6 Creativity and language

In this section you’ll move to look at the relationship between language and some slightly more abstract or theoretical concepts.

One of the great strengths of human language is that it’s almost endlessly flexible. With a small group of standard sounds, or the set number of letters in an alphabet, we can express our feelings and ideas about almost any experience we encounter. Using that small collection of sounds or set number of letters, you can combine them to produce sentences which will never have been uttered by anyone else in the world before – and yet are still meaningful to anyone who speaks the same language as you.

It’s because of this property that the notion of creativity is so important for the way we use language. In some ways, every time we open our mouths to speak we’re engaging in a creative act in that we’re creating meaning for others to interpret. But this would be a rather broad definition of creativity. The video below looks in a more focused way into the relationship between language and creativity, at what we mean when we say something is creative, and at why the concept is so important in our lives.

Activity 7

Before watching the video, have a think about the following questions:

• How would you define ‘creativity’ if you were asked to do so?
• Do you think that creativity, as you’ve just defined it, is an important part of our everyday language use?
• Are there specific uses of language, or specific contexts in which language is used, which are particularly dependent on linguistic creativity?

Jot down any thoughts you have about this in the text box below. Once you’ve done so, save your answer and then read the comment.

Video 7 Language and creativity

Transcript

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Discussion

As the video argues, to call something creative is to appreciate the effect it has in the conversation, especially in the way it makes us see things in a novel light. The concept is often associated with art, literature and high culture, but some sort of linguistic creativity can be found in almost any example of language use. There are, however, some domains in which it’s more salient than others and you’ll look at a couple of these in the next two sections.