29.3359, Review: Applied Linguistics: Bell (2016)

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Subject: 29.3359, Review: Applied Linguistics: Bell (2016)

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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:14:07
From: Villy Tsakona [villytsa at otenet.gr]
Subject: Multiple Perspectives on Language Play

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-1327.html

EDITOR: Nancy  Bell
TITLE: Multiple Perspectives on Language Play
SERIES TITLE: Language Play and Creativity
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Villy Tsakona, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

SUMMARY

A bias against playful, ludic, or humorous discursive phenomena has
considerably postponed academic research on them. ‘Serious’ research was
expected to concentrate exclusively on ‘serious’ topics, thus dismissing
language play, humor, laughter, and related phenomena as unworthy objects of
study (see among others Morreall 2009). This has, however, been reconsidered
in the past few decades when (socio)linguistics and discourse analysis brought
to the limelight the centrality of such phenomena in the discourse produced in
a variety of contexts. Among others, Jakobson (1960) and De Beaugrande (1979)
highlighted the significance of language play and linguistic creativity for
attracting audience attention to the conveyed message and for contributing to
language change.
 
More recently, particular emphasis has been placed on the fact that language
play and linguistic creativity are not skills belonging exclusively to
‘charismatic’ individuals (e.g. poets, authors, artists, politicians known for
their rhetorical skills). Instead, such phenomena originate and flourish in
everyday encounters, and are therefore perceived as part of ordinary speakers’
experiences, discursive resources, and performances (Negus & Pickering 2004;
on the democratization of linguistic creativity, see also Maybin & Swann 2007,
Jones 2012: 2). Such a shift in perspective resulted from and in research in
language play and linguistic creativity as pervasive, dynamic, and
co-constructed in everyday interactions (see among others Carter 2004, Maybin
& Swann 2006, Swann & Maybin 2007, Swann et al. 2011, Jones 2012, 2016).
Sociopragmatic research, in particular, has consistently shown that playful,
creative, and humorous uses of language encode ‘serious’ messages and
constitute important discursive means for constructing social identities,
conveying criticism, building rapport, or excluding outsiders, among other
things. From such a functionalist perspective, it is therefore difficult to
identify differences between playful and non-playful/‘serious’ uses of
language, except perhaps for the fact that speakers appear to enjoy (and
perhaps laugh at/with) bending and distorting linguistic forms and meanings
while playing.
 
It is exactly in this context that the volume “Multiple perspectives on
language play”, edited by Nancy Bell, comes to remind us of the ubiquity of
playful phenomena in discourse and the various functions they fulfill. In her
introduction, Nancy Bell discusses recent developments in research on language
play, linguistic creativity, and humor, as well as on the interplay between
these concepts. As she notes, there are certain aspects of language play,
creativity, and humor that emerge as significant in the relevant research.
First, it is indeed a challenging endeavor to define the boundaries between
these overlapping concepts; hence scholars usually focus on one of them and do
not attempt to examine them in a comparative perspective. Second, resorting to
language play, linguistic creativity, and humor to convey messages in casual
interaction involves a near-paradox: it may render communication more opaque
and difficult, but simultaneously seems to be beneficial for interlocutors
from a cognitive, social, and emotional perspective. Third, despite the fact
that these discursive phenomena are negotiated and co-constructed in
interaction, most research focuses either on their production or on their
comprehension. Fourth, they are directly related to language variation and
change, as they contribute to the production of new linguistic forms and
meanings, thus enriching speakers’ repertoires. Finally, language play,
linguistic creativity, and humor are culture-specific, context-dependent, and
scalar phenomena: speakers often offer different assessments of what can be
perceived as playful, creative, or humorous, and such divergent perceptions
may also vary across communicative settings, historical eras, and/or
linguocultural communities.
 
Neal R. Norrick’s opening article on “Language play in conversation” is based
on the distinction between two kinds of language play: first, playing with
language as an object; and, second, playing with language as a medium. In the
first case, he discusses language games with a strong metalinguistic focus,
such as crosswords, Scrabble, tongue twisters, word chains, and Pig Latin. In
the second case, he refers to language play as emerging in interaction,
whereby interlocutors bend or defy linguistic conventions to achieve an array
of sociopragmatic functions including, among other things, creating rapport,
showing aggression, and redirecting talk. The author explores how specific
phenomena (i.e. formulaic speech, overstatement, address terms, puns,
question/answer sequences) may belong to the first category of language games,
but often surface in interaction, thus demonstrating the interplay between the
two above-mentioned categories.
 
Even though most studies on language play describe it using the traditional
levels of linguistic analysis (phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis,
pragmatics), Thorsten Huth attempts to expand the definition of language play
by analyzing its occurrence in patterns of interaction. In his chapter titled
“Playing with turns, playing with action? A social-interactionist
perspective”, he adopts a conversation analytic perspective to account for
interactants’ tendency to consciously manipulate interactional mechanisms and
patterns to play with language. The data examined comes from interactions
between American learners of German as an L2 and reveals how they rely on
their metapragmatic awareness in both L1 and L2 to jointly bend basic rules of
interaction in L2. In particular, learners take advantage of the different
patterns of organizing compliments in American English and German and mark
their deviations from the expected (German) patterns using metapragmatic
markers such as laughter.
 
In “The shape of tweets to come: Automating language play in social networks”,
Tony Veale discusses the generation of metaphors and irony by Twitterbots,
namely “high-concept, low-complexity generative systems that transplant the
aleatoric methods and constraints of the early surrealists, the Oulipo group
and the ‘beat’ writers […] into the realms of digital content, social networks
and online publishing” (p. 75). Twitterbots follow specific rules and employ
various sources of knowledge to generate tweets, usually through manipulating
utterances attested in Twitter and using words in more or less unexpected
ways. After a detailed description of how such generative systems work, the
author concentrates on two of them, that is, @MetaphorMagnet and
@MetaphorMinute, and tests their products to assess their success in
generating creative metaphors. In particular, randomly selected tweets are
evaluated by informants for their comprehensibility, novelty, and
retweetability. The author concludes that “we humans […] do others the
courtesy of assuming their utterances to be freighted with real meaning and
creative intent, and will often work hard to uncover that meaning for them”
(p. 88). This, however, does not entail that we will all arrive at the same
meaning/interpretation.
 
In her chapter titled “‘This system’s so slow’: Negotiating sequences of
laughter and laughables in call-center interaction”, Elizabeth Holt examines
extracts of calls to a gas-supply company, during which interactants tend to
move from institutional talk to less serious and more playful exchanges while
commenting on the slowness of the online system of the company. Conversation
analysis allows the author to demonstrate in detail how the transition from
institutional/serious talk to more informal/non-serious talk is usually
accomplished gradually: in most cases, a clear-cut distinction between the two
discursive modes cannot be established. In this context, laughter plays a
significant role as it helps interactants to negotiate the transition over
several turns. Laughter does not only mark the exchanges as (potentially)
playful or non-serious but, most importantly, exhibits an affiliative function
fostering rapport between the caller and the employee, even though their
interaction involves callers’ complaints against the company and employees’
complaints and accounts for the slowness of the online system.
 
In “Laughter as a ‘serious business’: Clients’ laughter in prenatal screening
for Down’s syndrome”, Olga Zayts & Stephanie Schnurr examine the functions of
laughter in medical consultation encounters between nurses and pregnant women.
Their focus is on the second parts of laughter sequences where pregnant women
reciprocate the laughter offered by nurses. Adopting a conversation analytic
perspective and combining it with ethnographic information on the encounters
under scrutiny, the authors identify three kinds of shared laughter in their
data: shared laughter as a means of managing risk talk when nurses attempt to
reassure the women and to create rapport with them; shared laughter as a means
of negotiating epistemic statuses and stances when the information provided by
the nurses is judged as redundant or inadequate by pregnant women; laughter as
a means of negotiating deontic authority when nurses resist pregnant women’s
decisions or when the latter resist the former’s offers for information or
advice. This study confirms and elaborates on previous research on the
affiliative or disaffiliative functions of laughter, and underlines its use to
display epistemic or deontic statuses in settings where participants seem to
have asymmetrical roles of authority or expertise.
 
In his chapter titled “Jocular language play, social action and
(dis)affiliation in conversational interaction”, Michael Haugh discusses cases
where a negative stance is expressed by an interlocutor towards him/herself,
his/her addressee, or a third absent party, and language play is employed to
affiliate or disaffiliate with this stance. In particular, language play
occurs in “various kinds of sensitive social actions, such as accusations,
criticisms, complaints and disagreements” (p. 146). Concurrently, Haugh
exploits the distinction between ‘playing with language’ and ‘playing in
language’: the first involves bending linguistic conventions for playful
purposes, while the latter employing language to engage in play (see among
others Bell 2012). Hence, the data examined includes both interactions where
wordplay and puns are attested (cf. ‘playing with language’), and joint
fantasizing where fictional scenarios are co-constructed by participants for
entertainment purposes (cf. playing in language). The author’s preference for
an interactional pragmatic analysis helps bring to the surface how
interactants negotiate diverse stances without overtly endangering their
social relationships.
 
Teasing as a kind of language play and/or humor is the focus of Valeria
Sinkeviciute’s study titled “‘Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me
in the face’: Frontstage and backstage reactions to teasing”. The author
relies on Goffman’s (1959) distinction between frontstage and backstage
behavior to describe contradicting reactions to, and perceptions of, teasing
mostly by those who are targeted by it and those who witness it. She argues
that, while in frontstage performance speakers tend to conform to social
values and norms favoring the light-hearted, positive uptake of teasing, in
backstage performances the same speakers express themselves more freely and
disclose their negative feelings stemming from the teasing addressed to them
or from the teasing they witnessed as third parties. Such behavior is
discussed in view of widely accepted norms according to which speakers are
expected to publicly display a sense of humor and not to take themselves too
seriously in sociocultural communities such as the British and the Australian
ones. The data analyzed comes from the British and the Australian ‘Big
Brother’ reality shows which encourage participants metatalk on previous
interactions among them. Similarities and differences between the two shows
are also explored.
 
Emi Otsuji & Alastair Pennycook investigate language play in the context of
metrolingualism in their chapter on “Cities, conviviality and double-edged
language play”. Metrolingualism highlights both the fluidity and the fixity of
linguistic resources allowing speakers to engage in language play. It refutes
“the assumed connections between language and culture, ethnicity, nationality
or geography” (p. 201) and explores “how such relations are produced,
resisted, defied or rearranged” (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010: 246). Given the
above, the authors analyze extracts from everyday interactions among speakers
of different origins living in Sydney, Australia, and playing with various
linguistic resources to create moments of conviviality in the workplace, to
cross ethnolinguistic lines, or on the contrary to draw ethnic boundaries
among different immigrant populations, and in some cases even to discriminate
against ethnic groups. The authors also discuss how the landscape and spatial
arrangements in contemporary multicultural cities play a significant role in
bringing people of diverse origins together and in mixing, recontextualizing,
and redefining their linguistic resources. They finally consider fluidity and
fixity as equally important parameters for such purposes: “[w]e may […] live
in a world of flows, but we also live in a world of fixities. Not only are
there political and economic limits to the degrees to which languages and
cultures can ebb and flow, but there are also strong attachments to fixed
identifications” (p. 214).
 
David Hann’s contribution to the volume refers to “Building rapport and a
sense of communal identity through play in a second language classroom”. The
author investigates how language play during L2 courses can enhance group
cohesion through common cultural reference points, despite the not
particularly high level of learners’ proficiency in L2. More specifically,
Hann focuses on a specific case study involving role-playing among learners: a
pragmatically inappropriate utterance produced by one of them becomes a kind
of running joke and is recontextualized at different stages of the course. The
data examined reveals that such cases of language play significantly
strengthen group bonds and involvement in the joint activities performed in
class, while they also allow learners to create absurd scenarios and test the
use of different voices therein. In other words, instances of language play
that could otherwise be framed as “performative mistakes” (p. 238) and be
‘corrected’ so as to be avoided in the future, are employed by learners and
teachers to enhance the formers’ pragmatic repertoires, and create a shared
sense of identity and culture in the L2 classroom. This is particularly
significant for L2 speakers who may “feel less able to control the social
construction of self when operating in another language and culture” (p. 220).
 
In “The first English (EFL) lesson: Initial settings or the emergence of a
playful classroom culture”, Jet Van Dam & Anne Bannick underline the
importance of planned or unplanned language play in designing and performing a
variety of activities for the L2 classroom, so as to enhance students’
interest and participation. The data examined comes from the first lesson of
English for a class of 12- to 13-year-old Dutch students of varying competence
in the target language. The analysis demonstrates how the different identities
performed by either the teacher or the students (or both) lead to a “mix of
situated play and task-orientedness” where the teacher and the students are
“making fun of the lesson frame while being fully involved in it” (p. 274).
Opting for a holistic, micro-ethnographic approach, the authors trace the
“co-construction of a learning culture” (p. 247) not only via analyzing
instances of classroom interaction but also via returning to the same class to
observe and take field notes three weeks and then eight months after the
beginning of the course. This method allows them to confirm the significant
role of language play in establishing an engaging learning culture in class as
well as the steady high levels of students’ participation and motivation in
learning English as an L2.
 
In his chapter titled “The emergence of creativity in L2 English: A
usage-based study”, Søren W. Eskildsen sets out to investigate how emergent
creativity in L2 contributes to L2 learning by expanding L2 patterns in and
through talk. The study ascribes to usage-based linguistics and involves the
comparison of L2 patterns at earlier and later stages of learning, and hence
the detection of their evolution in time. Such a traceback methodology applied
to data coming from authentic learning environments and interactions helps the
researcher to detect subtle changes in learners’ language use, and account for
the ways such changes emerge and are triggered by what happens in classroom
interactions. In this context, language play seems to enable learners to break
down, recycle, and manipulate a variety of recurring multiword expressions and
thus to increase their linguistic awareness, which in turn facilitates
language learning. Such a conceptualization of language play comes in sharp
contrast to generative approaches proposing that innate rules of syntax govern
the production of utterances, and eventually compromises the significance
attached to the poverty of stimulus for language learning (Chomsky 1980).
 
Jiyun Kim’s study on “Teaching language learners how to understand sarcasm in
L2 English” is based on the premise that phenomena subsumed under the labels
of language play or humor, such as sarcasm, are universal but
culture-specific. At the same time, it presupposes that L2 teachers have the
necessary linguistic and analytical skills not only to detect the
linguocultural differences in the production of sarcasm but also to explain
them to their students. The study reports on a meticulously designed teaching
experiment aimed at sensitizing Korean students of English to the pragmatic
differences between Korean sarcasm and its English counterpart. The experiment
begins with documenting and taking into serious consideration students’
conceptualizations of (mostly Korean) sarcasm and then exploits various
material (e.g. diagrams, video clips, observational verbal data) to discuss
the particularities of (English) sarcasm with the students and to point out
its functions and goals in interaction. The post-test interviews reveal that
such explicit teaching of sarcasm may have remarkable results in improving
students’ detection and interpretation of L2 sarcasm and in their becoming
aware of the differences between the L1 and L2 conceptualizations of the
phenomenon.
 
In “Anti-language: Linguistic innovation, identity construction, and group
affiliation among emerging speech communities”, Natalie Lefkowitz & John S.
Hedgcock examine four types of anti-language: the French language game Verlan,
the novel registers employed by francophone social media users, the deliberate
underperformance of L2 learners of French and Spanish, and the non-standard
varieties used by learners of Spanish as a heritage language. Adopting a
sociolinguistic perspective, the authors draw on Halliday’s (1976) work
underlining the marginalized, antagonistic, and exclusive nature of
anti-languages. Furthermore, they discuss specific linguistic features and
sociolinguistic functions occurring in the above-mentioned varieties. The
linguistic features involve relexicalization, simplification, phonological and
morphological innovation, lexical borrowing, taboo language, and registerial
blurring, while the sociolinguistic functions involve identity maintenance and
affirmation, opposition and defiance, covert prestige, the construction of
alternative realities, mainstream disapproval, verbal competition, secrecy,
solidarity, and othering. All the cases examined exhibit most of these
features and functions, with Verlan emerging as a “prototype” (p. 370).
Emphasis is also placed on the language ideologies concerning these varieties
as expressed by their users and the outsiders.
 
Finally, in their sociolinguistic study titled “Celebrations of a satirical
song: Ideologies of anti-racism in the media”, Julia McKinney & Elaine W. Chun
explore the potential of anti-racist satire to convey more or less latent
racist messages. The authors focus on a satirical love song written and
published as a response to a racist video reproducing stereotypes against
Asian minorities in the USA. In particular, the authors analyze the satirical
love song in combination with media articles and interviews commenting on the
conflict between the two media texts and on their producers’ identities. The
media discourses on the two opposing texts appear to celebrate the satirical
song by praising its condemnation of the initial racist video, the singer’s
fame, talent, and skills, as well as the satirical song’s humorous,
light-hearted, and positive style. Such praise, the authors suggest, alludes
to racist discourses widely circulated in the USA, and implies that more
serious, critical, and direct forms of anti-racist critique may be
inappropriate or even illegitimate in public spaces. Thus, media reframings
of, and metapragmatic talk on, the opposing texts may eventually divert the
attention of the audience from the subtle racist messages conveyed in a text
intended and perceived as anti-racist, to aspects of the conflict that only
superficially touch upon the ideological assumptions and consequences of
racist acts (cf. Archakis et al. to appear).
 
EVALUATION
 
The majority of the studies included in the volume involve pragmatic,
conversation analytic, and sociolinguistic theoretical frameworks and
methodologies, while there is also a strong focus on how language play,
linguistic creativity, and humor contribute to L2 teaching and learning.
Following and expanding on recent research on these phenomena, the volume
elaborates on their interactive nature and provides detailed analyses of how
they are co-constructed in various communicative settings, whether
institutional (e.g. classrooms) or not (e.g. peer interaction). What emerges
from most of the data analyzed is the centrality of laughter as a
metapragmatic marker signaling the transition from not playful to playful
exchanges. Such similarities between the studies enhancing the coherence of
the volume could have been more ostensibly demonstrated by more
cross-references between the chapters.
 
Terminological issues can also be revisited, as these studies suggest. Most
(if not all) contributors seem to imply that the concepts of language play,
linguistic creativity, and humor overlap to such an extent that it is not easy
(if not impossible) to tell them apart. This is clearly attested, for
instance, in the literature review of many chapters, where studies referring
to language play, linguistic creativity, and humor are cited one next to the
other. Such practices underline the similarities of the addressed phenomena
and call for further research to confirm and elaborate on such similarities or
potential differences. In addition, this terminological overlap and blurring
could be addressed by more research oriented towards the perception of
language play and related phenomena. As Carter (2007: 600) suggests, “[a]
clear requirement now is to embrace not simply the producer but the receiver
of creative processes and to shift the analytical attention towards greater
assessment and appraisal of creative outputs” (see also Swann 2012: 53-38).
Even if researchers do not detect significant differences between language
play, linguistic creativity, and humor, ordinary speakers/recipients might do.
 
Finally, this is the first volume of a new series by De Gruyter Mouton
entitled “Language play and creativity” meant to host more research along
these lines. It seems that language play and related phenomena do increasingly
attract scholarly attention, which in turn could hopefully shed more light on
why, how, when, and where speakers prefer to play with language rather than
not. This particular book is definitely an inspiration for further research
and hence highly recommended to researchers interested in the wide area of
language play, linguistic creativity, and humor, especially if they work in
pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and L2 learning and
teaching.
 
REFERENCES
 
Archakis, Argiris, Sofia Lampropoulou & Villy Tsakona. to appear. “I’m not
racist but I expect linguistic assimilation”: The concealing power of humor in
an anti-racist campaign. Discourse, Context and Media.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.03.005 (5 December, 2017.)
 
Bell, Nancy. 2012. Formulaic language, creativity, and language play in a
second language. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 32. 189-205.
 
Carter, Ronald. 2004. Language and creativity: The art of common talk.
Routledge: London.
 
Carter, Ronald. 2007. Response to special issue of Applied Linguistics devoted
to ‘Language creativity in everyday contexts’. Applied Linguistics 28(4).
597-608.
 
Chomsky, Noam. 1980. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
 
De Beaugrande, Robert-Alain. 1979. Toward a general theory of creativity.
Poetics 8(3). 269-306.
 
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York:
Doubleday Anchor Books.
 
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1976. Anti-languages. American
Anthropologist 78(3). 570-584.
 
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas
A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 350-377. Cambridge: MIT Press.
 
Jones, Rodney (ed.). 2012. Discourse and creativity. Harlow: Pearson.
 
Jones, Rodney (ed.). 2016. The Routledge handbook of language and creativity.
London: Routledge.
 
Maybin, Janet & Joan Swann (eds.). 2006. The art of English: Everyday
creativity. Basingstoke/Milton Keynes: Palgrave MacMillan, The Open
University.
 
Maybin, Janet & Joan Swann. 2007. Everyday creativity in language: Textuality,
contextuality, and critique. Applied Linguistics 28(4). 497-517.
 
Morreall, John. 2009. Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of humor.
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
 
Negus, Keith & Michael Pickering. 2004. Creativity, communication and cultural
value. London: Sage.
 
Otsuji, Emi & Alastair Pennycook. 2010. Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and
language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism 7(3). 240-254.
 
Swann, Joan. 2012. Creative interpretations: Discourse analysis and literary
reading. In Rodney Jones (ed.), Discourse and creativity, 53-71. Harlow:
Pearson.
 
Swann, Joan & Janet Maybin. 2007. Introduction: Linguistic creativity in
everyday contexts. Applied Linguistics 28(4). 491-496.

Swann, Joan, Rob Pope & Ronald Carter (eds.). 2011. Creativity in language and
literature: The state of the art. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Villy Tsakona is Assistant Professor of Social and Educational Approaches to
Language in the Department of Early Childhood Education, National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research interests include
humor research, narrative, political and media discourse analysis, as well
literacy theories and applications. She has co-authored The Narrative
Construction of Identities in Critical Education with Argiris Archakis
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), authored The Sociolinguistics of Humor: Theory,
Functions, and Teaching (Grigoris Publications, 2013; in Greek), and co-edited
The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in
Everyday Encounters with Jan Chovanec (John Benjamins, 2018). Personal
webpage: http://www.concept-pl.us/villy.tsakona





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