Psychology club with Lena: Лингвистическая креативность

Люди всегда стремятся выразить свою индивидуальность во внешности или одежде, в предметах искусства или различных материальных вещах. Но у всех нас есть мощный ресурс, который всегда с нами – это наш язык. Он дает постоянную возможность для творчества: каламбуры, неологизмы, рифмы, аллюзии, сарказм, ирония, сравнения, метафоры, аналогии и шутки. Ваша речь может быть индивидуальной, цепляющей, креативной и изощренной. Вы можете выразить себя, и никакие другие инструменты не нужны. Обсудим это детальнее на английском.

What is ‘linguistic creativity’? It is a deliberate violation of language rules in order to create something new. We can form new words by adding suffixes, prefixes, combining stems of several words, create a phrase with unusual combination or use unusual words for giving context to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods and interpretations. Our language has no limits; we can produce endless combinations of words. Moreover, we can create our own words that will serve our purposes.

Where can we use it? In everyday communication with colleagues, friends and relatives, in PR, mass media, public speaking, advertisement, pedagogic, everywhere where linguistic skills are in demand.

Why do we need it? We can use linguistic creativity to claim about ourselves, to express our individuality, to make catchy phrases, influence people, use it as a resource to verify our speech and make it interesting and more effective.

What do you need for linguistic creativity? Its components are creative thinking or ability to think out of frames and from different perspectives (this topic was covered in previous blog) and sufficient language knowledge and skills, because violation of rules have to be deliberate but not as an example of your ignorance.

If you want to ask, whether we can improve it, of course I will reply that we can. But like all skills it needs practice. Observe how naturally children do that, make fun and play with words using unusual combination, analyse different meanings of words, try to find similarity between them, just start experimenting with your friends and check how funny and useful it can be.