Cliches to Be Avoided on Television
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Any term or phrase, when used excessively, would lose its charm over time and become redundant. These platitudes and catchphrases are called clichés. Clichés are ubiquitous and are, without doubt, not limited to a particular language or a dialect. Within a matter of minutes, we can point some of them out in English, and at the same time, we can also, as easily, identify them in Urdu.
To tell you the truth (a cliché), most of us realize their lack of appeal during our conversation, but we still opt to go with the flow (cliché) nonetheless. Reason? Our everyday working vocabulary is limited; these expressions are readily accessible to our minds and are easily understood by the listener.
It is also not surprising that Urdu relies more heavily on clichés since it is still in its budding stage compared to English, a language that has been well established for centuries. For instance, at least in newspapers, we always celebrate all of our Islamic festivals every year with an unrelenting religious ardor (mazhabi josh-o-jazba). This phrase does not get modified or improved and is reprinted in the same way on the same spot after every important religious event.
A reassuring sign in this situation would have been to get some help from the electronic media to expand and diversify the vocabulary, and to rephrase and re-modulate some existing expressions. Nevertheless, instead of helping it to improve, it is adding fuel to the fire and making it worse. From political talk shows to drama serials, the quality of our language on television is disconcertingly poor, full of buzzwords, overused quotations and rhetorical taglines. If we compare the language spoken in the serials 30 years ago, we would easily be able to see the difference between the two. We would find out that our accents have become coarser, our expressions have become harsher, our words have become odious, and our speech has become louder.
Besides our general lack of interest to promote Urdu as a national language, there are many other factors that have contributed to this phenomenon: subpar education standards across the board nationally, poor training of the associates before their appearance in front of the camera, insensitivity towards literature, lack of command of any language, be it Urdu, Punjabi or English, and absence of encouragement to improve it by the institution. That is why our talk show hosts tend to hop from Urdu to Punjabi to English in a single sentence many times during their show.
Today, I am presenting a set of a few clichéd phrases that have lived way beyond their shelf lives. I am sure there are numerous such; however, it is not my intention to enumerate all of them. Instead, my purpose is to identify the few that are used most commonly and get the ball rolling for the future. As you can imagine, my real handicap is that I am writing them in English, yet it mostly serves the Urdu language! In that attempt, I have tried to keep their meanings close enough to be understood clearly as they are translated. All these terms are political. I have refrained from religious expressions and have not included poetic verses. Here they are.
1. Have our politicians learnt their lesson? This is a very vague term with covert support for dictatorship. It should always be avoided as it is not only the politicians who suffer when a democratically elected government is overthrown and replaced by a military commander, rather, it is the whole nation that has to pay the price.
2. Conspiracy: There is always someone lurking in the dark, conspiring against the people in power in Pakistan. Even General Musharraf held it responsible for destabilizing his regime after he had sacked the Chief Justice in March 2007.
3. Is democracy back on track? The answer to this question is: we never know. We have always been wrong about it whenever we made such a claim. So let us not dwell upon an unknown future anymore.
4. Expressing concern: This term is usually used after a major setback like the sugar crisis in the market for weeks. Once the prices have shot up three times, a senior official or a federal minister would then call his immediate subordinate and say: “I want to express my concern on the crisis.” This concern is then reported in all the newspapers in the same way.
5. National security: It is an undefinable term, coined by ‘unidentifiable’ people who usually abuse it to justify their illegal actions.
6. Establishment: Please replace this evasive term with military or the army. If you do not want to upset the khakis, then at least come up with some other innovative ideas.
7. Karachi is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy: It is probably true, but is there any other way to put it? I have heard this a zillion times in the last 20 years.
8. Taken notice of something: This is an extreme form of expressing concern and is mostly left to take care of emergency situations like the brutal killings of Hazaras in Quetta.
9. Unknown people in Karachi: They are busy killing ordinary citizens without covering their face or hiding their identities, but for the media with numerous eyes they always seem to remain ‘unknown.’
10. Accountability and Reconciliation. I know these are two different terms but I think they are just the opposite sides of the same coin. If you go for accountability, you would compromise on reconciliation and vice versa. They have been around for decades. Let us improvise some new ones and stop using them.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
-----------------------
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
