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Elements of language creativity

  • Simone Casini EMAIL logo
From the journal Semiotica

Abstract

This paper proposes a concept of creativity that stems from a semiotic and linguistic theoretical perspective, in which the formal frame of reference for variation and linguistic change considers and evaluates both the process of general interaction and the contact of languages as a global phenomenon. This method proposes an analysis of creativity that ranges from reflections of ancient philosophy to a contemporary linguistic perspective, incorporates international ideologies, and identifies, within the dimensions of use and social sharing, the principle capable of guiding potentially unlimited forms of linguistic creativity that are self-expressive and communicative, far beyond the grammatical patterns of regularity and norm. Interpreting the paradigm of creativity according to this model means placing the semiotic property in a position of prima inter pares, entrusted not only with the “role” of forming signs (words, sentences, texts), but the function of arbitraire, as a phenomenon of language creation. The following reading references the semiotic contribution of Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist who has contributed to the systematization of creativity, overcoming and synthesizing both Saussurian structuralism and Chomskyan generativism.


Corresponding author: Simone Casini, University of Toronto, Mississauga Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A1, Canada, E-mail:

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Received: 2019-11-24
Accepted: 2019-11-27
Published Online: 2021-04-20
Published in Print: 2021-07-27

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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