Creativity and discourse

This paper will consider the relationship between discourse analysis and creativity and elucidate the ways in which a discourse analytical approach to creativity might be distinguished from the ‘language and creativity’ approaches which currently dominate applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. In the ‘discourse and creativity’ approach I will be describing, creativity is located not in language per se, but in the strategic ways people use language in concrete situations in order to stimulate social change. I will explore how aspects of this approach are reflected in work carried out within the paradigm of world Englishes.

Dancing, skating and sex: action and text in the digital age

This paper explores the relationship between discourse and action in practices involved in making and consuming texts. Texts are produced through the process of ‘entextualization’ in which strips of action and discourse are extracted from their original contexts and recontextualized into other situations. Different technologies for turning actions into texts affect the kinds of social actions and social identities that are made possible both at moments of entextualization and at future moments of recontextualization. In particular, I focus on how digital technologies affect the practices and participation structures around entextualization. Digital photography and video have had a profound effect on social practices and relationships around the making of texts. Specifically, they have made processes of entextualization more immediate, more contingent and more communal. Implications of these features of digital text making are discussed in light of previous work on literacy and orality.

”Potato seeking rice”: language, culture, and identity in gay personal ads in Hong Kong

This paper examines the relationship between language, culture, and identity in a corpus of gay personal ads collected from two publications in Hong Kong in the three years before the 1997 transition of sovereignty. Gay personal ads are seen äs an "island of discourse," whose marginal nature is reflected in the use of language and in turn reflects issues of marginalization in the larger social context. Using Fairclough's (1992, 1993) three- dimensional model for critical discourse analysis, an attempt is made to uncover the relationship between text structure and issues ofpower/ideology in the society that produces the texts. On the level of text, it was found that structural components, particularly the degree of grammatical elaboration, differ according to the stated race or cultural background of the authors and their targets. On the level of discourse practice, authors were found to appropriate a variety of "voices"from the larger culture arena, the use of which amplifies or limits the participation of particular classes of individuals. Finally, on the level of social practice, the ads were found to reflect and re-create both the racial stereotypes and heterosexist ideology found in the dominant culture.

Mediated action and sexual risk: Searching for 'culture' in discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China

This paper examines the concept of ‘culture’ and its relationship to HIV prevention. Culture is here seen as the interaction between human beings and the various ‘cultural tools’ they appropriate when taking action. Among these tools are ways of speaking which encode certain meanings, ideologies and social practices. When individuals take action with regard to AIDS, what they do is mediated through voices which they borrow strategically from their environ- ment. The textual tools that are available and the ways individuals adapt and combine them work to either limit or amplify their participation in HIV prevention. What are traditionally seen as ‘cultures’ or ‘sub-cultures’, or worse, ‘risk groups’, are, in this perspective, viewed as ‘communities of practice’, groups of individuals who share particular cultural tools and ways of using them. This conceptual framework is applied to recent discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China. An instance of ‘of� cial’ discourse in the form of an AIDS education pamphlet for ‘gays’ is analysed for the voices it contains and how these voices are strategically marshalled by the authors and mixed with other voices in ways which amplify participation in AIDS prevention for some and limit it for others. This ‘offical’ discourse is then compared to the discourse of homosexually active Chinese men recently interviewed in Beijing and Fuzhou to examine which of these of� cial voices and other voices they appropriate, and how they adapt these voices in responding to HIV.

Suicide candy: tracing the discourse itineraries of food risk

Traditional approaches to the way people react to food risks often focus on ways in which the media distort information about risk, or on the deficiencies in people’s interpretation of this information. In this chapter Jones offers an alternative model which sees decisions regarding food risk as taking place at a complex nexus where different people, texts, objects and practices, each with their own histories, come together. Based on a case study of a food scandal involving a particular brand of Chinese candy, Jones argues that understanding why people respond the way they do to food risk requires tracing the itineraries along which different people, texts, objects and practices have traveled to converge at particular moments, and understanding the kinds of concrete social actions that these convergences make possible.