However, there are times when you’d rather your writings not necessarily be understandable to others. Sometimes, like if you’re keeping a journal and detailing the various angsts and dramas of your life, you’d rather that the relevant parties not be able to read the entries. Similarly, if you’re keeping a grimoire (book of recipes and incantations), a book of shadows (for spells or other magical writings), or even just the list of top secret spices in your world famous marinara sauce, you’ll have a strong motivation to make sure that nobody else gets to to the information. In this sort of a situation, there’s a variety of different ways of going about hiding or obscuring your writing, even though you’re using the same language that everybody around you speaks.

Writing without being read

Now, assuming that you’re writing a physical document, the first, and most simple, is by hiding it. You could write your marinara sauce recipe out in perfectly understandable english, but if it’s locked in a safe at the bottom of the Atlantic, nobody will be able to read it. Similarly, if you keep your diary in a locked box, or even just have a lock on the cover, it’ll be safe from prying eyes.

However, hiding the document can fail. It’s really easy to go and answer the door, leaving your journal in plain sight for any offendable parties to find. Not to mention the fact that all locks are breakable, and if the only thing between your neighbor and your marinara sauce recipe is a cloth and cardboard locking journal, your recipe is practically already stolen.

So, the next step is to somehow hide the writing itself. Things like disappearing invisible ink or ink that’s only exposed with certain light sources are wonderful at this sort of thing. Similarly, you could use some sort of steganography (hiding information within other information), maybe putting a microdot on the page, or making the first letter of every word spell out your real meaning.

These methods have their downfalls too, though. Invisible ink and microdots require specialized methods or technologies, and aren’t really practical to everyday use. Besides, sooner or later, people will notice the UV lamp on your desk and start to wonder why you keep so many blank journals. If you do a “the first letter of every word” sort of thing, then you’ll end up having to write whole paragraphs of gibberish to communicate even the smallest of concepts, and even then, it’ll betray that there’s something else going on.

You could certainly go all out and start using some sort of cipher. Switch z for a, y for b, and so on, until eventually you’ve replaced the whole alphabet with an alternative one. Perhaps you could even go deeper, using some of the more innovative sorts of cryptography out there. (For a great, understandable book on cryptography, check out Simon Singh’s The Code Book). But, encrypting your writing takes forever to encode and decode, and it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever be able to read and write in a cipher fluidly. Besides, those, too, are crackable.

Perhaps the most complex sort of cipher would be to just use the writing system (and even some vocabulary) from another language. If you’re, for instance, writing English using the Cyrillic alphabet from Russian, it’ll be pretty incomprehensible to your neighbor. However, if you come across somebody who speaks English and reads Russian, your system falls apart.

So, what option does this leave you?

Enter Cryptorthography

‘Cryptorthography’ is a word I’ve made up to describe the creation of secret writing systems. It’s a combination of cryptos (Greek for ‘hidden’), and then the linguistics term ‘orthography’, referring to the writing system and writing rules of a language. ‘orthography’ also comes from Greek, being a combination of orthos (‘correct’) and graphein (‘to write’)

So, how does one practice cryptorthography? It’s actually fairly simple. You just take a given language (or languages), and create a new writing system for it which only you (or a few select people) can understand. This way, you could leave even your most secret writings out on the kitchen table, but nobody would be able to understand them without a fair amount of contemplation or analysis.

By creating your own system, you’ll be able to write and read it without too much trouble, but it’ll be completely opaque to everybody else, no matter which language they speak. It’ll be far faster than coding or ciphers, and doesn’t need to be hidden or obscured to be secret, and since it’s all hand-written, it’ll be far less vulnerable to computer-based assaults because of the trouble of transcribing it into a computer.

Before you start writing all your personal secrets on your front door, it’s important to remember that, just like with the above systems of hiding your meaning, there are weaknesses and places where people could easily figure out what you mean. I’d like to discuss a few of these weaknesses that I’ve come up with, and offer some advice for how to harden your writing system against analysis.

Obscuring the obscure

The most simple way to do this would be just creating new letter forms for your language. If you just use a new symbol in the place of ‘a’, a new one in place of ‘b’, and so on, you’ll quickly have a text that’s unable to be read at first glance. The system would be easy to create, but I’d recommend against it. As soon as somebody started looking, they might well start noticing patterns. If they know (or suspect) that it’s English, they’ll start looking for certain patterns. If they see a single symbol alone, they’ll know, for instance, that it’s either ‘a’ or ‘I’. Similarly, two symbol words are far less common, and give them an inroads to further analysis.

If, on the other hand, you mix it up a bit, you’ll make their lives infinitely more difficult. For instance, if you were to use only the sounds of words and disregard how they’re written, it would instantly complicate analysis. So, instead of “rough”, you’d have ‘ruf’. “You” would become a two symbol sound (‘yu’), and ‘I’ would become two symbols (‘ay’). If you’d like to play it even safer, start marking all the different English vowels. With that step, you’ll confuse anybody who thinks that English only has a, e, i, o and u, and likely stop most casual inquiries.

Another good strategy is to include a few filler characters. If you include in your writing system a symbol or two that you know has no meaning, you can use it with single sound words (‘a’) to throw off analysis. Similarly, just dropping a few of those into random words will force people to try and find a correspondence for something that, well, just doesn’t exist.

While we’re being evil to any potential analysis, one of the advantages to creating a phonetic symbol set is that you can use it to write in other languages as well. If you start including random words in other languages, or substituting say, some Hindi word for their English equivalents, it’ll throw off any attempts to figure out what is what based on the phonology (sound rules) of a language.

For instance, somebody analyzing your system might know that if there are three consonants together in English at the start of a word, the first consonant is always an /s/ sound. Always. So, if they’ve decided what constitute vowels, and then find three consonants before one, they’ll know what your /s/ symbol is. That is, unless you use the Russian word “vsyo” (all) someplace in your text. Then, they’ll have at least two three-consonant clusters, and can’t use the phonology to work their way through it.

Using similar symbols to the existing system can be a double-edged sword: it can both help and hurt you. If your symbols are too similar, your system is far too easy to crack. However, I highly recommend using one or two symbols that are at least close to an existing symbol, however, I’d recommend assigning them a different sound. For instance, one might use a ‘v’ to represent the /k/ sound.

This has the wonderful effect of creating a cognitive mismatch between the system they’re trying to analyze and the system they’re using. As any English-literate learner of Russian will tell you, at first, it’s very tough to see a ‘p’ and hear an ‘r’ sound, even though that’s what Cyrillic does. It won’t stop them, but it’ll certainly make analysis that much more of a pain.

There are other ways to make life difficult for anybody analyzing your writing. If you write from right to left, you’ll create a great many problems for them, just as if you were to write vertically. Along those lines, if you remove spaces and familiar punctuation, it’s even more difficult, both for you and for them.

Also, remember that you don’t need to create an alphabet per se. You might create a syllabary like in Japanese, where the symbols each represent a different syllable (‘ra’ might have one symbol, whereas ‘re’ would have a completely different one). Also, if you’re feeling ambitious, you could make a character set, where each word has a symbol. It’d be a great many symbols, but it’d be very difficult to crack.

Finally, as common sense dictates, throw away the key. Once you’ve created your system and learned it well, hide or destroy your handy reference guide, or else understanding your writing is as easy as looking up the symbols.

It has to make sense to somebody

However, if you spend all your time trying to make reading your system tough on other people, it’s easy to make it tough on you too. There are a few easy ways to avoid this.

Perhaps one of the toughest parts of the process is actually designing the symbols. For that, I highly recommend that you make a trip over to Omniglot, a wonderful website which discusses writing systems around the world and has lots of examples. It’s a great place to blow a few hours, and will show you all the variety of systems out there.

Once you’ve got symbols, make sure you’re combining them in a way that makes sense to you. For instance, I might use a system based on phonetics, where high vowels (like in beet and boot) are marked above the baseline, and low vowels (bat and bot) are the same symbol, but marked below the baseline. However, you can go much more personalized. If a symbol reminds you of the shape of Cape Cod, you might use it for a ‘kay’ sound. Basically, if it makes sense to you, go for it.

Finally, keep in mind the difficulty of writing the symbols you pick. Don’t use anything more complex than necessary, because it’ll only slow you down. Similarly, if you often write with a fountain pen, try to avoid symbols with right to left strokes (assuming you’re writing left-to-right). If you’re going to use this a lot, any corners you can cut now (without making it more difficult to read) will save you a massive amount of time in the future.

Your thirteen spices are safe

If you take the time to create your own writing system and take a few easy steps to harden it, you can sure that nobody will be able to casually peruse your secret recipes and writings.

However, as with all security measures, your secrets are never completely safe. All that locks, encryption, ciphers and even cryptorthography can buy you is time. If somebody has a sample of your writing system, it’s very likely that, given enough time, they’d be able to figure it out.

So, if the CIA wants to find out the secret thirteen spices, chances are, they’ll be able to. However, a little bit of cryptorthography will go a long way towards keeping your recipes mysteriously delicious.

(PS: If this sounds interesting, stay tuned. I might well be holding some sort of a contest where people create secret writing systems and then have other people try and crack them. I’ll announce more details later, but if you’re interested, leave a comment and we’ll be in touch!)

There, I describe my introduction to Linguistics as largely a question of fate and terrible Russian textbooks. That is all true, but only tonight have I realized and acknowledged the secondary (and at the same time, primary) reason why I am where I am: I thought the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was true, and wanted to use it to improve life. Let me explain.

Applied Linguistic Relativity and you

I’ve discussed this idea (also referred to as ‘Linguistic Relativity’) elsewhere on this site before (view them all here), and in the interest of time (and friendliness to people who’ve not read the past posts), I’m just going to quote my past explanation posted here. I encourage you to read that full post to get a better idea of the controversy and guesswork involved in any exploration of Linguistic relativity, but for a quick summary, I’ve quoted the most explanatory parts:

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a blanket term for the idea that the grammar and lexicon of a person’s language subtly affects their thoughts and perspectives on the world. It’s a very hotly contested issue in modern Linguistics, and although the most extreme variations (the idea that language determines your thought) have been disproved through some pretty ingenious color studies, the more subtle varieties are still supported in some senses.

If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, a speaker of the Hopi language (which has a very different system of tenses than English) will perceive time in a fundamentally different way than an English speaker. Similarly, a Spanish speaker will have a slightly different view of the world than an English speaker, simply due to the underlying differences between the two languages. If this is, in fact, the case, then there are huge ramifications in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and the world in general.

Basically, I believed that one’s language can limit one’s thought. If you don’t have a word, you don’t have a concept, and your brain is bound. I believed that language was the fundamental chain that bound us all, so insidiously that we don’t even know it.

So, if language is the fundamental chain that binds our cognition, then what can we do to escape? Well, we have two options.

One would be to raise our children without language. This would certainly remove the binds of language, but cause them to be incapable of most of human interaction. Without language of some sort, there likely wouldn’t be civilization, society, or even basic human cooperation. This would clearly be, as the American idiom goes, throwing the baby out with the bathwater (getting rid of the good parts of something simply because there’s a small imperfection).

The second option, simply put, is to change language as we know it. This was my plan.

Not ambitious at all, why?

My plan was simple: If a person’s language puts limits on their cognition, then really, all you need to do is change the language in such a way that those limits are removed. If language is a dam on the vast cognitive river, then to get more flow, you make a less restrictive dam. Thus, my love of language creation was born.

My hope was to create a language through which anything was expressible. I still have between 30 and 50 pages of hastily scribbled blueprints for my language (‘evlit’ was the working title), ranging from the philosophical needs to the grammatical needs. That little strip of light that shows up on the wall because of the slight imperfection of the fitting of the metal pieces of the fluorescent fixture in my Russian classroom my Freshman year would be just as easy and quick to describe as, say, a gray cat. Regularity would abound, simplicity would be a constant, and ease of learning would be maximized. Ideas from computer science, philosophy, and more all bounced around in my head in an effort to come up with a language that would not just function, but would set our minds free.

Perhaps this all sounds strange to you all, and I’ll admit, it was strange. However, I’d like you to imagine for a second that language was really the invisible chain that binds us all. Imagine being able to do something that not only freed a single person from bondage, not only a single community or even state, but the entire human race. I felt that if I could actually create a language which was truly “better”, more versatile, and allowed true cognitive freedom, I could truly help the entire human race.

The Russian department pushed me away, sure. Languages intrigued me, no doubt. However, that’s not really why I’m here today. When I signed up for my Intro to Linguistics class, I wanted to learn the nature of the chains, so I could cast them off, then help other people do the same.

Realization

I still vividly remember one day, around three years ago, walking back towards the department with my Intro to Linguistics professor and talking to him about language creation. I explained my ideas for creating a new, improved language, as he listened quietly. We arrived back in his office, he sat down behind his desk, and he shared an insight that has affected me to this day. He turned to me and said: “Well, all you’re going to be doing is re-encoding how things work in your mind as an English speaker, just using different sounds and grammar”.

Pop. There went my plan. One offhand comment showed me the folly of my idea. I tried to fight the realization in my own mind for a few weeks, but really, it died right there. If language does fundamentally bind my thought, how the heck could I escape it long enough to loosen the chains. If I’m bound, I won’t be able to free myself, because I literally cannot exist outside of this bondage. By the time we’re old enough to understand and use language, then we’re old enough that we’re trapped. Soon after that, I realized that really, whether or not language affects our thought is irrelevant.

As the Buddhist monk Shantideva once wrote, “If there is a problem and you are able to do something about it, why despair? And if there is a problem and you are not able to do anything about it, why despair?”. If language does, in fact, change how we think, well, we’re already bound and we can’t really escape, so there’s nothing we can do. If language doesn’t change how we think, then there’s no problem at all. Nobody’s bound, and there’s nothing we need to do. Either we’re bound, or we’re not, and we’ll never be able to tell the difference.

Even I were somehow able to create a truly better language, and even if it helped people, it would also likely result in a great linguistic genocide. Many of the remaining languages on Earth would gradually be abandoned in favor of a more useful and more powerful language, and the blood of all those grammars would be on my hands. So, I’ve realized that my goal, my dream, of changing and “improving” language to help the world is not only impossible, but probably not even a good idea. Yet, I’m still a linguist.

Now what?

Language is truly incredible. Next time you see a conversation taking place, sit back and watch. Patterns of air pressure, body language, and facial expressions are being used to express the millions of thoughts flying around inside our heads, and even more amazing, those things can be interpreted and understood by other people. The fact that we have a means of communication at all, let alone one so full of nuance and beauty, is simply miraculous.

I might have come to Linguistics because I wanted to improve language, and because I thought I could use it to help the world. The reason I’m still here is because I’ve realized that human language is not only sufficient for what we need, it’s truly miraculous. This may sound corny, but I am captivated by the complexity, the grace, and the sheer pragmatic beauty of grammar, sound, and the cognition required to get it there.

Nobody knows exactly where language came from, or when it developed. Heck, nobody knows exactly how language works in our minds, how we learn it, and how we understand it. We have described elements of it, have made lots of theories, and we’ve even made some progress on understanding how we go about making language. However, there are still many mysteries out there.

I might not set the world free with a single word, but language is a fundamental aspect of our everyday lives, if not the fundamental aspect. By studying language and the mysteries involved, I’m studying not only grammar, sound, or cognition, but human life itself.

If that’s not important, what is?

Right now, in-Game languages are usually rather disappointing to a Linguist.

For instance, in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the main character interacts with a variety of different human and alien species on a variety of planets. Although most interaction with humans (and a few specific non-human characters) takes place in English with actors reading lines, when an alien speaks, a soundbite of their “language” is played and a subtitle is shown on the screen. Now, this is cool, and the fact that every species that speaks has a different and recognizable sound and sound system in those soundbite is a really cool thing. However, it’s literally just two or three soundbites. So, every time your garden variety Twi’Lek speaks, one of the two or three twi’lek soundbites is played, no matter what’s being said and who’s saying it. So, although the Twi’Lek language in KOTOR has a sound system, there’s no actual grammar.

In game languages can get more complex, though. In Ambrosia Software’s Escape Velocity: Nova, they have a slightly different philosophy. Although all communication is through text, they’ve managed to work some interesting language use in. There are several species living in the same galaxy, and the naming of both the planets and the ports on them is usually reflective of the language of the species. Looking at a Galactic map, one can pretty easily distinguish the different governmental regions of control just by the planet name. For example, The Polaris (in purple) generally have names with a single syllable, an ” ‘ “, and a cluster of syllables, whereas the Wraith (grey, at the top of the map) name their planets with a syllable, a ” ‘ “, a capitalized orthographic vowel, ” ‘ “, and a syllable cluster.

However, the really interesting stuff happens when you look more closely at the Polaris planets and personal names in EV Nova. In the game, they are explained as having Five Castes. If you learn the different castes and the naming system, then just by looking at the map, you can tell instantly which of the castes controls a given system, which offers a huge gameplay advantage. Say, for instance, you needed to purchase an armor upgrade. Knowing that military hardware is sold by the Warrior caste (the Nil’Kemoria), you could look at the map for the nearest system prefixed with “Nil’” indicating warrior caste control, and go there. Similarly, it’s easy to determine where to go for cheap medical supplies (at the Healer caste planets, with “P’”). So, learning elements of the Polaris language in EV Nova is a boon to the gamer, and I applaud the folks at Ambrosia for taking the time to actually make something (no matter how small) out of the language, rather than just leaving it as creative gibberish.

Some games have interesting language features that aren’t even meant to be interesting. In Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Jedi Academy they have the wonderful option to have all dialogue, interface features, and subtitles in English or Spanish. Being a language nerd, I usually leave it set to Spanish. The translations are very good in general, with only a few comical aspects. Notable among them is the fact that Jedi, pronounced “Jed-eye” in English, is pronounced “Yed-ee” in the Spanish version). It’s also quite funny to see a Rodian speaking Spanish, with the distinctive Rodian pitch and filter.

So, oftentimes, games (especially in Sci-Fi and fantasy) will give a nod to the existence of non-human language, but very seldom will they actually go through the trouble to make that language into more than just background noise. However, those games that do choose to utilize some variety of actual, meaningful created language create a unique experience for the gamer, and deserve commendation.

These are just a few salient examples from the vast world of gaming. If you’ve got another example, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll give it mention, or, if you’re space-travel enabled, just stop by Ling’angma, home planet to the Linguist caste. You might not want to bring any grammarians, though.

Also: If you look at the sidebar on the main page, you’ll notice I’ve added a new feature, the Link of the Moment. This is just a random language, life, or computing link that I’ve found interesting and bookmarked here. It changes every time you refresh the page, so come back often. :)

Proponents of E-Prime maintain that the English verb ‘to be’ in all of its forms has no place in discourse. Thus, words like “be, being, been, am, is, isn’t, are, aren’t, was, wasn’t, were, weren’t” are strictly forbidden. However, no ban has been placed on words like “has, become, will, would, do, shall, ought”. Two wonderful poems have been placed on the Wikipedia site, one in E-Prime, and one in Conventional English.

Conventional English
Roses are red;
Violets are blue.
Honey is sweet,
And so are you.

E-Prime
Roses seem red;
Violets seem blue.
Honey pleases me,
And so do you.

E-Prime’s creator felt that these rules “reduce the possibility for misunderstanding and for conflict”. The reasoning for this seems firmly rooted in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, as they argue that the use of ‘to be’ can create false security in characteristics (when we say “the coat is red”, we only know that “the coat looks red to me”). They also seem to feel that the elimination of ‘to be’ leads to a language based less on an objective view of reality. Thus, eliminating statements of reality which include no epistemic information (information about how we know what we know) forces us to concentrate on the subjective nature of our interpretations. By adopting this language change, the creators of e-prime seem to feel that our perceptions would gradually shift as well, and eventually, so might our thoughts.

My primary skepticism involves the benefits of adopting such a change. Even if the elimination of ‘to be’ in written and spoken discourse could actually affect our perceptions of the world, I wonder whether the resulting change would really reduce the possibility for conflict and misunderstanding. Sure, false objectivity and lack of epistemic information in language could disappear (at least partially), but I question whether the awkwardness caused by eliminating ‘to be’ might outweigh the benefits and create additional sources of confusion. However, the awkwardness would vary from person to person. I composed this entire post in a basic form of E-Prime (excepting examples), and I did not find it overwhelmingly difficult, but I also cannot imagine it working well in spoken discouse.

E-prime seems quite innovative to me, and although I cannot see it catching on in everyday use, the mere idea provides a great example of thinking outside of the linguistic box in language creation/expansion. It seems like a good step towards precision language, and the idea of eliminating words for higher precision fascinates me. Thus, like many created languages, E-Prime seems destined to a gradual journey down the river to obscurity. However, like all created languages, it offers a new perspective and a new way to view the world.

I’ll end with a great quote from one of the E-Prime sites:

“You don’t need to take drugs to hallucinate; improper language can fill your world with phantoms and spooks of many kinds.”

I’d mentioned High Precision Language in a previous post, and I think it’s time to give it a little more consideration.

Human language is quite often ambiguous, especially outside of context. Take, for instance, the following wonderful examples of ambiguity at its best:

“Police help dog bite victim”

“Have you seen the Queen of England’s hat?”

This ambiguity is seldom a problem, especially in a conversational situation where the participants can either infer (“Oh, Jane was talking about getting bitten by a dog the other day”) or ask for a clarification. Worst comes to worst, there is a misunderstanding and some communicative catastrophy occurs.

Trouble on the Path to Precision

There are some areas where ambiguity becomes far more problematic.

One such area is that of computers. As my computational linguistics professor says, “Computers are stupid. They’ll do exactly what you tell them to.” Computers lack the ability to infer, or to ask for clarification, so if you hand a computer an ambiguous command, it will likely hand you an error in return. To conquer this, we have created a great variety of computer languages (like C, Python, Perl, etc.), all designed to prevent as much ambiguity as possible and offer the computer a command that can only be read in one way.

However, I believe that there are some human realms that are more susceptible to troubles from the ambiguity.

Whether or not language is the basis for human thought (a highly contentious idea, see the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), we do a great deal of subvocalization (talking to ourselves, silently) when thinking or working through difficult problems. Language is a good means of communication with ourselves, as well as with others, and when spelling out one’s thoughts, precision is very helpful.

In the legal world, hours upon hours are spent on each document, finding and removing (or exploiting) ambiguity in laws, contracts, evidence, and other such documents. Precise language could quickly eliminate loopholes, shorten text, and ideally make “legalese” obsolete.

In the realm of religion and spirituality, there are many examples of ritualized speech, where precision can be very important. In religious texts (and their translations), ambiguity can cause massive difficulties. As any lawyer can tell you, a single changed word can change the meaning of a text immensely. So, when a person is using a book to develop his or her spirituality, ambiguity can put them in a very difficult position. To avoid this, some religions (such as Islam) have decreed an official language to avoid such troubles in translation. In Islam, the Koran (or Qu’ran) cannot be “translated” from its native Arabic, but rather it is “interpreted” into other languages. These interpretations are not considered valid for any serious religious discussion, and most scholars of Islam are able to read, recite, and explain the Koran in Arabic. (Referencing the Wikipedia Article on the Qu’ran). However, a potent, easy-to-use, and ambiguity free language would be very handy for translation, and for the creation of any texts which may become important to future generations.

However, even in one’s personal worship or rituals, ambiguity in language can be seen to raise difficulties. In Paganism, Wicca, and other spiritual systems involving spellcraft or invocations, words are frequently used in Spells or Rituals as a method of establishing or guiding intent. In these situations, it’s vital to “be careful what you wish for”, because, if the spell is successful, practitioners believe that you just might get it. So, if your language is ambiguous, there’s a chance that your intent might be as well, and that could quickly lead to great difficulties. I suspect that with a High Precision Language, crafting the language for rituals would become a meditation and ritual in-and-of itself, and might well lead to better creation of intent in the long run.

Similarly, in some cultures involving planned ceremonies, the use, delivery, and intent of each word is vital, and some cultures believe that if a single word is misplaced or mis-spoken, the entire ceremony may fail. In these cultures, precision in speech and language is necessary, and ambiguity might be seen as a way to break a perfectly good ceremony. (This example stems from knowledge gained from a class on Native American Culture, but I’m unable to remember the specific tribe or ritual to cite. Assistance or corrections are appreciated.)

So what is High Precision Language?

Well, truthfully, I’m not sure yet. Whether it be an expansion to existing language, a language all its own, or a fool’s pipe-dream, High Precision Language is language easy enough for human use, but precise enough for computers, rituals and lawyers. Although it would undoubtedly be difficult to create, find, or discover, I think that the benefits in situations like those above would be a boon to humanity in a variety of contexts.

The potential of these benefits are what keep me searching for such an obscure concept, and hoping to make progress on what some might consider a fool’s journey.

John was burning rubber in front of his house on the parched desert flats when he noticed the approaching truck.

When reading that sentence, I suspect that very few people would instinctively imagine that he was in fact burning rubber (placing it in a barrel and setting it ablaze), instead assuming the clichéd meaning of “driving quickly”. Here, there’s enough ambiguity to allow two completely different situations to be described, but even in less ambiguous situations, cliché can still affect (or taint) the meaning of one’s words.

Every time a cliché is used, it is stamped with another experience. Just think of all the things in your life that have “shot off like a rocket”: maybe a stock, a car, maybe even a person fleeing danger? So, therefore, every time that a cliché is invoked, each past experience of the listener with the idea is pulled into it, however subtly. So, really, a cliché is more than the sum of its parts. A few seemingly harmless words, when united, can quickly turn into an amorphous beast, both relevant and out-of-place in any conversation.

It’s also worth considering the idea of cliché in computer languages. If you always use one particular chunk of code when doing X, perhaps you’re missing out on an opportunity for more precision or improvement. Mixing it up a little couldn’t hurt, where possible.

So, when you use a cliché, no matter what you intended to express, the sum of the listener’s past experiences have just been placed in your mouth. Your entire communication just got tainted, all because of one little phrase.

Should we attempt to crush Cliché?

Well, that’s a tough question. There’s nothing inherently wrong with cliché. It seems to be built in to our use of language, and there are times when any cliché is actually appropriate. I’m sure that I’ve unintentionally snuck a few clichés into this very post. Although it might eventually be for the best to cease cliché altogether, that’s far easier said than done.
However, if you’re concerned with the idea of high precision language (like I am), then cliché starts to take on a more dangerous aspect. In addition to pulling in unnecessary baggage, there’s the temptation to use a common cliché where a more unique phrase would be more powerful.

Alright, then how?

Well, that’s the trick. Anything can be overused, and the temptation is always there due to the inherent human lazyness in language selection. Perhaps the only way to completely eliminate cliché would be to categorically forbid the reuse of phrases. This would be difficult, because, well, some words are meant to be together, in the most cliché of senses (not to mention that the cliché police would inevitably face a rather cold reception, no matter their form.)

If one wants to eliminate cliché in a new language, another possibility is to create an easy, accessible system of word and meaning creation. This, too, is FAR easier said than done, but if accurate language is constructed easily enough, there’s no need to use inaccurate language.

Cliché is here to stay

So, really, there is no quick and easy way to eliminate cliché. It’s as much a part of current languages as anything else. Until the Cliché Police arrive or a better way of forming words comes along, the best we can do is exercise a little self control and try and pick the most accurate word, rather than the easiest.

Note: I’ll likely end up discussing “High Precision Language” and the idea of language creation to the point of absurdity later down the road. Sorry to leave people hanging!