My exhusband and I are from different English-speaking countries (think Australia and Scotland or England and America etc). So when I met him (& was quite young) I don’t think I noticed that he talks in cliches as I likely put it down to him being fascinatingly foreign.
It’s difficult to explain, but it’s like he can’t speak more than a couple of sentences without falling back on cliches/idioms/figures of speech. It’s almost like he is from another planet and trying to copy human speech but “over-shooting the mark” as he’d put it.
Fortunately I don’t have to interact with him anymore, but I’m curious about this way of using speech. Is it lack of original thought, habit, class, intelligence? I don’t notice it with anyone else (outside his family!).