Stock Phrase Market Update #3
Share price equals the number of results from the Google News (UK) search box given by each phrase. Phrases entered in quotation marks. Changes in price shown in the table reflect the previous week. High and Low prices based on daily results.
Raft of Measures…80…(-3, Hi 99, Lo 77)
So To Speak …1850…(-60, Hi 1930, Lo 1740)
The Holy Grail …1220…(+381, Hi 1230, Lo 713)
The New Black …120…(-25, Hi 150, Lo 117)
The Rest is History …296…(-38, Hi 341, Lo 281)
Will Never Be The Same Again …92…(+3, Hi 92, Lo 82)
Our final update brings few surprises, which allows us to reach a few conclusions. Journalism is a fast moving business and there is never time to do things properly. These hackneyed phrases provide a shortcut, an instant and familiar image that readers will immediately grasp. The terminology may not make any sense upon analysis; in fact, it is only their repetition that validates them. So somebody betting on the number of their appearances in the news will find the results fairly predictable; clichés are self-perpetuating and there will always be writers in need of a comfortably familiar phrase.
But then a certain world event will yank a particular phrase out of the slime and, for a week or so at least, hose it down and wave it around for all to see. One news source will use a phrase and it will stick; our results will temporarily skyrocket, before settling back down. The Queen's speech, for instance, sent the results for "raft of measures" up into the 90s for a week before settling down to a constant figure around 80. Since many newspapers rely on the wires so much, perhaps they are the ones who seed this ugly plantation of stock phrases.
Sometimes events can take a knife to our analysis, and this was so with The Holy Grail. Our stock phrase market is supposed to concentrate on the use of phrases as clichés…The Holy Grail is such a phrase, but it is also the name of a mythological relic out of which people still manage to squeeze news stories and films. And with a recent surge in stories about the relic, our metaphorical Grail is buried, and our analysis becomes meaningless.
But what the hell? This was a minor experiment and it proved nothing but the obvious. The only thing we can really take away from this is that new clichés appear all the time (Private Eye's latest column on overused phrases is "solutions", used by companies to mean any imaginable business product), but it takes genuine skill to disappear them. Even once half the nation begin spoofing such hackneyed dross as "[something] is the new black", examples in the papers continue to be prevalent. Of course the phrase is used ironically in many instances, but this joke is over almost immediately, and the ironic use of the phrase becomes as dull-minded as the original usage.
Here ends the experiment.
Raft of Measures…80…(-3, Hi 99, Lo 77)
So To Speak …1850…(-60, Hi 1930, Lo 1740)
The Holy Grail …1220…(+381, Hi 1230, Lo 713)
The New Black …120…(-25, Hi 150, Lo 117)
The Rest is History …296…(-38, Hi 341, Lo 281)
Will Never Be The Same Again …92…(+3, Hi 92, Lo 82)
Our final update brings few surprises, which allows us to reach a few conclusions. Journalism is a fast moving business and there is never time to do things properly. These hackneyed phrases provide a shortcut, an instant and familiar image that readers will immediately grasp. The terminology may not make any sense upon analysis; in fact, it is only their repetition that validates them. So somebody betting on the number of their appearances in the news will find the results fairly predictable; clichés are self-perpetuating and there will always be writers in need of a comfortably familiar phrase.
But then a certain world event will yank a particular phrase out of the slime and, for a week or so at least, hose it down and wave it around for all to see. One news source will use a phrase and it will stick; our results will temporarily skyrocket, before settling back down. The Queen's speech, for instance, sent the results for "raft of measures" up into the 90s for a week before settling down to a constant figure around 80. Since many newspapers rely on the wires so much, perhaps they are the ones who seed this ugly plantation of stock phrases.
Sometimes events can take a knife to our analysis, and this was so with The Holy Grail. Our stock phrase market is supposed to concentrate on the use of phrases as clichés…The Holy Grail is such a phrase, but it is also the name of a mythological relic out of which people still manage to squeeze news stories and films. And with a recent surge in stories about the relic, our metaphorical Grail is buried, and our analysis becomes meaningless.
But what the hell? This was a minor experiment and it proved nothing but the obvious. The only thing we can really take away from this is that new clichés appear all the time (Private Eye's latest column on overused phrases is "solutions", used by companies to mean any imaginable business product), but it takes genuine skill to disappear them. Even once half the nation begin spoofing such hackneyed dross as "[something] is the new black", examples in the papers continue to be prevalent. Of course the phrase is used ironically in many instances, but this joke is over almost immediately, and the ironic use of the phrase becomes as dull-minded as the original usage.
Here ends the experiment.
posted by Jamie at 11:08 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home