Lecture #1 General notes on style and stylistics: Style and stylistics. Stylistics and its tasks

The Cliché
A cliché is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed and trite. It has lost its precise meaning by constant reiteration; in other words it has become stereotyped. 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 (See p. 164) are brand-, ed as clichés. In an interesting article entitled "Great Clichè Debate" published in the New York Times Magazine"^ we can read the pros and cons concerning clichés. This 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 debators 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. "Determine to avoid clichés at all costs and you are almost certain to be led into gobbledygook."
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: lan­guage should always be fresh, vigorous and expressive, and on the other hand, 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.
R. D. Altick 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').
"Similarly when you read," he goes on, "if one word almost inevitably invites another, if you can read half of the words and know pretty certainly what the other half are, you are reading cliches."
And then again come illustrations, like We watched the flames {'lick­ing') at the side of the building. A pall ('of smoke') hung thick over the neighbourhood...; He heard a dull ('thud') which was followed by an ominous ('silence').
This passage shows that the author has been led into the erroneous notion that everything that is predictable is a cliché. He is confusing useful word combinations circulating in speech as members of the word stock of the language with what claims to be genuine, origi­nal and vigorous. All word combinations that do not surprise are labelled as clichés. If we agree with such an understanding of the term, we must admit that the following stable and necessary word combina­tions used in newspaper language must be viewed as clichés: 'effective guarantees', 'immediate issues', 'the whip and carrot policy', 'state­ment of policy', 'to maintain some equilibrium between reliable sour­ces', 'buffer zone', 'he laid it down equally clearly that...' and soon.
R. D. Altick thus denounces as clichés such verb and noun phrases as 'to live to a ripe old age', 'to grow by leaps and bounds', 'to witbstand the test of time'^ 'to let bygones be bygones', 'to be unable to see the wood for the trees', 'to upset the applecart', 'to have an ace up one's sleeve'. And 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.'*
In his protest against hackneyed phrases, Altick has gone so far as to declare that people have adopted phrases like 'clock-work precision', 'tight-lipped (or stony) silence',, 'crushing defeat', 'bumper-to-bumper traffic', sky-rocketing costs' and the like "...as a way of evading their obligation to make their own language."
Of course, if instead of making use of the existing means of communi­cation, i.e., the language of the community, people are to coin "their own language," then Altick is right. But nobody would ever think such an idea either sound or reasonable. The set expressions of a language are 'part and parcel' of the vocabulary of the language and cannot be dispensed with by merely labelling them clichés.
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.
But as history has proved, the protest of too-zealous purists often fails to bar the way to all kinds of innovations into standard English. Illustrative in this respect is the protest made by Byron in his "Don Juan":
"... 'free to confess' -(whence comes this phrase?
Is't English? No -- 'tis only parliamentary)."
and also:
"A strange coincidence to use a phrase
By which such things are settled nowadays."
Or
"The march of Science (How delightful these clichés are!)..."(Aldington)
Byron, being very sensitive to the aesthetic aspect of his native language, could not help observing the triteness of the phrases he com­ments on, but at the same time he accepts them as ready-made, units. Language has its strength and its weaknesses. A linguistic scholar must be equipped with methods of stylistic analysis to ascertain the writer's aim, the situation in which the communication takes place and possibly the impact on the reader to decide whether or not a phrase is a cliché or "the right word in the right place." If he does not take into consideration all the properties of the given word or word combination, the intricacies of language units may become a trap for him.
Men-of-letters, if they are real artists, use the stock of expressive phrases contained in the language naturally and easily, and well-known phrases never produce the impression of being clichés.
Here are a few examples taken from various sources:
"Suzanne, excited, went on talking nineteen to the dozen.'"
(Maugham)
"She was unreal, like a picture and yet had an elegance which made Kitty feel all thumbs." (Maugham)
"Because the publisher declares in sooth
Through needles' eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass, than those two cantos into families." (Byron)
"Redda had that quality... found in those women who... put all their eggs in one basket." (Galsworthy)
"As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey." (Dickens) ^