Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk
(Routledge, 2004)

Author Review
Ronald Carter, University of Nottingham

(a pre-review of this book appeared in HLT Sept 2004)

What the book tries to do

In this book I try to address the relationship between language and creativity, with reference to examples drawn from recently developed corpora of everyday 'common' language and in the context of new research in the domains of both everyday examples of language play and language use by different communities. I also address the whole question of changing definitions of creativity in an historical context.

In the book I try to argue that, traditionally, creativity has been regarded, at least within Western cultures, as a product of a unique, individual, inspired genius and in its most modernist Western conception as a process in which existing modes of thought and representation are challenged or deviated from to create `original', `new' mainly aesthetic paradigms. I've also pointed out that previous studies of creativity in the context of English Studies seem to be regarded as principally the domain of written texts.

At the heart of this book is a challenge to such assumptions. By exploring the extent to which creativity can be analysed as emergent processes of social construction in a wide range of contexts of communication I try in this book to take a wider view of the subject. Throughout the book the main aim is to underline the extent to which creativity is not simply a capacity of special people but a special capacity of all people and that this remarkable capacity is especially evident in everyday spoken exchanges.

Among the topics explored in the book are: the pervasiveness of creativity in everyday communication including (un)common speech, multi-lingual `crossings' and internet relay chat; the differences and distinctions between Western and Eastern conceptions of creativity in relation to language and cultural reflection; corpus-based exploration of tropes such as repetition and metaphor; creative interactions such as psychiatrist-patient, lawyer-client and doctor-patient in HIV and AIDS consultations; the implications of new paradigms of creativity for the training of professionals for workplace communication; the intimate and shifting relations between `the creative'and `the critical'; the pervasiveness of language play and its relevance to language learning and teaching; the relevance of recent developments in the study of creativity for integrated language and literature education and for second language acquisition.

A main aim is to push back frontiers in theorisation of the relationship between language and creativity and to propose some new frameworks. In so doing, I draw on the extensive data provided by modern corpora of everyday language spoken and written but with particular emphasis given to the spoken language and to its sources in the CANCODE corpus of everyday spoken English held in my department at the School of English Studies in the University of Nottingham. There are examples drawn from the ordinary conversations of flatmates, families on holiday, computer chat-lines, psychotherapy treatment sessions and classroom tutorials. The book focuses on the development of theory and of descriptive frameworks and tries to lay out what I take to be important foundations.

What the book doesn't do but might have done

Looking back now a few months after the publication of the book (in order to write this review) is a strange experience as I am not altogether sure I took all the right decisions in providing these platforms and foundations. For example, much of the data I explore involves people in convergent, collaborative exchanges with every effort being made by them to secure supportive, mutually enriching exchanges. This is in part dictated by the nature of the CANCODE corpus on which I based the findings. But colleagues have subsequently pointed out that linguistic creativity occurs equally pervasively (if less frequently) in non-collaborative conflictual situations and that many of the linguistic features I itemise can also be used for purposes of insult, putting someone down, challenging and responding negatively to them or their words. I will continue to give this whole area thought.

It is also perhaps unfortunate that I chose not to draw out the implications for language teaching and learning more explicitly. I'd also like to have looked more extensively at potential applications of the questions raised for literature teaching and for introducing a less information-based and more interpersonally-oriented language teaching.

In so doing, I might then have picked up more on these aspects of challenge and creativity, for the fashionable emphasis in English language teaching has recently been upon a reduced repertoire of functions, encouraging the use of English for uncritical obedience, bland politeness, and false consensus. Three developments in particular should make us rethink this restrictive legacy, and question its effects upon both first and additional language education. First, the use of English as the international lingua franca should be accompanied, for all its speakers, by a sense of ownership of the language, and access to the full range of its communicative functions, including its more creative functions. Second, changes to the media of communication, in particular the internet, offer new resources for both creativity and rebellion. Third, the dangers to individual and cultural diversity inherent in an emerging global world order can be checked, rather than hastened, by a re-emphasis in language education upon creativity. Furthermore, if creativity in language learning implies resistance to conventional language usages and uses imposed by society, what role does critical reflexivity play in the exercise of creativity in a second or foreign language? How far might a revitalised teaching of literature support such a classroom practice and what are the implications for methodology? For example, is one major implication a position that we should look at literary language alongside rather than separately from the metaphors, puns and word play to be found in everyday communication? Would this help to overcome the current rather dangerous hierarchy of treatment and allow students to work from what they can do and from what they perceive others to be able to do in their everyday lives and everyday, 'common' uses of language. Might this result in giving them more confidence to engage more fully with more canonical texts.

Some of the questions posed in the book which I would like to now pursue and explore further are:

- Why, particularly within literature and language study, creativity is conventionally seen largely as a written phenomenon or, in spoken form, is seen as restricted generically (mainly to narrative) and contextually (mainly in relation to rhetorical performance);
- how spoken and written creativity differ and what their respective purposes are;
- the extent to which speakers are conscious or unconscious of what they do on a daily basis;
- whether there are degrees of creativity with some instances more highly valued than others (and, if so, why);
- how and why creativity in common speech is often connected with the construction of a relationship and with interpersonal convergence; whether spoken creativity is only confined to particular socio-cultural contexts and to particular kinds of relationship.

Conclusion: What I am still (nevertheless) happy with having done

I suppose there is only so much you can ever do in a book, although they always leave me feeling unsatisfied and with a sense of there being more to say. I do feel, however, that some basic points have been communicated and that they are worth thinking about. Above all, I do feel that, with the extensive help of the CANCODE corpus, I have been able to demonstrate that creativity is a common property and that it is not the exclusive preserve of the 'gifted individual. Instead, all individuals are gifted in their most common and daily uses of language and it is about time we found ways to celebrate and utilise the insights that such a perspective generates.

Comments and observations on the book or on what is written here are welcome.