Language Creativity: A Semiotic Perspective

(Hardback)

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Language Creativity: A Semiotic Perspective frames the concept of creativity within a linguistic dimension by developing a theoretical reflection with constant references to contact languages and to the educational plan. Through the concept of creativity and linguistic rule, Simone Casini highlights how knowing and using a language does not mean using the rules of its grammar, or making well-made phrases that guarantee understanding and communication. Learning and using a language are social activities, constantly hovering between the risks of misunderstanding and the attempt to create upon the field an understanding between users: a meaning that is possible (but not guaranteed) provided that the users themselves are willing to move within creativity to try to identify the most appropriate semiotic roads to convey and create meaning. In the perspective Casini proposes, semiotic creativity abandons the condition of the linguistic property inter pares and rises to the rank of theoretical and first principle by which languages define themselves, function and interact in the negotiation of meaning in relation to the social uses. This book considers creativity as a premise for the rule changing of boundaries of meaning and creation of language and meaning. Casini progresses from the historical-critical concept of creativity and discusses the most philosophical and linguistic theories in the North American and European context.

Reviews

"Dr. Casini has authored a brilliant historical, theoretical, and semiotic account of linguistic creativity. His clear and precise explanation of the process of verbal innovation demystifies and unravels the enigmatic nature of this type of ingenuity. Relevant exemplars of linguistic inventiveness (dialect variation, games, metaphor) illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of this grammatical phenomenon. This comprehensive and comprehensible volume offers an insightful and critical analysis of the creative dimension of language."

-- Frank Nuessel, University of Louisville

"This is a major, valuable, and timely contribution to research on the multidisciplinary notion of creativity. One distinguishing feature of this volume is the scope of fields represented, ranging from linguistics to semiotics to cognitive science. It touches on so many critically-engaged issues that its an eye-opening read. The scholarship is very sound, up-to-date, and extensive. The writing is intelligible and sophisticated; Casini writes in an admirably clear, jargon-free, accessible style. In sum, the book is both excellent and useful; its unique, and it provides a take on creativity that is not available elsewhere. I look forward to recommending the book to my students and colleagues."

-- Michael Lettieri, Editor of Italica

"Simone Casini reconstructs with rigorous method and a range of sources the meaning of the word creativity giving an organic and deep sense within the sciences of language. He has given an innovative and original framework, deeply anchored in theoretical linguistics and philosophy of language, with which to give new interpretation to the linguistic phenomena of contact that characterize Italian and other languages in the global linguistic space. The book makes an important contribution to international linguistics by proposing a reading of creativity as a synthesis of perspectives for years considered dichotomic."

-- Rita Librandi, University of Naples LOreintale

"Simone Casini's wide-ranging and stimulating investigation highlights that in language there are both constraints and freedom, in other words there is creativity. The result is a dialectical pluralism that, for example, makes the clarity of the teacher and the ambiguity of the poet equally appreciable."

-- Pietro Trifone, University of Rome Tor Vergata

"Il libro coraggioso: non ha paura di affrontare alcune fra le pi complesse questioni che riguardano i processi di costruzione del senso. un libro che con coraggio si pone al punto di incontro di veri e propri continenti di questioni: il rapporto fra le prospettive semiotiche europee e quelle nordamericane; il piano dei processi individuali di creativit e la dimensione collettiva, sociale; lanalisi teoretica dei processi e la dimensione applicativa, soprattutto nel campo linguistico-educativo. Non un libro di sintesi, dunque, ma una proposta interpretativa basata su una solida base teorica e di storia delle idee.

The book is courageous: it is not afraid to address some of the most complex issues surrounding the processes of building meaning. It is a book that courageously places itself at the meeting point of real continents of issues: the relationship between the European and the North American semiotic perspectives; the plan of individual processes of creativity and the collective, social dimension; theoretical analysis of processes and application dimension, especially in the linguistic-educational field. Not a book of synthesis, therefore, but an interpretive proposal based on a solid theoretical basis and history of ideas."

-- Massimo Vedovelli, Universit per Stranieri di Siena

Author Bio

Simone Casini is assistant professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Toronto Mississauga.