Yes, communication is power, that is, if you observe certain rules. Three, among several others, are, and they are pretty basic: Avoid clichés; choose words carefully; and, in oral communication, use measured and appropriate gestures to reinforce your point.
A cliché is a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought, and thus loses meaning and credibility.
We, Pakistanis, love to talk in clichés.
Turn on the TV, and you will have one or the other politician, an anchorperson, or a panelist touting his personal opinion as mandate or consensus of the solah crore awaam — meaning 160 million people of Pakistan. We have been hearing this 16 crore bit for several years now, not realizing that population of Pakistan, in the meanwhile, has been galloping at the robust rate of 2 percent a year and has passed the 17 crore mark by now.
“Foolproof security†is another cliché that has entered our lexicon in the past few years. We frequently hear of a demand for or a promise of “foolproof security†to be provided on certain occasions or for certain individual (s). Foolproof, by definition, means incapable of going wrong or being misused. One could talk of providing high security or maximum security, but providing “foolproof†security to anyone in today’s Pakistan, when suicide-bomber has become a household word, is virtually impossible, unless, that is, you confine the person in a lead-walled container with no doors or windows, in which case the person would die of suffocation, anyway.
