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Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk

Part 1 – Backgrounds and Theories
Chapter 1 – Approaches to creativity
Creative texts are designed to require some engagement and interaction on
the part of the reader/interpret
...

Cultural knowledge is needed for the impact of wordplay and humour to be at
its most effective
...

Creative language play with shop names is typically limited to independent
shops that are engaged in selling just one form of product or service
...
Such
examples include hairdressers, plumbers, photographers, cafes etc
...
The humour provides phatic
communication and establishes contact with the potential customer
...

The dominant current definition of creativity is an ability to produce work that
is novel and appropriate
...


Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Psychological approaches to creativity
Practical and pragmatic approaches
Companies often use creative activities such as brainstorming and lateral
thinking to enhance a capacity for problem-solving
...

Psychodynamic approaches
This approach originates in the work of Sigmund Freud and indicates that the
creative impulse is an inflection of unconscious wishes on the part of the
creator for love, wealth and social respectability
...
The aim of this approach
is to combine both qualitative and quantitative analysis to identify the
childhood experiences, life vents and personality traits that contribute to the
development of the creative individual within the framework of a theory of
multiple intelligences
...
They aim to explore how
different phases of the creative process can be measured
...

Social-personality approaches
This approach concentrates on determining some of the relevant personality
factors and environmental variables affecting creative thought and production
such as motivation
...
Creativity is not the product of single
individuals, but of social systems making judgements about individuals’
products
...
The evaluation of what is
creative is neither global nor universal but varies from one domain to another
and can only be fully appraised according to the criteria of a particular field of
activity or domain
...


This can be defined in the diagram below:
When taking account of the processes by which creativity comes to be
recognised and valued, we must focus not so much on the producer or product
but rather on those who are the receivers or consumers of such a creative act
...

Instead, creativity involves a state of personal fulfilment, a connection to a
primordial realm or the expression of an inner essence or ultimate reality
...

Eastern cultures are far more process-orientated seeing creativity’s main
purpose as self-realisation, ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ rather than ‘doing’ and
‘making
...

It is key to remember that creativity varies by culture and often it can be seen
as creative to imitate a previous model of drama or poetry, seen as a
compliment or homage to cultural heritage and its largely unchanging values
...
Use of fixed phrases,
gestures, variable sound pitch and loudness and repetition all contribute to
this aspect
...

Critical creativity underlines that creative output is never simply consensual
and integrative
...
In Western society,
it is often to offer an alternative point of view or create an alternative world or
reality
...

Key conclusions on creativity so far
 Creativity is commonly assumed to involve novel analogies or combinations
between conceptual elements which have been previously unassociated
 Within Western traditions of thought, creativity is closely connected with
originality but originality is only recognised as such when it is accepted and
valued by the peers of the creative individual and the guardians of the
particular domain in which the creator works
 Creativity results in changes to domains or in the establishment of new
domains
 Historiametric measures and biographical accounts of eminent creators
have enabled researchers to identify recurring personality features
associated with creative acts
 The dominant paradigm of creativity is based on the discipline of
psychology and views creativity as a mentalistic phenomenon
 Creativity is culturally variable
 Identities can be created through creative acts
 Creativity is not neutral and can have socio-political and ideological
implications
 Creativity is demotic and endemic to everyday discourse
 The variability of creativity suggests that the plural term creativities is more
appropriate

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Chapter 2 – Lines and Clines
In the last twenty years, there has been a growing trend towards the
recognition of spoken language in linguistics
...

Given the conversionalisation of written English nowadays, McCarthy has
argued that the most useful thing to do is conceive the differences as scales
along which individual texts can be plotted rather than distinct binary
differences between written and spoken language
...
Literariness inheres in the degrees to which language use departs or
deviates from expected patterns and thus defamiliarises the reader
...
g
...

According to Jakobson, in non-literary discourse, the word or phrase is a mere
vehicle for what it refers to
...
Guy Cook has looked at the
effects of creativity on larger chunks of language, concluding that discoursal
deviance can act as a specific trigger to schema refreshment
...

They introduce a new way of viewing the world
...
In reference to this idea, Ohmann states that

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
the kinds of conditions that normally attach to speech acts such as insulting,
questioning or promising do not obtain in literary contexts
...
Thus, this involves a suspension of the normal
pragmatic functions words may have in order for the reader to regard them as
representing or displaying the actions they would normally perform
...

Carter’s feels that it is easier to consider texts as being more or less literary
rather than being distinctively different
...
One must consider literary
language as socially and culturally relative
...

Boden breaks this creativity down into H-creativity (historical values that stand
the test of time) and P-creativity (person values that are not likely to prove of
recognised monumental value beyond this particular context)
...
This process is usually consensual and
collaborative
...
Speakers must take into account
a conversational duet, a dynamic of interchange with the listeners who are
addressed
...
He also points out that we can reproduce the voice of
others and that when we do this it is nearly always for purposes of evaluation
or judgement
...
Creativity is a
two-way process and can have a range of social purposes which include
entertainment, drawing attention to the language itself for pleasure as well as
highlighting more disruptive purposes in which existing orders can be inverted
...

Cognitive models
A continuing inspiration for the study of figurative language is seminal work by
Lakoff and Johnson which considered that human language and the human
mind are not inherently literal
...

Crystal argues that although the main purpose of language is normally seen to
be that of communicating information, it is language play which is truly central
to human lives
...

Cook is especially interested in exploring the links between games and
language play recognising that:
- They are uniquely of the human and animal world
- They contain core component of contest and competition
- They can be individual or involve a team
- They provide an opportunity for individual display and for mutual communal
pleasure
- Knowing the rules of the game, skill within these rules and competence in
producing particular effects within the rules is the mark of a creative player
- The ability to break out of the imposed boundaries is a special mark of
competence
- Improvements can be produced by practice and rehearsals
- There is no unambiguously defined productive outcome
- There are elaborate rules for turn-taking and fixed sequences
- There is an element of risk involved

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Although the primary functions of language are often conceived to be social
organisation and the accumulation and transmission of factual knowledge,
with fiction and formal patterning arising as minor if entertaining by-products,
this order of origin and dependency can easily be reversed
...

Chomsky and creativity
Chomsky saw creativity as the infinite competence of ordinary language users
to produce and understand language forms which they could not have possibly
heard before
...
This is a biological view in which language is separate
from external social or cultural influences
...

Speakers are seen as social actors and agents of culture who are transitive in
their encounters, shaping and reshaping language in ways which encode that
how they mean is a significant component in what cultures mean and what
people mean as speakers within their cultures
...
Recent studies also recognise that casual
conversation creates a space within which speakers can fulfil what would
appear to be a fundamental need to insert a more personal or personally
evaluative position into the ongoing discourse
...
She
states that repetition is the central linguistic meaning-making strategy, a
limitless resource for individual creativity and interpersonal involvement
...

Conclusion
 Issues of creativity are not easily separated from questions of what makes a
literary text literary

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
 Research in cognitive poetics has shown that the boundaries between the
literal and non-literal are not as clear as often assumed
 Creativity is ubiquitous across a range of text types and is especially salient
in spoken discourse
 Creativity is both special and normal and is both ordinary and extraordinary
 An emphasis on clines of creative language use should not obscure the fact
that some communications are routine and are at the limit of the noncreative part of the cline
 Creativity is connected with language play
 Creativity functions to give pleasure, establish both harmony and
convergence as well as disruption and critique, to express identities and to
evoke alternative fictionalised worlds
 Although linguistic descriptions can show how creative language works,
they can only do so relatively to the values, beliefs and judgements formed
within each social group and community
 To identify features of literariness in language is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for the definition of literature
 The variable and plural nature of creativity is best discussed in terms of
clines and continua
 It is both necessary and valuable to see creative language in relation to
social and cultural contexts

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk

Part 2 – Forms and Functions
Chapter 3 - Creativity and Patterns of Talk
Corpus and Data
Carter's data was drawn almost exclusively from the CANCODE corpus of
spoken English - a corpus that allows both quantitative and qualitative
measurements
...

Punning and Playing and Patterning
The CANCODE corpus has revealed that puns are a clear example of everyday
creativity in language
...
This type of
verbal play can be seen as a type of verbal schizophrenia with words pointing
in two directions at once - e
...
final frontier (relating to the famous line from
Star Trek as well as Spock's unusual ears)
...

Verbal play can also be seen with larger chunks of language - often typical
formulaic structures are taken and played with by deviating from what is
expected to creatively disfigure them to produce and play with perspectives
and ways of seeing - e
...
he's got a finger in all kinds of pies and houses and
stuff
...

Thus, it can be said that puns are self-referential as they draw attention to
themselves and draw the attention of speakers and listeners
...

Morphological Inventiveness
Also prevalent in CANCODE are instances when speakers invent new words
from existing words - e
...
heart drawers, crawly
...
Particularly in informal contexts, the speakers find the
interaction clearly supportive and co-productive enough to allow the invention
to be accepted and seen as necessary and motivated
...
It can also be combined with satirical cultural reference too e
...
greenly challenged
...

Parallel structures in the form of lexical and syntactic echoes are constantly
patterned
...
It is
the central linguistic meaning-making strategy, a limitless resource for
individual creativity and interpersonal involvement
...

Pattern re-forming draws attention to itself by reshaping word meanings and
sometimes directly breaking with them
...

As for pattern forming, speakers use patterns to converge their way of seeing
things and to create a greater mutuality between them
...
It is also more likely
that rules will be conformed to rather than departed from, thus more in
keeping with pre-Romantic views of creativity
...

Demotic Creativity: Conclusions
CANCODE has clearly revealed two levels of creative interactions: more overt,
presentational uses of language, open displays of metaphoric invention,
punning, uses of idioms and departures from expected idiomatic formulations
(pattern re-forming) and less overt, subconscious and subliminal parallelisms,
echoes and related matchings which regularly result in expressions of affective
convergence (pattern forming)
...

As well as conferring pleasure, we use creative language to display identity
...

Generally, pattern re-forming structures and forms involve greater risks for
speakers, particularly potential failures of uptake, the embarrassment of
unsuccessful performance or ineffective presentationality
...
When performed
successfully, however, there are corresponding rewards as the results can be
schema-refreshing
...

Language, Creativity and Models of Language
Written
Sentence
Invented data
Ideal individual speaker
Rule-governed creativity

Spoken
Stretches of discourse
Naturally occurring data
Real speaker
Co-creative talk

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Referential
Ideational
Transactional
Literal
Truth-conditional meaning
Serious
Monologue

Representational and expressive
Interpersonal
Interactional and affective
Non-literal
Contextual meanings
Playful
Dialogue

Spoken creativity is unplanned and unrehearsed
...
In spoken discourse, intimacy,
evaluation and intensity are more closely bound up with creative expression
...

Conclusion
 Creativity can and should be explored in stretches of naturally occurring
text involving authentic data and real speakers
 Language investigated involves interpersonal exchanges in social and
cultural contexts with speakers affectively involved in the co-creation of
meanings
 Figures of speech can be shown to be common to spoken discourse
 Transfer of information is importance but the creation of relationships is
also significant
 Play with language form and function lead to a range of social and cultural
purposes
 Compared with written text, creative spoken language may be more closely
connected with expressions of feeling and identity

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Chapter 4 - Figures of Speech
Core and Non-Core Vocabulary
Core vocabulary is used to describe those elements in the lexical network of a
language which are unmarked
...
g
...

Carter established the following criteria as typical of core vocabulary:
- Core words often have clear antonyms - e
...
hot, cold, laugh, cry, fat, thin
- Characterised by wide collocational patterns - fat man, fat salary, fat cheque
- In any lexical set, there will be an unmarked word which can be pressed into
service to define the meanings of the related words - smirk, grin, snigger,
beam, smile
- Core vocabulary items do not carry especially marked connotations of
associations - thin is neutral but skinny or slim isn't
- Core words do not allow us to identify from which field of discourse they
have been taken
- Core words are often superordinates - flower rather than carnation, rose etc
Although these guidelines are useful, it is clear that respective degrees of
coreness will vary according to the particular sociocultural contexts and
registers, according to individual speakers' preferences and according to the
uses to which the vocabulary is put
...
Speakers
also often wish to give a more affective contour to what they or others are
saying
...
g
...

Metonymy, on the other hand, links things by means of contiguity rather than
similarity - e
...
The Crown has lost its popularity in recent years
...

Lakoff introduced the idea of conceptual metaphors and that some certain
analogies are root analogies that organise in a very basic way how things are
seen
...

As language represents the reality of speakers and their positions, there is a
fundamental iconicity between language form and metaphorical mapping
...
as well as the perceptual sequences of English
culture such as hot and cold taps rather than cold and hot
...
g
...

The idea of the ham sandwich at table 11 wants the bill involves a metonymic
process in which ham-sandwich is taken to refer to the person at table 11 who
has been eating the sandwich
...
The explicit markers of comparison take several forms ranging from

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
copular and verbal similes involving like and as, specific phrases such as the
equivalent of, close to and clausal similes such as as if and as though
...
Processing metaphorical language takes place in context and draws on
the discourse expectations of participants
...
Such
strategies regularly take such forms as intensifiers, hedges and vague
language
...
g
...

Fixed Expressions and Formulaic Language
Fixed expressions are notoriously difficult to define and to classify due to their
degrees of fixedness which affect the syntactic and lexical patterns of their
component parts
...

Idioms, Creativity and Evaluation
Idioms do not simply describe but comment in more positive or negative ways
on events, processes and persons
...
Thus, to say she is on cloud nine is very different to just she's
extremely happy
...
However, running
parallel, there is also a range of non-creative, formulaic expressions which
operate primarily to stabilise and routinise the communicative event
...

Proverbs and Slang Expressions
Proverbial expressions convey familiar folk wisdom through statements and
sayings
...
They often have a metaphorical basis
and their indirectness prompts interpretation and a creative inferencing of
meaning
...
Thus, don't count your chickens implies a negative
evaluative comment but one that is less direct and face-threatening
...
Thus,
where there's a will, there's a way is an on-record approbatory statement
...

Their primary function is as part of pattern forming but pattern re-forming
functions do occur when speakers create novel proverbs
...
Slang, however, is regularly the subject of social
stigma with users seen as taking easy and ephemeral linguistic options, thus
inhibiting careful thought or original expression
...
In CANCODE, hyperbole appears to take the
following forms:
- Vague quantifiers - e
...
numerical, measurement, container, time
- Modifiers - e
...
gigantic, enormous, ginormous
- Verb phrases - e
...
to be covered in, to be dying of

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
- Counterfactual expressions (often used in conjunction with literally, nearly
etc) - e
...
I ran a mile when I saw her, we literally froze to death
Hyperbole functions to evaluate, to introduce humour and informality into
proceedings, to mark solidarity and mutuality between speakers as well as to
gain attention
...
It often involves speakers in
saying things which cannot be true or are recognised as untrue or contrary to
perceived facts
...
It is a common strategy and has an inbuilt creative
potential
...

Indirectness and Creativity
Figures of speech such as innuendo, understatement, irony and other more
indirect modes such as allegory often require a complete stretch of text in
order for their functions to be more fully discerned
...
In
addition to puns and wordplay, other key forms have been shown to
include repetition, metaphor, metonymy, simile, idioms and hyperbole
 Spoken creativity is instantial and emergent coming from local,
particular instances, often unplanned and unprepared for by participants
 Creativity is a matter of degree, pervasive in the daily commerce of
language, especially in ordinary everyday exchanges
 Spoken creativity can occur in monologues and in the context of a
transmission of information but is more likely to grow out of dialogic
interaction in which creative forms and functions are co-produced
 There is often a sense in which the co-production of creativity by pattern
re-forming means results in our not seeing things subsequently in quite
the same way

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
 Figures of speech are employed and deployed by speakers as
communicative resources to negotiate and position ideas, feelings and
attitudes
Conclusions
Creativity is difficult to define and hard to measure in any quantitative way
...

Spoken creativity tends to be both emergent and discourse-internal
recognised, stimulated, promoted and supported by insider-dealing
...
It also
engages us emotionally and affectively, enabling speakers and listeners to feel
more intimate and at ease with one another
...


Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk

Part 3 - Contexts and Variations
Chapter 5 – Creativity, Language and Social Context
Corpus and Creativity? Basic frameworks, definitions and research questions
In a sense, almost all conversational exchanges are creatively co-produced,
typically instantial and emergent, occurring when particular patterns have
comet o be perceived by conversational participants as purposeful and
motivated uses of language
...

When thinking of creativity, one must explore definitions which take account
of functions in context and which acknowledge that much depends on how
creative language is used by speakers in relation to local, contextual purposes
and engagements with language
...

Generic Organisation and Speech Genres in CANCODE
The data that Carter collected from CANCODE was organised according to
context type and interaction type
...
In all cases, the relationship between speakers qualified data
for inclusion in this category, not simply the environment in which the
recording was made
...

Transactional is most public and involves contexts in which there is no previous
relationship between speakers
...
Socialising refers to
areas of recreation and group meetings whereas intimate is normally a private,
cohabiting relationship where speakers are most linguistically ‘off-guard
...


Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Context Type
Information
Provision
Transactional
Commentary by
museum guide
Professional
Oral report at
group meeting
Socialising
Telling jokes to
friends
Intimate
Partner relating
story of film seen

Interaction Type
Collaborative Task Collaborative Idea
Choosing a buying
a television
Colleagues
window dressing
Friends cooking
together
Couple decorating
a room

Chatting with
hairdresser
Planning meeting
at place of work
Reminiscing with
friends
Siblings discussing
their childhood

Organising the Data: A Brief Note on Evidence
Given the fact that it is hard to quantify data in a corpus, examples must be
trawled through individually
...

Footing Shifts
Conversations can also contain what Goffman calls ‘footing shifts’, whereby an
alignment or stance of projected self is present and changes in this alignment
establish a new frame in which the talk is interpreted
...
Shifts are often marked by
discourse markers such as the thing about x is
...
etc
...
Results from other
corpus studies, however, have revealed that humour is more frequently
employed in the workplace by women rather than men
...
It
works by allowing a potentially literal statement to be made by non-literal
means
...
Linguistic creativity is
less likely to occur in contexts which involve a one-way process of information
provision or in those of professional interaction in which the main purpose is
transactional and where relationships between participants in a particular
context may be asymmetrical
...

The Creative Continuum: Conclusions
 Creative language use cannot be captured and described or evaluated
wholly by formalistic definitions
 Creativity is probabilistic – it is more likely to occur in some contexts and
in some kinds of interpersonal contact than others
 Recognising creativity in context is valuable
 Creativity seems to be best captured and discussed with reference to
clines and continua

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Chapter 6 – Creativity, Discourse and Social Practice
Interlingual Creativity, Crossings and Identities
Bilingual and multilingual communities are also especially rich in the
production of creative artefacts and there is some evidence to suggest that
conditions of multilingualism and multiculturalism may favour creative
production
...
Often these exchanges took place in
liminally fluid encounters where normally ordered social life is loosened and
normally social settings and interactions involving rules set by adults do not
apply
...
Typical contexts include the playground; the
school corridor; street corners and shopping malls
...

Code-Mixing and Online Communication
In online exchanges of Chinese speakers writing in English, it is interesting to
note that they almost creatively play with the boundaries of English to create
their own version that makes sense to them and enables them to develop a
repertoire of mixed codes in order to give expression to their feelings of
friendship, intimacy and involvement
...
Here, creativity is strategically blended with the lawyer sometimes
adopting a confrontational and adversarial attitude and other times, more
conciliatory and symmetrical
...

A Post-Modern Critical Creative Practice
Particularly in counselling, creativity takes place in very liminal social spaces
often by realigning expectations and outcomes, by widening, narrowing,

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
altering or completely replacing existing frames
...

Here, creativity is ‘critical’ as it appears as a result of occurring at a ‘critical’
moment in a professional exchange when the resources of all involved are
being critically tested
...
g
...
as well as the creative
purposes of the @ symbol
...

Although the medium is written and responses are typed on a keyboard, a
number of features of chat room language are much more typical of the
spoken domain
...
These features lead to a very particular dramatisation of the self
...
Participants regularly
reflect on their own presence, questioning the extent to which what they have
just typed and sent is where they actually are – is there anybody out there?
The Self as a Dramatic Effect
The detached and impersonal nature of friendly interpersonal exchanges leads
participants into self-dramatisation
...

Goffman also talks about the dramatic nature of all response cries, in that they
are all designed for an audience’s appreciation and are all self-regarding
...
The
response cry signals that we have regained control
...
Identity is multiple and plural and is constructed through language
in social, cultural and ethnic contexts of interaction
...
Often,
the linguistic creativity works alongside the creation of the self as a dramatic
artefact, a creative act which is almost in the manner of someone trying on
different styles of dress
...
Here, the reality created is a
function of the participants and does not exist independently of them
...


Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
The Creativity Continuum: Remapping Creativity
All the points addressed above have highlighted the need to readdress
creativity and remap it slightly according to multilingual and multicultural
crossing as well as multiparty interactions:
Context Type (communication varies
according to cultural and language
affiliation)
Information
Provision
Transactional
Commentary by
museum guide
Professional
Oral report at
group meeting

Socialising

Telling jokes to
friends

Intimate

Partner relating
story of film seen

Interaction Type (including hybrid
forms and embedding for creative
purposes)
Collaborative Task Collaborative Idea
Choosing a buying
a television
Colleagues
window dressing

Chatting with
hairdresser
Planning meeting
at place of work;
therapist or
counsellor
problem-solving
with a patient
Friends cooking
Reminiscing with
together; online
friends;
communication in adolescents
a MUD game
insulting an adult
authority figure
Couple decorating Siblings discussing
a room
their childhood;
Hong Kong
Chinese friends
emailing in
English and in
mixed code

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
Conclusions of book
 Creativity is present in many everyday spoken language exchanges
 Ordinary, demotic, common talk is frequently both artful and art – it has
continuities with and exists along clines with forms that are valued by
society as art
 Creativity is an act of the mind but is also a contextual act
 Creativity is always contextually framed and conditioned
 Creative language use is not simply ornamental but is fundamentally
purposeful
 Creativity emerge from interactional language encounters
 Creativity involves the breaking and re-establishing of patterns in a
process of forming and consolidating, reforming and transforming
 Creativity can be a contentious and confrontational as well as a
cooperative and collaborative act
 Creativity is closely related to language play and to games which may
and often do frequently involve humour
Suggestions for Further Research
- Describing Language Patterns – further focus on how to search for
prefabricated chunks of language in corpus
- Voicings – look more at the creative functions of voicing and revoicing
- Multimodality – development of video-corpora to supplement and
extend audio tape recording to allow gesture, eye contact and gaze to be
analysed too
The Meaning of Context
Further questions to consider:
-

The relationship between creative language use and particular topics
The connection between such patterns and gender roles
The relationship between creative language use and particular genres
Is creativity negotiated in mixed gender talk so that particular kinds of
display and presentationality are allowed or particular identities
promoted or constrained?

Ronald Carter – Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
- Is the use of creative language connected to the exercise of power in
particular contexts?
- Does creativity confer power and conversational control among
interlocutors?
- Is such power related to the gender or ethnicity of the speaker?
Creativity and the Language Classroom
One must ensure that foreign learners also learn about the cultural context of
a language in order to understand how it operates
...

Structures that focus on Illustration, Interaction and Induction will help
learners to better internalise and appreciate relationships between creative
patterns of language and purposes and contexts which can foster both literary
appreciation and greater language understanding
...
We must ask what a study of spoken creativity tell us about the
nature of language rather than what it tells us about creativity
...
It shows speakers as language makers and not simply as language
users

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