230290 Prefabrication, Improvisation, and Creativity in Communication (S) (SoSe 2025)

Analyses of language use in communication show – to put it broadly – that the interlocutors put their local and global goals above linguistic norms. In spite of the thus per se flexible and heterogeneous use of language in “communication in the wild”, ‘unusual’ linguistic forms that can be described als improvisations or as creativity in communication occur. These linguistic inventions, improvisations, and creative forms are delimited on the one hand by the normal variability of spontaneous language use, and on the other hand by comprehensibility and acceptability. In authentic communication, linguistic improvisations and creative forms are often – in more or less explicit ways – marked by the speaker and interactively processed by all the interlocutors.
 
In this course, we will use the scientific method of linguistic conversation analysis to examine data at hand (in German, translations available). Additionally, students are invited to contribute their own conversational data if desired.
The available data comprises audio/video recordings from two settings that are scientifically transcribed according to GAT 2 conventions. In relaxed settings, somewhat playful interaction sequences containing linguistic creativity can be found. In doctor-patient communication, the patients are under high pressure to formulate their experiences, e.g. pain or loss of consciousness. They may find different solutions to describe these personal perceptions: prefabricated or pre-patterned expressions like idioms, creatively altered multi-word expressions, but also creative morphological derivations in analogy to productive patterns.
Our focus will be methodological on the one hand, and empirical on the other hand.

Bibliography

Breyer, T., Ehmer, O. & Pfänder, S. (2011). Improvisation, temporality and emergent constructions. In P. Auer & S. Pfänder (Ed.), Constructions (pp. 186-217). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110229080.186

Schwabe, Meike / Reuber, Markus / Schöndienst, Martin / Gülich, Elisabeth (2008). Listening to people with seizures: How can Conversation Analysis help in the differential diagnosis of seizure disorders. In: Communication & Medicine 5, 59-72.

See also: CRC 1646, Project B04: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/linguistik-literaturwissenschaft/forschung/projekte/crc1646/area-b-linguistic-creativ/