The war against cliché has failed

Language can't remain in aspic, but cliché has defeated Martin Amis.
Are there any linguistic developments we should be celebrating?

Michael Holroyd, guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 January 2011

 

I am becoming increasingly exercised by our culture of outrage. Turn on your television and you will see bereaved families goaded into demanding, for the sake of "justice", severer penalties for criminals – though it is the severity of what was accepted as justice in the past that now shocks us. Meanwhile politicians, unaware of how sick we grow on a diet of flattery, keep congratulating us on belonging to a wonderfully tolerant country. They say they want our democratic "feedback" – the very word makes me feel nauseous. I remember how, before he was elected leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron promised to set aside the confrontational politics of the House of Commons. Have you heard his performances there lately?

Do you care what happens during question time? On the whole, we languish in indifference over most things until suddenly roused to spasms of moral ferment. "We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality . . . once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous," Macaulay wrote. Much has changed since he attacked "the savage envy of [those] aspiring dunces" who denounced Byron. We no longer wait seven years for our virtuous eruptions: we have them every week.

In the literary world we are encouraged to mimic this outrage. Obituaries of Graham Greene focused on the appalling scandal of his never having been awarded the Nobel prize for literature, and those of Beryl Bainbridge loudly deplored the gross unfairness of her being denied the Booker. As for Martin Amis, we cannot wait for him to die before encircling him with the names of prizes he has (so far) failed to win.

To my mind, it is Amis's campaign against the clichés on which our outrage feeds that has failed. Is there any meaning whatever in the repeated words we hear? "Fantastic" and "incredible" seem to parody or refute the statements they are intended to strengthen. Many of our newly minted clichés have a touch of violence added to them – such as "kick-start" instead of the quicker, simpler "start", and the aggressive coating of "batter" which (as if taking orders in a totalitarian restaurant) all cricket commentators suddenly began using one morning.

Michael Holroyd's full piece at The Guardian.