Cliche Expressions in Literary and Genre Novels

Should writers {``}avoid clich{\'e}s like the plague{''}? Clich{\'e}s are said to be a prominent characteristic of {``}low brow{''} literature, and conversely, a negative marker of {``}high brow{''} literature. Clich{\'e}s may concern the storyline, the characters, or the style of writing. We focus on clich{\'e} expressions, ready-made stock phrases which can be taken as a sign of uncreative writing. We present a corpus study in which we examine to what extent clich{\'e} expressions can be attested in a corpus of various kinds of contemporary fiction, based on a large, curated lexicon of clich{\'e} expressions. The results show to what extent the negative view on clich{\'e}s is supported by data: we find a significant negative correlation of -0.48 between clich{\'e} density and literary ratings of texts. We also investigate interactions with genre and characterize the language of clich{\'e}s with several basic textual features. Code used for this paper is available at \url{https://github.com/andreasvc/litcliches/}