Assignment Task
Introduction The terms ‘creativity’ and ‘creative’ are used in a variety of contexts. There are creative artists, thinkers, writers, designers and entrepreneurs; there can be creative talent, ideas, processes and minds. Creativity can be boundless and spontaneous, but it needs to be unleashed, fostered, stimulated and expressed, though sometimes it may be stifled. Creativity is also strongly associated with imagination, innovation, originality and genius. Similar lists and descriptions can be found in many discussions of the concept (e.g. Pope, 2005; Carter, 2011; Pope and Swann, 2011) and it is an area studied in a number of disciplines. Psychologists and neuroscientists are investigating creativity to find out more about its relationship with the mind and the brain; ethnographic work is being done to explore its role in society; linguists are exploring creative language to understand more about how people communicate; and commercial organisations are constantly trying to find ways of Chapter 1 What is linguistic creativity? 17 Figure 1.1 Mercedes-Benz advertisement showing creativity making themselves and their employees more creative. Given this wideranging interest in the topic, it might be reasonable to assume that it is clear what ‘creativity’ means. But this is not necessarily the case: you will find that each field and discipline defines creativity slightly differently, and takes a different approach to investigating it. This book looks specifically at linguistic forms of creativity and at how creativity can be understood in different contexts of language use. This first chapter will begin by asking what linguistic creativity is, how it can be defined and how it can be studied. It will also touch on why it might be important to know more about linguistic creativity in the first place. For example, it has been suggested that linguistic creativity allows a better understanding of our sense of self and our societies (Jones, 2012).
Activity. On first reading, which ones do you think are creative? Which ones are not? Is it easy to put them into these two categories? Look over them again and think about what made you decide that some of them are creative and others are not. What aspects of the examples suggest creativity.
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