CLICHÉ, THE FAST-FOOD OF LANGUAGE

APPEALING AS A MASS-PRODUCED GREASE-BURGER, AND FLAVORFUL AS THE CARDBOARD IN WHICH IT IS PACKAGED

As a matter of casual observation, I would guess that less than five percent of what passes for conversation nowadays has any originality, representing a genuine expression of the speaker's own thoughts. For most people, fifty percent or more of what they utter is meaningless "padding" (like you know like I told him I said like basically like I mean like you know what I'm saying). The remainder is made up largely of cliché, which, despite its faults, has the miraculous quality of enabling people who have nothing to say to each other to carry on a seemingly animated conversation.

Of course, clichés don't start out as such. Originally someone says or writes something delightfully witty or poetic, and soon everyone else is quoting (or misquoting) it. Naturally, after everyone has heard the witty saying a few times, it loses its punch and becomes stale. But by that time it has become a standard part of the average person's speaking pattern, and its general meaning can be conveyed in casual conversation even when it is misquoted or used inappropriately.

Clichés are remarkably resilient, and can survive considerable mangling. ("Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," not "beast.") You can even mutilate one so badly that it means exactly the opposite of what is intended, and still masquerade as a brilliant conversationalist in some circles. The intended meaning of even a butchered cliché comes through simply because it is so tiresomely familiar. How often, for example, do you hear people say, "I could care less" (meaning, "I care somewhat"), when what they really mean is, "I couldn't care less" (meaning, "I don't care at all")? That one really drives me up a wall, know what I mean? But, boring and even irksome though they may be, clichés do have their uses.

Some people are, through no fault of their own, severely lacking in verbal skills. They would be sorely taxed to express themselves if they had to do so solely by crafting coherent sentences from "scratch," using individual words. For them cliché is an essential crutch.

Many people seem to use cliché in a misguided attempt to appear fashionable, clever and witty, apparently not realizing that the use of trite expressions whose bloom has faded has quite the opposite effect.

The numbing effect of cliché is used to advantage by propagandists, who sometimes cleverly misquote familiar truisms or use them inappropriately, distorting the meanings thereof in order to support their own arguments. They rely upon the tiresome familiarity of cliché to cause complacent and gullible listeners to ignore a subtle but crucial alteration in the meaning of a familiar-sounding phrase, in order to gain acceptance of their ideas.

For most people in this age of billboards and bumper stickers, however, the use of cliché is simply a matter of convenience (read "laziness"). Expressing one's own thoughts presumes that one has thoughts to express. And that in turn implies both the ability to think, and the willingness to exercise that ability.

Thinking—real thinking that is, the evaluation and manipulation of ideas in order to enhance one's grasp of a subject, and perhaps to derive new concepts therefrom—has become passé. That kind of thinking requires effort, and many regard it, not as a delightful intellectual exercise, but as a distasteful drudgery they'd rather forgo. They'd prefer to be told by someone in authority what they ought to "think," rather than employ their own gray matter to evaluate ideas and develop their own conclusions.

Clichés are handy, simple, fashionable, comfortable and safe. They let people talk without thinking, listen without learning, socialize without saying anything, converse without communicating. And with clichés there's never the risk of embarrassment from—gods forbid—the expression of an original idea!

= SAJ =