1st Edition

Formulaicity and Creativity in Language and Literature

Edited By Ian MacKenzie, Martin A. Kayman Copyright 2018
126 Pages
by Routledge

126 Pages
by Routledge

126 Pages
by Routledge

Formulaicity is pervasive in both spoken and written language. Speakers use a huge amount of prefabricated language including collocations, idioms, fixed and semi-fixed expressions, and verbal creativity often involves combining established word sequences rather than inventing wholly new ones. In literature, formulaicity was long disparaged as the opposite of creativity, and a hallmark of ‘genre... Read more

Introduction: Formulaicity and creativity in language and literature Ian MacKenzie and Martin A. Kayman

1. Formulaic sequences: a drop in the ocean of constructions or something more significant? Andreas Buerki

2. Begging the question: chunking, compositionality and language change Carol Lynn Moder

3. How native and non-native speakers of English interpret unfamiliar formulaic sequences Alison Wray, Huw Bell and Katy Jones

4. Rewriting the fairy tale in Louise Murphy’s and Lisa Goldstein’s Holocaust narratives María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro

5. Transforming the pantomime formula in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan Kirsten Stirling

6. ‘The Hollow Echo’: Gothic fiction and the structure of a formulaic pattern Manuel Aguirre

Biography

Ian MacKenzie recently retired from the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research largely concerns the role and nature of English as an international language.

Martin A. Kayman is a former Head of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK, and a general editor of the European Journal of English Studies. He researches and publishes on law and literature, and on the cultural politics of English as a global language.