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E301A
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Chapter 1 \ the art of the everyday
*****This chapter is exploring various aspects of the argument that
'artful' language is pervasive and purposeful: rather than seeing
literature as a distinctive way of using language we can find literarylike or artful language in a range of more everyday contexts.
The new argument:
Certain kinds of linguistic creativity traditionally associated with poetry
and other forms of literature - including play with the sounds and
structures of language (repetition, metaphor, rhyme, and rhythm) are
a feature of ordinary, everyday conversation. There is a connection
between such everyday creativity, or verbal arts, and literature itself.
Traditional argument:
Literary language has traditionally been thought of as distinctly "noncreative", a highly valued form of language where words and phrases
are carefully chosen for their artistic effect and responded to
aesthetically by listeners and readers.
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The nature of verbal art
Activity 1 \ 'Artful' language:
(Reading and underlining is more important than only seeing the
comments, so read it from the book)
1) Pun: a form of word play which relies on ambiguity in word meaning.
Pun often use homophones or near homophones (words with the same
or similar sounds but different meanings, e.g. plane-plain) Puns occur
in everyday conversation, advertising catch phrases, newspaper
headlines, etc.
2) The effects of the similarity in form between words: [Al capigeon –
godfeather]
3) Repetition: a common feature of conversation: the speaker repeats a
set of words, a grammatical structure, also an intonation pattern that
contribute the sense of rhythm.
Repetition may operate on several linguistic levels: words and phrases,
grammatical structure and rhythm, and speech sounds as in the case of
rhyming words.
4) Figurative or metaphorical language: metaphor is strongly associated
with poetry and other form of literature, but it also occurs frequently
in everyday language. [a leaf in the wind]. Metaphor is strongly
associated with poetry and other forms of literature, but it also occurs
frequently in everyday language.
5) Playing with rhyme
6) Pun based on similarity of sound between words in two different
languages (joke performance)
____________________________________
Language is being used for routine, everyday purposes: to carry out the
business of everyday interaction, conveying information from one
person to another, getting on with others, engaging in disputes. But in
each case language also seems to draw attention to itself. Some formal
aspect of language – such as sound rhythm, grammar, meaning – is
highlighted and this makes the utterance stand out: it may sound
clever or amusing.
____________________________________
***Certain forms of language, particularly those found in literature,
are highly creative.
The argument is that there isn't a clear-cut distinction between
'literary' language and more everyday forms: creativity is not restricted
to literary texts but is a common aspect of our interactions with others.
A further argument is that artful language is functional, or purposeful:
it is used to a range of effects in interactions.
Some writers advance a much larger argument, that verbal art, like
other forms of art or creativity, is an essential property of humankind;
that there are evolutionary benefits to be gained from this, and also
cognitive benefits for individuals.
____________________________________
Activity 2 \ Reading A \ Ronald Carter:
Common language corpus, creativity and cognitive
 Carter's evidence of verbal creativity is derived from a corpus of
spoken English, Collected in Britain, which provide a relatively
large sample of naturally occurring spoken language use, with
emphasis on' "common" informal discourse'
 Carter identifies different forms of creativity: he refers to
'punning and playing', 'morphological inventiveness', 'echoing
and converging'.
 He makes a border distinction between 'pattern-reforming' and
'pattern-reinforcing' choices.
1- Patter-reforming examples include puns, invented words
or expressions: usages which play with and transform
words and phrases in various ways.
2- Pattern-reinforcing examples including repetition or
echoing a previous utterance, without deviating from
expected linguistic patterns.
 Carter also argues that such forms of creativity serve particular
interactional functions: they are often humorous; they serve in
part to bring people together; they seem to be associated with
informal, symmetrical social relations.
____________________________________
Activity 3 \ Creativity at large:
 Much of Carter's argument is persuasive. His use of evidence from
relatively large, systematically collected corpus of spoken English
lends credibility to his argument that artful language is pervasive in
everyday talk.
 Carter gives no information about the gender balance in his sample,
nor about other social factors such as class and ethnicity. It's not
possible, therefore, to consider social, cultural and contextual factors
that might affect the types of creativity people engage in and their
interactional effects, and this would limit the generalizability of
Carter's claim.
READ THE QUOTE P.9
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Everyday language sets the conditions for literary language.
- Repetition, for instance, is a fundamental characteristic of
everyday language.
-
Deborah Tannen suggests that this comes from a basic human
drive to imitate and repeat.
- Repetition may have certain interactional effects – e.g. bringing
people together and signalling their mutual involvement – but in
most cases it would not seem particularly creative.
Discussing the relationship between everyday linguistic creativity and
literary language begs the question of what literary language actually
is.
 Carter distinguishes three main models of literariness which
underpin definitions: two established model which he refers to as an
inherency model and a sociocultural model; and a more recent
cognitive.
1) An inherency model would see creativity or literariness as residing
in certain formal properties of language: literary language is
regarded as distinct from more 'practical' uses of language in that
language itself is highlighted.
- Roman Jakobson referred to the poetic function of language,
where there is a 'focus on the message for its own sake'.
- This property of language may also be termed self-referential –
where language is referring partly to itself and not simply to
entities in the external world that are the object of discussion.
- While the poetic function is evident in many examples of
language use, Jakobson argued it was the dominant,
determining function of verbal art.
2) A sociocultural model of literary language would see literariness as
socially and culturally determined: for instance, drawing attention
to the fact that conceptions of literature very historically and
culturally.
- Terry Eagleton argues that there is nothing distinctive about
literary language: any text can be seen as literature if it is
defined as such by institutions or if people read it as such.
-
Anthropological studies of literary performances in different
cultural contexts also tend to take a sociocultural perspective on
literariness.
- Many study focus on performance in its conventional literary or
theatrical sense, to include public displays of artistic activity that
are responded to aesthetically by an audience such as
storytelling, song, dance or drama.
3) Cognitive model relate literary language to mental processes:
- Tannen suggests that linguistic repetition derives from a basic
human drive to repeat is a kind of cognitive argument.
- Cook argues that literary texts have an effect on the mind,
helping us to think in new ways and 'refreshing and changing our
mental representations of the world'. (Similar things to say
about everyday creativity with language).
- Raymond Gibbs argues that the human language and human
understanding are often metaphorical, and that literary
metaphor builds on and extends everyday metaphorical concept.
4) Carter sees some value in both 'inherency' and 'sociocultural' models.
Cognitive models, for Carter, are beneficial in that they help to explain
the prevalence of creativity in everyday language. His main argument is
that literariness is best seen as a cline. (it is appropriate to see texts as
more or less literary rather than in terms of an opposition between
literary and non-literary language.
Definition of a literary cline: p.11
____________________________________
Creativity, language play, verbal art, literary language and poetic
language, are terms used by different authors to refer to the same
phenomena.
Please read the definition p:12-13
____________________________________
Why verbal art?
Activity 4 \ Reading B By Guy Cook:
 Cook focus on two aspects of play: playing with the structures of
language, and invoking fictional worlds.
 He argues that linguistic play and/or fiction are manifested in a variety
of different activities: (children's rhymes and games, and adult's
informal and private play with language, but also more public activity,
such as adverts and other media language and serious examples such
as Martin Luther King's speech.) Cook argues that they are
underpinned by similar functions.
 Like Carter, he refers to local 'immediate' functions of play: play binds
people together and contributes to a sense of group identity, also, it is
necessarily excludes others
 Cook's wider argument is that playing with the structures of language
introduces a random element into language use: the words we choose
are constrained by form as much as by meaning. This random element
produces new connections, and can change the way we view things.
 People are enabled to 'break out of established patterns of thought'
and 'think creatively and flexibly'. This mental adaptability associated
with literary or artful activity is, according to Cook, beneficial to
individuals but has also benefited humankind as a species.
____________________________________
Metaphor and cognition
Metaphor, rather than being a literary or poetic device, is an inherent
property of language and the human kind, so that the fundamental
roots of language are figurative.
Lakoff, Johnson, and Turner:
 They are interested in metaphor as a way of understanding the world:
they argue that we habitually understand one thing in terms of
another.
 Language and our metaphorical use of language, is a window on this
process: the way we use language provides insights into how we
perceive and think.
 They argue that metaphorical understandings are not idiosyncratic or
one-of, but are organized systematically. E.g.: arguments frequently
seen in terms of war, the can be attacked, defended, won or lost, right
on target.
 They suggest that there is a conceptual metaphor – a metaphorical way
of thinking about argument- that underlines these expressions.
 Lakoff and Johnson suggests that it is possible to establish links
between different metaphorical systems: e.g: "up" is generally positive
and "dawn" negative in the cases of conceptual metaphors such as:
(HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DAWN)
(Health and life are up, sickness and death are down)
(Having control/force is up, being subject to control/force is
down)

For Lakoff and Johnson, metaphor is not simply a way of talking or
writing about something: metaphorical systems are associated with
cultural preoccupations and with the ways members of specific
cultures perceive and understand phenomena and act upon the world.
____________________________________
Activity 5 \ Ups and dawns:
It is easier to think of 'up' words as positive and 'dawn' words as
negative in English, though it's also worth bearing in mind that the
associations of ups and dawns also depend on the context in which
phrases occur.
____________________________________
Activity 6 \ Reading C – Everyday metaphor:
The main points Cameron makes about the cognitive shift notion of
metaphor? How metaphor is actually used by speakers?
 For Cameron, the 'cognitive shift' extends considerably what may be
seen as metaphor in actual uses of language. Metaphors do not need
to involve novel connections, or even to be recognised as metaphorical
by language users. The term is also extended to a wider range of
figurative language, such as similes and allegories.
 Cameron relates the characteristics of metaphorical language to the
'affordances' of particular languages. Affordance refers here to what
English (or any language) makes available to its users by virtue of its
structure: some forms are possible, or easier; others less so.
 Cameron distinguishes between 'deliberate' and 'conventionalised'
metaphor, and identifies uses of both categories in educational and
medical talk.
 Cameron focuses on the use of metaphor by particular speakers, in
particular contexts (there may be differences between speakers/
contexts).
 She argues also that metaphor has a range of interactional functions:
she emphasises the importance of an affective dimension, with
metaphor used to mitigate a threat or create a climate of support.
The relationship between 'everyday' and 'literary' metaphor:
Cameron notes that everyday talk does not make much use of novel
metaphors. It does, however, make some: this takes us back to Carter's
notion of a cline of literariness, rather than a binary distinction between
literary and non-literary language.
____________________________________
Activity 7 \ the 'fundamental' nature of metaphorical
language
Reading C, including Cameron's consideration of the limits of metaphor
and criticisms of cognitive metaphor theory. How convincing do you find
the arguments that 'the fundamental roots of language are figurative?
 The main arguments seem quite convincing - that metaphor is
prevalent in everyday language; that it is functional (i.e. used to specific
effects in an interaction); and that poetic metaphor builds on everyday
metaphorical understandings.
 The idea of underlying conceptual metaphors is more difficult: Cameron
pointed out that it is problematical to infer conceptual metaphors on
the basis of individual metaphors in discourse.
 And the idea of conceptual metaphors is a highly abstract one: this does
not mean that people consciously appeal to underlying conceptual
metaphors in using and responding to metaphor in the cut and thrust
of everyday interactions.
Cameron notes that the 'cognitive shift' in the study of metaphor has
considerably extended what counts as metaphor. Her own study takes
account of 'conventionalised' as well as 'deliberate' metaphor.
In discussing the limits of metaphor, however she concedes that there is a
danger of over-extending the notion of metaphor. It's also important to
note that metaphorical connections will differ in different cultural
contexts.
____________________________________
Art in interaction
While everyday verbal art may be considered in terms of its relationship
to literature and its cognitive, or even evolutionary benefits, specific
instances also have a local, interactional function (e.g. they may create a
common bond, or competition between participants, or perhaps do
both simultaneously).
A distinction is often made between conversational joking and joke
telling.
 Joke telling may be regarded as a performance set off from the
surrounding conversation by some sort of preface or performance
marker ('I heard this joke the other day……) jokes adopt certain
recognized formats, including a punch line, and they are subject to
explicit evaluation.
 Conversational joking involves spontaneous humour within the give and
take of conversation rather than telling a joke with a recognized format,
though a joking comment may still be explicitly evaluated and in that
sense constitute a small-scale performance.
Joking in workplace:
Holmes & Marra make a broad distinction between:
'reinforcing humour' (which reinforces or maintains existing relationship);
And
'subversive humour' (which subverts existing relationships – in this case
challenging power relationships)
e.g. p. 22\23
____________________________________
 Studies such as those carried out by Carter, Cook and Cameron identify
certain forms of language associated with creativity and also look at
how these function, or how they are used within an interaction.
Holmes and Marra, by contrast, are not concerned with linguistic form.
They identify humorous episodes not formally but functionally - in
terms of participants' perceptions of humour - whether an episode
seems designed to be humorous and how it is responded to.
 Holmes and Marra suggest that humour is used differently by different
types of participants in meetings: it may be used by a person in
authority to reinforce existing power relations or by someone in a
subordinate position to challenge or subvert these.
 Humour may of course have several other functions, some of which are
examined in other studies. It may also be multifunctional.
____________________________________
Activity 9 \ Artful joking?
These examples are unlike the poetic forms of language: there is no play
with language forms, no punning, rhyming or other poetic repetition, no
obvious figures of speech.
There is, however, some manipulation of discourse, or language use. People
may say something unexpected, playfully reproduce the kind of remark
associated with another speaker, say something ironically, or potentially
ironically. These may be seen as creative practices. The speakers are also
engaging in a small-scale performance: saying something for effect and
invoking a response from an audience.
____________________________________
 Holmes and Marra's study seems to be consistent with a sociocultural
approach to verbal art. Perceptions of humour are likely to differ in
different contexts - what seems humorous to one group of people, in
one workplace, may not be humorous to others and indeed may not be
fully understood by them.
 The use of humour, and understanding of humour, is likely to differ
between cultural groups
 Accepting participants' understandings of humour (or, strictly, analysts'
interpretations of these) is likely to give culturally and contextually
diverse examples of what counts as humour - or verbal art, more
generally: in this case humour, or art, is whatever people conceive of as
humorous, or artful.
Conclusion
There are different approaches to the study of the creativity in language:
1) Guy Cook's argument: about the universality and potential benefits of
language play. (evidence from a range of source)
2) Ronald Carter's argument: makes general claims about the forms taken
by creative or artful language – distinction between 'pattern-reforming'
and 'pattern-reinforcing'.(evidence from a large computerised corpus of
spoken language)
The focus on linguistic form is a textual approach to the study of
language, i.e. the analysis is concerned with formal properties of a
spoken and transcribed text.
Carter is also interested in the social functions of art in specific
contexts. Contextual approach is concerned with how language is used
in context.
3) Lynne Cameron: focus closely on how metaphor is used in specific
context i.e. the use of metaphor in teaching and learning in the
classroom. (evidence from language used in schools)
4) Janet Holmes: focus on a particular type of context – the differences
between speakers in terms of the power conferred by their institutional
position.
These approaches to the study of creativity in language partly map on to
Carter's distinction between different models:
- A textual approach would map on Carter's 'inherency' model,
where that distinguishes literature are the formal properties of
literary texts.
- A contextual approach would be more consistent with Carter's
'sociocultural' model, with its emphasis on social, cultural and
contextual variability in what counts as literature.
- Carter's third, 'cognitive' model, is somewhat different, as it
relates to mental processes rather than to the properties of texts
or how language is used.
Activity 10 in book P.28
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