Formulaicity and Creativity in Language and Literature

<p>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 fiction’ of questionable aesthetic value but a more recent approach sees all writing as intertextual – a tissue of citations and creative reworkings of other texts. The chapters in this book elucidate the nature of semi-fixed formulaic sequences; how the meaning of formulaic expressions can change over time; how readers interpret formulaic expressions in first and second languages; how modern and postmodern authors use traditional genres and tales to challenging effect; and how formulaic patterns involving particular words can underlie the texture and meanings of entire novels. Together the contributions to this collection provide a convincing reassessment of the potential creativity of the formulaic in a variety of linguistic and literary contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of the <i>European Journal of English Studies. </i></p>