The Cliché in the Reading ProcessAuthor(s): Ruth Amossy and Terese LyonsSource: SubStance, Vol. 11, No. 2, Issue 35 (1982), pp. 34-45Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684023Accessed: 25/11/2009 08:56

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The Cliche in the Reading Process1

RUTH AMOSSY

Although regarded as the height of stereotype and the very mark of trite-

ness, cliches play an important role in the most varied kinds of textual strategies. So-called "literary" discourse makes extensive use of cliches. A threadbare figure can help direct the reading; it shapes the receiver's attitude towards the text it belongs to, as well as towards the social discourse it exemplifies. Its ability to condition a text's reception provides a necessary complement to the cliche's essential precariousness. Indeed, the cliche, with its "dejf-vu" effect, cannot exist outside of the reading process: it must always be recognized by the reader.

(In the apt words of Michel Charles, it is simply a "reading hypothesis."2) Thus it raises countless questions concerning the impact of the literary text in its constitutive relationship to its reception. The cliche not only belongs to the

problematic of reading, but seems to symbolize it in an almost exemplary way. Within this framework, I would like to examine the cliche from three funda- mental angles:

1. as a reading effect (in terms of its delimitations) 2. as a reading activator (in terms of its functions) 3. as one of the elements that program a reading (in terms of its use).

In the interests of brevity, I shall confine my discussion to the unmodified cliche in the strictest sense of the term (des seins de neige, snow-white breasts, and not, as Desnos suggested, "une neige de seins," a snow of breasts).3

I

Cliches are reading effects. Stylistic features frozen by usage, lexically full

figures felt to be shopworn or hackneyed (Riffaterre, 1971), they emerge through an act of recognition. It would never be enough to define them in purely formal

terms, since cliches are based not only on a spatial arrangement (figures of

speech, structures), but on a temporal dimension as well: cliches are cliches

Sub-Stance N? 35, 1982 34

Cliche in the Reading Process

by virtue of a phenomenon of repetition (of which the reader is the only judge). Moreover, this repetition must be perceived as something purely mechanical, as parroting. It then appears to be something that dis-originates: at one and the same time, it erases origins and strips away originality. Repetition throws the figure into limitless circulation in which it is exchanged and replicated ad

infinitum. It is spoken by an anonymous voice, the French "on"; that is, "we" ("I," "you") speak it and at the same time "he/it" and the Other also do. The reader

recognizes, in the text, speech that is both his own and radically foreign to him. In identifying a cliche as common property and, consequently, as the

sign of a dizzying expropriation, he combines recognition with critical evalua- tion.

The sense that cliches are signs of the stereotypical stems from an histori-

cally dated attitude. Indeed, the concept of the cliche first arose in the modern era--in the nineteenth century. Classical rhetoric as it continued to be repre- sented by Dumarsais and Fontanier was unaware of the concept, and with good reason. Cliches such as "brave as a lion," "gentle as a lamb," and "white as snow" were considered canonical examples of tropes.4 Cliches were also seen as flowers of rhetoric in the many lines in which Racine speaks of the flames and the chains of passion. This is because the notion of the cliche implies a

conception of repetition as parroting and must necessarily be based on a

dichotomy between Creation and Imitation, Originality and Banality, the Indi- vidual and the Collective. Within a framework in which creation was imita- tion and the individual was in harmony with the collective in a "common place" where values held to be universal were exchanged, repetition was not judged in term's of difference. Stock figures provided the standard or norm; it would have seemed absurd to relate them to the "pre-constructed" or integrate them into a network of stereotypes (Herschberg-Pierrot, 1980). The cliche (the worn- out stylistic device) belongs, therefore, to rhetoric at the same time that it dis-

places rhetoric's boundaries and objectives. Once a familiar stock figure loses its exemplary nature, it is subject to a

reception organized along the axis of new and old, original and trite, the unheard-of and the oft-said. The cliche no longer has its canonical value. By becoming as automatic as possible (which is a sign of its loss of value), it calls for two reversible and complementary types of deciphering. A trite metaphor or stock figure may be denounced for its faded stylistic effect: in that case it

prompts a sudden awareness coupled with a critical assessment. Precisely because of its mechanical nature, however, it may also be immediately assimi- lated before its triteness is even noticed. Insofar as the familiarity of set ex-

pressions virtually insures their transparency, they are quickly skimmed over

by the reader: in their glaring obviousness, trite stylistic features very easily go unnoticed. No doubt "milk-white skin," "heart of gold," "angelic disposi- tion," and "dark conspiracy" can immediately be spotted by the reader if he

pays even the slightest attention to them. They can nonetheless make for count- less blind spots in the course of the cursory kind of reading that we all engage in from time to time. In other words, a single cliche, by definition, can give rise to two contrary attitudes. The reversibility of these attitudes is the touch-

35

Ruth Amossy

stone determining contemporary attitudes towards stereotypes. On the one hand, there is passive absorption and immediate appropriation, and on the other, critical awareness or evaluation. In terms of this double reception, the cliche reveals itself as wholly a "reading effect."

II

Whether it is taken in passively or consciously perceived as a sign of ex- treme triteness, a cliche activates the reading process on the most varied levels. Its quality of deja-vu enables it to regulate the interaction between the text and the reader. It plays an important part not only in an immediate deciphering, but also in reading operations such as the construction of representational illu- sion, emotional and/or intellectual identification, and critical reflection. The following brief typology illustrates the different ways a threadbare figure can direct and order reception. It is intended to elucidate the functions (or poten- tial functions) of the cliche in activating a reading. By attempting to delimit the various functions that the cliche can perform in relation to the reader, this typology will indicate the cliche's ability to shape -or simply engage or rein- force -different reading attitudes. Of necessity, the classification will isolate elements that, in reality, enter into relationships of complementarity and reversibility.

Functions of the passively registered cliche

1. Facilitates and Speeds Reading

A set, worn-out figure is promptly assimilated: it is particularly digestible fare and facilitates the absorption of the text.

2. Orients and Models Reading

Belonging to a particular kind of discourse, the cliche can be a generic sig- nal. It helps the reader get his bearings and models his attitude and expec- tations along familiar horizons.

3. Helps Construct a Representational Illusion

Reading constructs the fictional text as a representation (Todorov, 1975) and produces the illusion of a fictional world existing outside of the text. (Cf. the "quasi-pragmatic" reading in K. Stierle, 1979.) To this end, the

36

Cliche in the Reading Process

discursive element must be perceived to refer directly to "reality," that is to the conventional idea that the reader has of what is real (cf. the notion of "vraisemblable," verisimilitude, in Communications 11, 1968). As an auto- matized figure, the cliche insures an illusion of transparency, a passage through the discourse towards the "referent." As the bearer of a stereotyped meaning, it presents a picture conforming to the reader's conception of what is real.

4. Favors Identification

The cliche is a familiar element encompassing the realm of "(every)one"; it insures a circular relationship between "I" and "you." It is a common place in which emotional identification can occur.

5. Can Be an Argumentative Device

Contributing to the realm of the "as they say," "as everyone says," "as you have to admit" (Herschberg-Pierrot, 1980), the cliche grounds discourse in truth and helps to persuade the addressee, bringing about an adherence or solidarity of minds (Perelman, 1970).

Functions of the critically perceived cliche

1. Engages Intertextual Operations

An intentionally obvious cliche reminds the reader of the pre-existent dis- course from which it was taken. As the sign of widely shared, anonymous speech, it indicates, in the text, either an earlier literary discourse or a gen- eralized social discourse (cf. Iser's "repertory," 1978). Thus it is the site of an active intertextuality calling for recognition of the model and close atten- tion to its handling when introduced into a new context.

2. Contributes To Representational Illusion

An obvious cliche may be attributed to a specific character or milieu. This

type of cliche has been called a "mimetic" cliche. The work of M. Riffa- terre is of particular interest on this topic (Riffaterre, 1971).

37

Ruth Amossy

3. Establishes Complicity

Obviously the possession of a group to which both the reader and the speaker belong, it creates a close relationship of complicity.

4. Provokes Criticism

When stressed, a cliche exposes public opinion - (every)one's, the Other's- as trivial and trite, a deceptive conventionality. It convinces the reader of the gap between discourse and Truth and between discourse and the real.

The functions of passively registered cliches are, in essence, tied to the phe- nomenon of maximal automatization; those of critically perceived cliches are based on the fact that they are quotations. In both cases, however, the cliche posits a relation with a pre-existing discourse-anonymous and blurred talk, the insistent buzz of social discourse (cf. Claude Duchet's definitions from the per- spective of socio-criticism), and that relation mediates both text production and

deciphering. The relation with the "deja-dit," the already said, draws both text and reader into a "common place" and enables the worn-out figure to activate various reading operations. In no way, however, does it make a prior judg- ment of the cliche's value. Cliches acquire their true impact within a discur- sive strategy that selects, combines, and hierarchically orders their potential functions. For this reason, instead of condemning the cliche, we should examine the ways it is used within various programmings of reading.

III

The "reading program" that selects and organizes the cliche's functions can be defined on two complementary levels:

- an overall strategy inscribed in a very general textual sequence, shaping the reader's attitude (producing reading models);

-a specific strategy at work within the overall program (which it modifies, modulates, surpasses, subverts. ..).

38

Cliche in the Reading Process

Only specific examples can demonstrate how textual organization gives the cliche its true impact and programs the ways it can be deciphered. The examples will be taken from a homogeneous domain, Nineteenth-Century representa- tional fiction. That domain is, however, rich in internal differences, for it en-

compasses E. Sue, Balzac, and Flaubert. In the interests of brevity, the dem- onstration will be conducted on isolated quotations considered to be represen- tative of the overall system. All have been taken from a descriptive context, and the cliches in them refer to a woman's complexion.

Sue, Les Mysteres de Paris

"Son teint d'une eblouissante purete, se nlancait du plus frais incarnat; de longues boucles de cheveux chatains clairs effleuraient ses epaules arrondies, fermes et lustrees comme un beau marbre blanc ..."

"Her dazzlingly pure complexion was finely shaded with the freshest of rosy hues; long ringlets of light brown hair brushed against her rounded shoulders, which were as firm and lustrous as lovely white marble ..

Balzac, Eugenie Grandet

"Mme Grandet etait une femme seche et maigre, jaune comme un coing, gauche, lente; une de ces femmes qui semblent faites pour etre tyrannisees. Elle avait de gros os, un gros nez, un gros front, de gros yeux, et offrait, au premier aspect, une vague res- semblance avec ces fruits cotonneux qui n'ont plus ni saveur ni suc."

"Madame Grandet was a thin, dried-out-looking woman, yellow as a quince, awkward and slow; one of those women who seem born to be tyrannized over. She had big bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big bulging eyes, and presented, at first glance, a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits which have long since lost all juice and flavor."

Flaubert, Madame Bovary

"Malgre ses airs evapores (c'etait le mot des bourgeoises d'Yonville) Emma, pourtant, ne paraissait pas joyeuse, et d'habitude elle gardait aux coins de la bouche cette immobile contraction qui plisse la figure des vieilles filles et des ambitieux dechus. Elle etait pale partout, blanche comme du linge."

"In spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that im- mobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambi- tion has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet."5

Since the construction of an illusion of reality is of primary importance here, it is the cliche's "verisimilar" function which is exploited above all. The trans-

39

Ruth Amossy

parency insured by an immediately recognized expression refers to reality, or rather to the reader's conventional idea of the real. Moreover, all three texts introduce the cliche into an overall system designed to construct a representa- tional illusion.

-In the passage from Sue, the cliche is caught up in a network of stereotypes (of a woman's portrait, actantial dichotomies, . . .) producing an effect of homo- geneity and direct transparency.

-In the portrait of Madame Grandet, the cliche obeys the convention in realis- tic description that calls for trivial details and remarks about ugliness. It also submits to the principle of motivation. (Madame Grandet is yellow because she almost never leaves her house.)

- The same motivation effect is at work in Flaubert's text: Emma's mental state naturally influences her health and her looks. This is coupled with the "effet de reel" or realistic effect, produced by the mimetic cliche, since the descrip- tion seems to be quoting the "housewives of Yonville."

As far as specific strategies are concerned, however, these three texts pro- gram different kinds of deciphering:

- Sue's cliches belong to a system of more and more all-encompassing stereo- types and are meant to facilitate and speed up the reading of the feuilleton novel: since everything is based on dejg-vu, it need only be recognized. Simi- larly, cliches belonging to established social discourse help bring about emo- tional identification as well as the adherence of minds: the dazzlingly pure com- plexion and shoulders of white marble direct our sympathies towards the rep- resentative of Beauty and Goodness and reinforce the values of feminine purity in which all the senses of white play a part.

-Since the Balzacian cliche has already been analyzed in an article I pub- lished with Elisheva Rosen in Litterature (February 1977), I shall limit myself to a brief review of the conclusions:

The clichejaune comme un coing, "yellow as a quince," can become the object of a second, non-linear reading by virtue of its relation to a figure (mealy fruit that have lost both their flavor and juice) retroactively projected onto the cliche. The simile makes the cliche literal, that is, it makes it conspicuous and decon- structs it. The reader is then invited to follow the transformations undergone by the fixed element 'jaune comme un coing" in the new context. (The quince is the dry, hard fruit that Madame Grandet, the heiress, has become: she has been drained of her "suc" (juice), and her money, which has passed to her hus- band; the middle-class, provincial housewife is trapped in a predetermined rela- tionship to both money and sex.)

40

Cliche in the Reading Process

The cliche's naturalizing function applies only to a first stage of reading; it calls for the construction of representational illusion. Beyond this operation, a different kind of deciphering emerges-one that pays attention to the worn- out figure's handling in its new context. The cliche proclaims itself to be a quo- tation, a ready-made linguistic expression. -It is not simply a representation of a married woman, but a simultaneously humorous and critical denuncia- tion of her real position in post-revolutionary France. The Balzacian text calls, therefore, for a double reading, one which is simultaneously contradictory and

complementary.

-In Madame Bovary two contradictory functions of the cliche are combined. Both its verisimilar effect and its ability, as a quotation, to set apart and de-

mystify are exploited. Modulated by free indirect discourse and an ironic tone, the threadbare figure appears here as a "They say"-the talk of the Yonville housewives or the common babble of stupidity. The cliche points not to the

real, but to language, which both reductively and inevitably mediates all ref- erences to reality.6 It constructs the representation at the same time that it under- scores its impossibility. This use of two ostensibly incompatible functions of the cliche establishes an irreducible tension which underlies Flaubert's writ-

ing. The reader is trapped in a dizzying movement between construction and deconstruction: he is ceaselessly called upon to "see through" the representation that he is supposed to be building.

We can now see how each discursive strategy produces a different reading model. Within the framework of representational illusion, the cliche's modula- tions induce the reader sometimes to be carried along and seduced, sometimes to try to break through the quiet surface of established truths, and sometimes to treat generally accepted ideas and platitudes ironically -without ever being able to escape them. The reading program corresponds here to the ways the cliche is put to use within an overall textual system and, consequently, to the

ordering of the steps the reader takes in deciphering. It shapes attitudes and sets operations in motion: its aim is to orient the reading process. It does not, however, indicate its product or offer an interpretation. Far from imposing a single meaning on the reader, the reading program accommodates itself to a plurality of meanings.

From this perspective, let us briefly reconsider the passage from Madame

Bovary. The coherence of the representation is established through its motiva- tion and conformity with pre-established knowledge. The expression "blanche comme du linge," ("white as a sheet"), stresses the interdependence of the moral and the physical: it indicates a wasting away, a lack of vitality, the languor of sadness and boredom. It can also designate frustration and disappointed expectations (as do the tight creases at the corners of the mouths of old maids and failures). Some might read into this passage an appeal to pity, the sign of misfortune. (The mentally superior heroine has been struck down by fate;

41

Ruth Amossy

she is pale, caught between two worlds.) Others might see in it the fatal result of ineradicable romanticism. A thematic deciphering would liken the theme of deathly paleness to the references to death scattered throughout the chapter ("une journee funbre" [a funereal day], une "atmosphere noire" [dark atmosphere], un 'froid qui la traversait" [a cold shudder passing through her] . . .). A spiritual suicide foreshadows the actual suicide at the end. -The critical attitude, on the other hand, will look upon the cliche as a quotation and will try to deter- mine its coherence in terms of the part played by the integration (or disinte-

gration) of common speech in Flaubert's writing. "White as a sheet," which thanks to the use of free indirect discourse belongs to the realm of "what Yon- ville housewives say," is a sign of the "dit-on," of what "(every)one says"; it is an ironic treatment of a standard way of represeting frustration. Besides, the cliche "white as a sheet" is taken from the down-to-earth language of Yonville's

gossips and Charles Bovary, the small town doctor: it casts an ironic shadow on the ideal paleness of Romantic heroines to which Emma aspires ("ces existences

pales" [pale existences], "lafemme pale de Barcelone" [the pale woman of Barcelona], Lucia di Lamermoor, paler than the satin of her gown . . .). We can also see here an ironic treatment of materialistic interpretations. - Charles, for instance, worries about his wife's ill-health without understanding it. When brought together, these two models create a tension which, instead of being resolved, prompts questions concerning the place of Meaning, Truth, and the Subject.

In other words, when integrated in an overall program determining its

impact, the cliche in no way halts the play of interpretations. It is important at this point to ask some questions about the powers and limits of a program conceived as a set of textual strategies producing reading models. Does this mean that a particularly strict regulation will always shape the way a text is received? Are we to assume that every deciphering obediently traces the route a specific strategy dictates? -We need only consider the three examples just analyzed to realize that different readings are possible for all of them. Of course, we could dispense with Flaubert's "undecidability" and isolate either the axis of representation (as in traditional readings), or the critical axis (the so-called "modernist" attitude). Or we could confine ourselves to a linear deciphering of Balzac's text and attend to the cliche's realistic qualities alone. Conversely, the reader could follow the initial program backwards and activate the cliche's critical function when only its realistic and demonstrative qualities are at work. In other words, a reading can thwart textual strategies by organizing its own

strategies (by selecting and combining a cliche's potential functions differently). These reading strategies could be formally classified according to whether they operate in terms of a lack (the suppression of one or more of the cliche's func-

tions), inversion (the activation of a critical consciousness when automatism is called for), or even radical heterogeneity. This last category inevitably raises the question of the adequacy of any particular reading. Could Les Mysteres de Paris ever reasonably be considered to make use of stereotypes in the interests of critical and ironic consciousness? Would a realistic or naturalizing deciphering of a playful cliche-poem by Robert Desnos be valid when the whole discursive

42

Cliche in the Reading Process

system that it establishes shatters the very possibility of representational illu- sion? We can judge from the following example:7

C'etait un bon copain

II avait le coeur sur la main Et la cervelle dans la lune

C'etait un bon copain I1 avait l'estomac dans les talons

Et les yeux dans nos yeux C'etait un triste copain

II avait la tete a l'envers Et le feu la oCu vous pensez

Mais non quoi il avait le feu au derriere C'etait un drole de copain

A distinction can be made between a reading model that is totally hetero-

geneous as to its object and those models that produce variants while remain-

ing within the logic of a system. Part of the very logic behind the way cliches function is that a text founded exclusively on the naturalizing or persuasive capacities of threadbare figures of speech can be read "backwards," that is, criti-

cally. Similarly, any reading model that activates various functions of a cliche

by combining them in an even slightly complex set can inevitably be reduced to just one of its aspects. Here the question raised by the deciphering has less to do with pertinence than with the gap between programming and reading.

What this gap involves must be examined. Cliches are authorized and

brought into play in a text by their relationship to social discourse or, strictly speaking, to a system of values. As we have seen, the reader is not only referred back to an "as they say"; he is asked first to confirm it by letting himself be

seduced, then to reflect, to reexamine it, put it in perspective, and denounce it. The use of cliches in literary texts makes the addressee reconfirm, question, or modify his view of the world: the reading process reveals its own ideological premises. From this perspective, any reduction, reversal, or disruption of the textual strategy within the reading process transforms the relationship estab- lished by the cliche with social discourse: its impact is modified ipso facto. A

close, critical reading of Sue proceeds from a deconstruction and takes account of the reassuring relationship set up between stereotype and the "deja-parle," the already spoken, or the dominant ideology, exposing its mechanisms and

implications. Similarly, to consider Flaubert's cliche only for its value as a quo- tation and role in establishing verisimilitude would be to classify the novel under a fixed world view. Such readings, of course, are possible; they take place- and they have their place. They indicate both the impact of cliches in literary texts and the impact that various readings of cliches have acquired. This trou-

bling plurality of ideological functions is confirmed by factual reality: every- one knows that a single text can be put to various uses. Rather than a simple

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Ruth Amossy

logic of a system, we should speak here of the logic of History. The ways cliches are activated, or rather, the ways they are used in different reading models

by a specific social group or at a particular time depend upon that logic. Here we approach the aesthetics of reception (auss, 1978) and sociological analysis (Leenhardt, 1980), which study the readings of a text and the conditions of its readability. At this point, the poetics of the cliche merges with the socio- historical study of its uses, and calls for an analysis going beyond the scope of this paper.

Translated by Terese Lyons Columbia University

NOTES

1. This text was presented in French, with the title "Le Cliche en proces de lecture," at the

Colloquium on the Poetics of the Reader held at Columbia University, November 20-22, 1980. 2. Michel Charles, Rhetorique de la lecture (Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1977). 3. This study makes use, albeit from a different overall perspective oriented around reading,

of the findings of a work written in collaboration with Elisheva Rosen: Les discours du cliche (Paris: CDU-SEDES, 1981).

4. When Dumarsais and Fontanier take the criterion of frequency into consideration they do so from a different perspective. Cf. Michel Charles, op. cit., p. 127: "Fontanier differentiates, in this order, catachreses from commonly used tropes or tropes in the language, from tropes of inven- tion or writer's tropes. (. . .) The 'progress' of language has turned tropes of invention into com- monly used tropes, and commonly used tropes into catachreses." For the examples quoted here, see Pierre Fontanier, Lesfigures du discours, Introd. Gerard Genette (Paris: Flammarion, 1977). (First published in 1827.)

5. The preceding passages were taken from: Eugene Sue, Les Mysteres de Paris, first American edition (New York: Presse du New World,

1844), Part one, p. 118. Honore de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet in La Comedie humaine, III Etudes de moeurs: Scenes de la

vie privee, Scenes de la vie de Province, Ed. P.-G. Castex (Paris: Gallimard, La Pleiade, 1976), p. 1046.

Dorothea Walter and John Watkins, trans., Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac, in Pere Goriot and Euginie Grandet (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), pp. 314-315.

Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary-Moeurs de province" in Oeuvres completes, Ed. B. Masson (Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1964), Vol. I, p. 616.

Paul De Man, trans. and ed., Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (New York: W.W. Norton, 1965), p. 89.

6. See: Francoise Gaillard, "L'en-signement du r6el (ou la n6cessaire ecriture de la r6petition)" in La production du sens chez Flaubert, Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (Paris: Union Generale d'editions, 10/18, 1975);

Shoshana Felman, "Gustave Flaubert, Folie et Cliche," in Lafolie et la chose litteraire (Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1978);

Anne Herschberg-Pierrot, "Cliches, stereotypie et strategie discursive dans le discours de Lieu- vain," Litterature 36 (December 1979), and "Problematiques du cliche-sur Flaubert," Poetique 43 (1980).

7. This poem, consisting of one untranslatable cliche after another, truly defies translation. Instead of settling for a wholly unsatisfactory English approximation, we have chosen to admit defeat and let the original stand alone. (Translator)

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Cliche in the Reading Process 45

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