Talking in Cliches: The Use of Stock Phrases in Discourse and Communication

Clichés have been seen as hackneyed, tired, lazy, unthinking, and uninspiring, but this book explores their perception and use from social perspectives and academic studies of language. It draws data from written and spoken sources to re-interrogate and re-imagine the nature, role, and usage of clichés, identifying innovative and creative ways they are utilized in communication, interaction, and self-presentation.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 275 pages
Publication date: 03 November 2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

For decades, social perspectives, and even academic studies of language, have regarded clichés as a hackneyed, tired, lazy, unthinking, and uninspiring form of communication. Authored by two established scholars in the fields of Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Discourse Studies and Pragmatics, this cutting-edge book comprehensively explores the perception and use of clichés in language from these complementary perspectives. It draws data from a variety of both written and spoken sources to re-interrogate and re-imagine the nature, role, and usage of clichés, identifying the innovative and creative ways in which the concepts are utilized in communication, interaction, and in self-presentation. Observing a rich, complex layering of usage, the authors deconstruct the many and varied ways in which clichés operate and are interdependently constructed; from the role they play in discourse in general to their functions as argumentative strategies, as constructs of social cognition, as politeness strategies, and finally as markers of identity.

Weight: 326g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781108458139