Can a curious cliché be related to home owners and how they secure their properties?
A political journalist from the national broadsheet The Independent has been making a case against civil leaders (and media centres) overusing clichés and empty phrases. He blames politicians, and perhaps their lazy speech writers, for a seeming lack of rigour in the way we express ourselves.
It is implied that as more of the world moves online, and into a virtual realm of relationships, language and its connection to the material world is becoming fragile. We are using words with little regard to their meanings or referents: instead, these phrases, idiomatic catchphrases are being used as supposed 'catch-all' terms that we can all understand and relate to, when in reality....nobody knows what they're talking about (or listening to...)
One favourite phrase is 'early doors', which many claim was coined by football manager Ron Atkinson- 'it's early doors yet' indicating that there was still plenty of time for the game to change. Yet research of advertisements for entertainments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century will show the phrase 'early doors' historically refers to theatres opening early for the public to take the cheap seats before the upper class spectators arrived to locate their reservations.
The 'doors' in this 19th century phrase are still real, then; and from this real-life example of being in plenty of time, we can understand how the figurative 'early doors' emerged. But we can bring both concrete, material door and these metaphorical doors back together? Can the cliché meet reality?
Perhaps - in a slightly absurd twist - in the realm of home improvement. Consumers might take a tip from those ticket-hungry bargain hunters of the music halls, by 'getting in early doors' with summer sales and bargains, such as timber and ironmongered external and internal doors from Todd Doors.
Indeed, this might be a stretch too far to hope that we can close the gap by being literal with these absurd clichés. Can we use the lesson of getting in early doors when it comes to doors themselves? After all, even the term 'literally' has been turned against itself! This time, another footballer is the culprit - 'literally' Jamie Redknapp, ex-Liverpool star-turned-pundit - who has managed to overuse the term so much that its original meaning has been completely reversed.
But when it comes to the entrances and exits in your home, whilst it is good advice to be prepared and timely when it comes to furnishing you home, don't be flimsy and vague like these clichés have become in our language. Solidity, definition and durability are qualities which are necessary to building a sturdy house - and, for the journalist at the Independent, a sturdy argument.
The author of this article has expertise in Todd Doors. The articles on internal doors reveals the author's knowledge on the same.
0 comments:
Post a Comment