Peculiar Use of Set Expressions
In language studies there are two very clearly-marked tendencies that the student should never lose sight of, particularly when dealing with the problem of word-combination. They are:
1) the analytical tendency, which seeks to dissever one component from another;
2) the synthetic tendency which seeks to integrate the parts of the combination into a stable unit.
These two tendencies are treated in different ways in lexicology and stylistics. In lexicology the parts of a stable lexical unit may be separated in order to make a scientific investigation of the character of the combination and to analyze the components. In stylistics we analyze the component parts in order to get at some communicative effect sought by the writer. It is this communicative effect and the means employed to achieve it that lie within the domain of stylistics.
The integrating tendency also is closely studied in the realm of lexicology, especially when linguistic scholars seek to fix what seems to be a stable word-combination and ascertain the degree of its stability, its variants and so on. The integrating tendency is also within the domain of stylistics, particularly when the word-combination has not yet formed itself as a lexical unit but is in the process of being so formed.
Here we are faced with the problem of what is called the cliché.
A cliché is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed and trite. As Random House Dictionary has it, a cliché... has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long over-use...
This definition lacks one point that should be emphasized; that is, a cliché strives after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic generating power it once had. There is always a contradiction between what is aimed at and what is actually attained. Examples of real clichés are rosy dreams of youth, the patter of little feet, deceptively simple.
Definitions taken from various dictionaries show that cliché is a derogatory term and it is therefore necessary to avoid anything that may be called by that name. But the fact is that most of the widely recognized word-combinations which have been adopted by the language are unjustly classified as clichés. The aversion for clichés has gone so far that most of the lexical units based on simile are branded as clichés. In an interesting article entitled “Great Cliché Debate” published in the New York Times Magazine we can read the pros and cons concerning clichés. The article is revealing on one main point. It illustrates the fact that an uncertain or vague term will lead to various and even conflicting interpretations of the idea embodied in the term. What, indeed, do the words stereotyped, hackneyed, trite convey to the mind? First of all they indicate that the phrase is in common use. Is this a demerit? Not at all. On the contrary: something common, habitual, devoid of novelty is the only admissible expression in some types of communications. In the article just mentioned one of the debaters objects to the phrase Jack-of-all-trades and suggests that it should be one who can turn his hand to any (or to many kinds of) work. His opponent naturally rejects the substitute on the grounds that “Jack of all trades” may, as he says, have long ceased to be vivid or original, but his substitute never was. And it is fourteen words instead of four.
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Debates of this kind proceed from a grossly mistaken notion that the term cliché is used to denote all stable word-combinations, whereas it was coined, to denote word-combinations which have long lost their novelty and become trite, but which are used as if they were fresh and original and so have become irritating to people who are sensitive to the language they hear and read. What is familiar should not be given a derogatory label. On the contrary, if it has become familiar, that means it has won general recognition and by iteration has been accepted as a unit of the language.
But the process of being acknowledged as a unit of language is slow. It is next to impossible to foretell what may be accepted as a unit of the language and what may be rejected and cast away as being unfit, inappropriate, alien to the internal laws of the language, or failing to meet the demand of the language community for stable word-combinations to designate new notions. Hence the two conflicting ideas:
1)
Richard Daniel Altick
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2) language, as a common tool for intercommunication, should make use of units that are easily understood and which require little or no effort to convey the idea and to grasp it.
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Richard Daniel Altick (September 19, 1915, Lancaster, Pennsylvania – February 7, 2008) in his “Preface to Critical Reading” condemns every word sequence in which what follows can easily be predicted from what precedes.
“When does an expression become a cliché? There can be no definite answer, because what is trite to one person may still be fresh to another. But a great many expressions are universally understood to be so threadbare as to be useless except in the most casual discourse... A good practical test is this: If, when you are listening to a speaker, you can accurately anticipate what he is going to say next, he is pretty certainly using clichés, otherwise he would be constantly surprising you.”
Then he gives examples, like We are gathered here to-day to mourn (“the untimely death”) of our beloved leader...; Words are inadequate (“to express the grief that is in our hearts”).
The scholar in question denounces as clichés such verb- and noun-phrases as to live to a ripe old age, to grow by leaps and bounds, to withstand me test of time, to let bygones be bygones, to be unable to see the wood for the trees, to upset the apple-cart, to have an ace up one's sleeve. Finally he rejects such word-combinations as the full flush of victory, the patter of rain, part and parcel, a diamond in the rough and the like on the grounds that they have outlasted their freshness.
However, at every period in the development of a language, there appear strange combinations of words which arouse suspicion as to their meaning and connotation. Many of the new-born word-combinations in modern English, both in their American and British variants, have been made fun of because their meaning is still obscure, and therefore they are used rather loosely. Recently in the New York Times such clichés as speaking realization, growing awareness, rising expectations, to think unthinkable thoughts and others were wittily criticized by a journalist who showed that ordinary rank-and-file American people do not understand these new word-combinations, just as they fail to understand certain neologisms, as opt (= to make a choice), and revived words, as deem (= to consider, to believe to be) and others and reject them or use them wrongly.
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Proverbs and sayings are facts of language. They are collected in dictionaries. Their typical features are rhythm, sometimes rhyme and/or alliteration. But the most characteristic feature of a proverb or a saying lies not in its formal linguistic expression, but in the content-form of the utterance. A proverb or a saying is a peculiar mode of utterance which is mainly characterized by its brevity. The peculiarity of the use of a proverb lies in the fact that the actual wording becomes a pattern which needs no new wording to suggest extensions of meaning which are contextual. In other words, a proverb presupposes a simultaneous application of two meanings: the face-value or primary meaning, and an extended meaning drawn from the context.
Almost every good writer will make use of language idioms.
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An epigram is a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference being that epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the coinage of the people. Brevity is the essential quality of the epigram. Epigrams are often confused with aphorisms and paradoxes. It is difficult to draw a demarcation line between them, the distinction being very subtle: He that bends shall be made straight (“The Painted Veil” by Somerset Maugham).
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