Metaphors, Idioms, and Cliches

George Orwell's very first rule for plain language is this: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." ⁽²⁾

One of the first Canadian English teachers to go to China, after its opening in the 1970s, tried to enforce this with their writing students.

The Chinese were shocked. Their response was: "Don't you Canadians have any respect for your ancestors?"

We don't. Similarly, in poetry competitions in Japan, you commonly lose points for not mentioning plum blossoms. In a Canadian poetry competition, conversely, you would lose points for mentioning the rosy-fingered dawn.

Clearly, there is a cultural difference here. Cultural relativists may simply want to jump ship on plain language at this point. Oriental and many other foreign cultures love idiom and genre. We, in imposing the plain style, are in fact imposing our cultural values. I think there's no way around that.

But we are already imposing it, by trying to communicate at all. As soon as we seek to communicate with a foreign reader, or one not of our own culture, we are imposing our preference for internationalism, pluralism, and communications. Other cultures do not in fact all agree that this is valuable. Many cultures in the past have in fact tried to maintain complete isolation from the wider world. Korea, Tibet, Japan, and China all sought to cut themselves off for centuries.

So it is not plain language that is imposing the cultural values, so much as the very desire for communication.

As soon as you consent to the value of international communication, the Chinese view is wrong. This does not mean Chinese culture is wrong; but Chinese culture does not favour international communication.

It is necessary, for practical purposes, to strip out all standard metaphors or idioms when writing for a multicultural market. Idioms-cliches if you prefer-require and assume a shared culture. Idioms are what a non-native speaker is least likely to understand. They cannot be looked up in a dictionary. And they are impossible obstacles for machine translation.

Worst of all, when they are transferred to another culture, they can look absurd or give a very different meaning. This is where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.