Clichés? Let's use them

Last week, the Guardian published a series on "How to write", which included "The Guardian Book of English Language" (read " .. of Guardian style". The Guardian's style includes the proscription of certain phrases, clichés. I disagree: I truly appreciate the image of a business "haemorrhaging cash" if they really are losing money hand over fist. Clichés are powerful. They get an idea across straight away. They may avoid the use of thought. But that is no reason to dogmatically refuse to use them: writers just have to make sure that they are using the right idea.

The Oxford Shorter Dictionary lists "cliché" as "a stereotyped, expression, a hackneyed phrase or opinion" and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors as "unoriginal phrase". Therein lies the sometime nature of the beast: negative, careless and wrong. "Cliché" first appeared in the English language in 1892, according to RW Burchfield: this is about the time that publishers had become established and were beginning to put their own style, their own choices, their own dictats on what they published. The style of "avoiding clichés" must come from this time. One definition of a cliché includes "overused to the point that its sole function is to mark its user as a lazy thinker". Hmm, so using a cliché reflects badly on the writer, which can only be when the cliché has become popular enough to become a cliché? It's a good example of a circular argument, which it seems is the best way to tackle any discussion of clichés: Stephen Fry wrote in his book Moab Is My Washpot, "It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then, like most clichés, that cliché is untrue." It seems that it is very difficult to talk positively about clichés and Burchfield himself wrote of them that they are "always reminding us of the repetitiveness of things, the humdrumness that lies beyond and within the doorstep if one's imagination should weaken or one's sense of humour runs out". Oh help, how do we get away from such dogma about what is often a non-issue?

Clichés are metaphors, dead metaphors, those that we know so well that we don't have to think about to understand. People use idioms, analogies, colloquialisms because they are useful in their quirkiness. It is as simple as that. Idioms, I note, are OK: there is even a dictionary of English idioms. Phrases such as "like a fish out of water", "a feather in his cap", "Hobson's choice" have a historical and cultural basis, and refusing to use them risks losing the diversity in the English language.

Yes, there is a caveat: clichés can be misused for didactic purposes. They are familiar, instantly recognisable, and therefore dangerously powerful, and the message becomes subliminal, one that enters the mind yet only skims the surface of conciousness. This is just what is very handy about them, to get the message over, but lazy readers, that is lazy thinkers, may be more likely to accept a point that they otherwise wouldn't. Well, good writing should make reading easy, but writers can't and shouldn't second guess their style to accommodate potential laziness in their readers. Let's use the English language as it is given to us.

Are non-native English speakers put at a disadvantage when a cliché is used? Is the material made inaccessible to them? On the down side, reading has to stop until the meaning has been researched. On the up side, there is going to be no slipping fast ones past these readers, they aren't lazy. And the nuances of the language that are otherwise so difficult for non-native speakers to access are made available. Spoon-feeding (my choice of phrase) non-native readers, like spoon-feeding in general, does not allow development.

Finally, I am reminded of a colleague's comments when our supervisor was interviewing candidates for a post-doctoral position within our research group. " Oh her, that one. She was nothing but clichés. They can't appoint her." Well, "that one" got the job. And brilliant she is, the longest standing member of the group bar the supervisor himself. Not that I always agree with her, and she has views on a lot of things. Indeed, I relish the challenge of keeping on my toes in conversation with her and making sure that I don't just allow her latest point of view to slip in unnoticed, to flavour the rest of the conversation with a premise that I don't agree with. She doesn't second guess me; she trusts in my intelligence.