I think that cliches are a wonderful part of language. True there are many that are over used and those are the ones that we get sick and tired of hearing day in and day out. But think of all the phrases that many people are ready to discard as being unoriginal and therefore unworthy of use in communication. Every word that is used carries with a resonance of all the things that have been previously associated with that word. We were witness to this just recently with the phrase "lipstick on a pig." This is a cliche that used to mean nothing other than that changing somethings appearance or name doesn't change the object itself. An earlier rendition of this was "you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear." The meaning of the words changed when we stared to relate them with the the GOP VP candidate's joke about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick. Hmmm I stray. Or do I? I think that cliches can give us a frame to view a culture by what they said most often. You use a cliche because you are counting on your listener to associate the same things with that phrase that you do. You can convey entire idea with very few words. As a culture changes so does it cliches but by looking back we can see where that phrase came from and why it was important at the time. When was the last time that you heard "Cash on the barrel head." This phrase summons to my mind places that are a rare find today and people interacting with commerce and each other in an equally rare or extinct manner. Another example is " down the rabbit hole" all of a sudden the entire story of Alice and wonderland is conjured to the listener's mind.
So yes I believe as many do that some cliches are over used. I also feel strongly that if we were to do away with every cliche that we would lose a valuable weapon in our communication arsenal. I encourage my class mates to find a phrase that doesn't carry with it any associations for this modern world and then learn what it used to mean to the people that turned it into a cliche.