This chapter focuses on the use of clichés for negotiating interpersonal relationships in organisational spoken discourse. The chapter conceptualises clichés as im/politeness strategies in the expression and management of evaluative meanings regarding an interactant either directly or indirectly. The study of clichés as interpersonal devices as explored in this chapter encompasses a multidimensional investigation co-deploying two complementary approaches: a systemic functional approach, utilising the appraisal framework, and socio-pragmatic approaches, namely im/politeness and face theory. These are applied to spoken data collected in an organisational setting. The findings demonstrate that, given their reliance on socially shared knowledge as carried by their formulaic nature, clichés allow the conveyance of evaluation of people or situations whilst also enhancing or mitigating the impact of such evaluation on facework.

This chapter outlines established disciplines that have addressed the study of clichés, from lexicography to formulaic language and problematises the issue of defining clichés based on form. The chapter positions linguistic clichés within discourse studies and conceptualises them as socio-semiotic resources and discourse strategies that fulfil a range of specific functions across different discourse types and sites. The chapter also provides a working definition of cliches and outlines what constitutes cliches for the purposes of the book.

This chapter explores the use of clichés as argumentative strategies in online reception of political news items. It conceptualises clichés as strategies that draw on conventionalised inferable premises that warrant conclusion and link the argument with a claim, also known as topoi. Drawing on online commentaries in response to the same item of Brexit news across The Guardian, the Daily Mail and BBC News, the chapter explains how clichés as topoi operate as strategies to legitimise a position and to other members of a perceived out-group thereby allowing participatory media users to construe ideational and interpersonal meanings in the argumentation process.

This chapter introduces clichés and discusses their uses and contemporary debates in academic and public domains. It argues for a functional approach to the study of clichés and outlines the scope of the book.

This chapter investigates the role that clichés play in the construction and articulation of face and entrepreneurial identity by examining transcripts from broadcast discourse TV show The Apprentice. Utilising insights from self-presentation theory, face theory and im/politeness, the chapter analyses a number of extracts from the show featuring clichés to explore what identities are construed by clichés and how they construe the participants’ (desired or actual) entrepreneurial identity. The first level of analysis explores the way in which clichés work ideationally as choices the speakers make to construe the version of the identity they wish to perform at the point of filming, known as single articulation. The second level of analysis discusses the juxtaposition between the interpersonal function clichés fulfil in the self-presentation extracts and in the representation of such self-presentation, known as double articulation.

This chapter conceptualises clichés as socio-cognitive representations in advertising and branding discourse. It draws on social cognition and argues that clichés are useful resources for the construction of brand identity. Two current UK print advertisements and a corpus of UK corporate mission statements are analysed combining corpus linguistics tools and textual analysis of cliches and their collocates using tools from SFL’s transitivity system, social actor theory, appraisal theory and conceptual metaphor theory. The findings demonstrate that, ideationally, cliches are used to construe an ideal self for the brand evoking models of superiority, difference and wholeness and interpersonally building a relationship of trust with the customer or stakeholder who is the ultimate addressee of the mission statements.

The chapter concludes by outlining the original, significant and rigorous contributions to the various fields of linguistics addressed in particular, and the study of clichés in general, that the book makes. It outlines theoretical and practical implications of the findings of each chapter, discusses limitations of the book and draws avenues for further research.