Dialogue: Cliches are a pain in the vernacular

My nephew just passed School Certificate English. When I say just, I mean narrowly. He didn't deem it critical to study hard for the final exam, figuring as he actually spoke the language it should have been a straightforward task.

Cramming for maths seemed far more urgent. Besides, he is a member of the text message generation, whose grasp of proper English has little relevance in day-to-day communications.

Text messaging is destined to do to his age-group the same thing that the spell-check facility on the computer did to spelling skills of my generation - and what calculators have done to our ability to crack long division mentally.

The Queen's English will soon remain unspoken and we may reconsider the need to bother learning it.

While we can blame technology for making us poor communicators, computers do not account for our growing penchant for speaking in cliches, which is further diminishing our ability to speak articulately and with flair.

As a nation we never spoke English particularly well in the first place but now there seems to be developing a sort of Auckland city-speak that shortcuts the whole process of oral communication.

How many times a day do we hear "Let's just not go there" (that is, don't pry, it will embarrass me), or "That's too much information" (that is, this excessive detail could embarrass you). Then there's "no-brainer" which also conveniently describes those who overuse this term.

While I'll 'fess up to my own speech being a string of unimaginative absolutely fabulouses and simply amazings, I am conscious to avoid sales rep jargon such as the extremely annoying term - "24/7."

This utterance is usually used in conjunction with another cliche "to the max" as in "I have been stressed to the max working 24/7." Ugh.

These same types often are heard exclaiming something is "going off" as in, like a rocket or spectacular fireworks display.

So, when they say, "This sushi is going off," don't alert the waitress, it's all right to keep eating.

Maybe it's the start of a central city dialect. Certainly, people I know in the provinces aren't, like, working "24/7, looking for windows in their diary to blue sky in."

My guess is that this liberal and lazy use of English started in the 80s when people started doing lunch. Now not only do people do coffee, they give great cellphone.

While Auckland enjoys the Hero festival we see a parallel influx of people using the very campish phrases of "Helloooooo?" (meaning, it's incredible that the jackass didn't understand me) and "Oh puhleeeze" (meaning, do I really have to tolerate this).

For optimum effect, they are best drawled using the full-on nasal effect borrowed from Fran Drescher, TV's favourite nanny.

We have also been readily adopting cliches spawned from the world of advertising. It's every adman's dream to have a slogan adopted as a pet phrase by Joe Public. One can imagine the sales pitch: George, this line will become part of the vernacular.

For instance, "Just do it" is a powerful phrase, which brings with it the outer ripples of a multimillion-dollar international ad campaign.

Closer to home, remember when we all adopted the phrase "been there, done that" which we'd taken from a domestic tourism campaign? And now one simple word, "bugger," has more impact than before.

What hope is there for the English language when even a forward-thinking scholar such as Edward De Bono feels that is a little outdated. I was curious to read his notion of adopting a new numeric system of communications (coincidentally invented by himself), which apparently is a far more effective way of expressing the sentiment of several well-known concepts. Why bother explaining how you feel when a couple of numbers can sum it all up?

But there is another purpose to adopting this shorthand phraseology. It instantly makes one seem more up with the play.

Once we must have had to think up a whole lot of witty phrases, quotes and sound bites to make ourselves seem unique and interesting.

Today we can just shortcut our way into popularity, acceptability and belonging by using the latest lingo.

Modern cliches are as irritating as the common cold - a virus easily caught and with no cure but to sit it out until it's run its course.

This column started with a discussion among friends. "I hate the way people use those terms like 'Let's just not go there,"' said one. "Yeah," said another, "I'm, like, soooo over it, oops." "Same," I reply. Oops.