I usually try to avoid using idioms in a group setting, or with people I don't know very well. I also usually cringe when people use them. That said, I do find them useful in private conversations. For example, in candid conversations with my manager I might say "Hey Boss, I think we've got a lot of bike shedding going on; folks on the team are eager to help, but they're attacking problems that they know how to solve first, not the problems that represent the biggest timeline risk." or I might say "Hey Boss, I know it looks like we're all off in the weeds on this project, but there's a lot of necessary Yak Shaving going on - I'd be happy to dig into some specifics/details if you like." ~ In private conversations with people you know/trust, some of these idioms are convenient shorthand.
People speak in metaphors. I don't know why people get so hung up when it happens. Language isn't a formula unless you're a model. Even then, LLM do cope with some idioms.
I try to work really hard on not using too many idioms and sayings in slack. Same goes for memes specific to American culture. Or if I use one accidentally, define the meaning.
OTOH sometimes other native English speakers get frustrated with this, and I’ll hear feedback like “YES WE KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS” when in reality this person is just speaking for themselves...
It’s a tricky balance because if I know someone has a shared cultural context, idioms, etc can make the communication more fluid, efficient etc. So I find it’s a constant calibration.
Trying to sound intelligent can actually have the opposite effect. I like the quote "If you can't explain something simply then you don't understand it well enough."
As for picking up idioms, I think it's something that happens gradually as you are exposed to more writing by native speakers.
Phrases that are overused: in regular speech that is quite normal. Also in other languages with less borrowing there are way more stock phrases that are used over and over and it's normal.
So being exposed to example French or Chinese you learn that the perception of overuse of a phrase is mostly an English language thing of the upper classes —middle and lower classes don’t observe this aversion as much.
Because, you know, they're overused like to the point that many Americans, ummmm, don't use them to like "tell the listener that you haven't finished speaking" anymore, you know, but instead they're like thrown randomly into, ahhh, sentences, even when the sentence is expressed fluidly, you know?
Using these phrases all the time has somehow become cool, even though it makes people look like fucking idiots.
I just find it an amusing way to talk, circumstantially. Since it places a sort of ironic lack of humility against the supposed humility and good-faith of another, and there's an interesting dynamic there. I have an extremely dry sense of humor that does get me intro trouble.
Here I was speaking very literally, and yet by using phrases like 'far left' taken to be signalling something non-literal. In doing this I was splitting the audience into those looking for dogwhistles and those reading what i've said.
If someone replied having read what i'd said, i'd take quite a different tone. That someone reacted superficially, to supposed implications that didn't exist -- well, that doesnt great any obligation on me to be anything other than ironic.
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