LANGUAGE - Arab Open University

in a globalised world

THE POLITICS OFLANGUAGECREATIVITY

AND

This book is part of a series published by The Open University. Thethree books in this series are:

Creativity in Language: From Everyday Style to Verbal Art (editedby Zsófia Demjén and Philip Seargeant)ISBN 978-1-4730-0372-9

Narrative, Language and Creativity: Contemporary Approaches(edited by Janet Maybin)ISBN 978-1-4730-0373-6

The Politics of Language and Creativity in a Globalised World(edited by David Hann and Theresa Lillis)ISBN 978-1-4730-0374-3

www.open.ac.uk

The politics of language and

creativity in a globalised world

Edited by David Hann and Theresa Lillis

This publication forms part of the Open University module E302: Language and Creativity. Details of thisand other Open University modules can be obtained from Student Recruitment, The Open University, POBox 197, Milton Keynes MK7 6BJ, United Kingdom (tel. +44 (0)300 303 5303; email [email protected]).

Alternatively, you may visit the Open University website at www.open.ac.uk where you can learn more aboutthe wide range of modules and packs offered at all levels by The Open University.

The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

First published 2016

Copyright © 2016 The Open University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted orutilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, withoutwritten permission from the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. Details of suchlicences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, SaffronHouse, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS (website www.cla.co.uk).

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Edited and designed by The Open University.

Printed in the United Kingdom by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

ISBN 978 1 4730 0374 3

1.1

Contents

Series preface 9

Biographical information 11

Book introduction 13

Chapter 1 Politics, creativity and language: an intimate

relationship 171.1 Introduction 17

1.2 The political dimension of language use 19

1.3 Rhetoric: the art of persuasion 23

1.4 Literature’s status in political discourse 27

1.5 The influence of cultural value on beliefs about creativity 29

1.6 Creativity and originality: purloining resources for political

ends 34

1.7 The power and wisdom of the crowd: a new creative

landscape 39

1.8 Conclusion 45

References 46

Reading A: Convergence culture 50

Reading B: Social media in the sixteenth century: how Luther

went viral 56

Chapter 2 Creativity in political discourse 652.1 Introduction 65

2.2 Analysing creativity in political discourse 71

2.3 Political speeches 73

2.4 Grass-roots political activity 78

2.5 Copying, remixing, irony and play 85

2.6 The value of creativity for political discourse 88

2.7 Conclusion 92

References 93

Reading A: On Obama’s victory style 97

Reading B: Creating a counter-space: Tahrir Square as a

platform for linguistic creativity and political dissent 103

Reading C: The redress of poetry 113

Chapter 3 Creativity on sale 1193.1 Introduction 119

3.2 Literary stylistics and the ‘poetic function’ 121

3.3 Linguistic creativity in an advertisement and a poem 123

3.4 Linguistic creativity and purpose 132

3.5 Multiple voices 135

3.6 Multimodality, literature and advertising 140

3.7 The political dimension of the global reach of advertising 142

3.8 Conclusion 147

References 147

Reading A: The discourse of Western marketing 149

Reading B: Language choice in advertising to bilinguals 161

Chapter 4 Language, creativity and the politics of

value 1714.1 Introduction 171

4.2 The politics of value 173

4.3 Language and value 174

4.4 Creativity in language: definitions and disputes 178

4.5 Conflicting values: creativity, authority and tradition 180

4.6 Innovation and the judgement of value 184

4.7 Mixing it up: ‘high’ culture, ‘low’ culture and the politics of

understanding 188

4.8 Creativity, elitism and the language of literature 192

4.9 Conclusion 197

References 198

Reading A: Texting 201

Reading B: The modern politics of ‘not real’ words 207

Reading C: Londonstani: Why the lingo? 213

Chapter 5 Talking and rapping in the globalised world:

creativity curbed or unleashed? 2175.1 Introduction 217

5.2 Globalisation, localisation and glocalisation 220

5.3 Hip hop: creativity unleashed? 226

5.4 Call centres: creativity curbed? 233

5.5 Conclusion 240

References 241

Reading A: Circles of flow 244

Reading B: ‘Subterranean worksick blues’: humour as

subversion in two call centres 255

Reading C: Is there a global ‘call centre’ speech style? 269

Chapter 6 Ownership, regulation and production 2716.1 Introduction 271

6.2 Regulating creativity 272

6.3 Regulating content and distribution: censorship and

surveillance 278

6.4 Digital curation and distribution 288

6.5 Creative Commons and alternative models of authorship

and ownership 294

6.6 Conclusion 299

References 300

Reading A: Fan fiction and copyright 303

Reading B: Obscene modernism 310

Reading C: Spreadable media 315

Chapter 7 Looking back, leaping forwards: a personal–

political review with critical–creative prospects 3237.1 Introduction 323

7.2 Challenging dichotomies, and key terms recast 325

7.3 Extended texts, extending practices 335

7.4 Conclusion 353

References 356

Acknowledgements 359

Index 365

Series preface

The books in this series provide an introduction to the study of

creativity in the English language. They look at what linguistic

creativity is, how it is used and the range of issues that it raises, both

in everyday contexts, and in literature and ‘high’ culture. They are core

texts for the Open University module E302 Language and creativity.

The series aims to provide students with:

. an understanding of the nature of creativity in English, and the

ways it is used to fulfil a range of social, cultural, artistic and

political functions

. knowledge of different theories and debates concerning creative

language practices

. the skills required to analyse and evaluate linguistic and semiotic

creativity

. an appreciation of how different modes (such as image, movement

and music) are used and combined to creative effect

. an understanding of how and why narrative plays such a central

role in people’s lives, and how narrative practices are changing in

the era of digital media

. an appreciation of how creative acts are shaped and constrained by

a combination of political, social and economic forces, and how

linguistic creativity can be used as a resource for political activity

. an appreciation of how the global status of English is altering both

the nature of linguistic practices and what is evaluated as creative

around the world.

The books include:

. activities designed to assist with the understanding and analysis of

the material

. key terms, which are emboldened in the text at the point where

they are explained (and in the index so that they are easy to find)

. readings at the end of each chapter, which offer further in-depth

discussion of key points. These involve relevant examples of

linguistic creativity from diverse contexts around the world, and

Series preface

9

represent an additional viewpoint on core discussions from the

chapter.

The other books in this series are:

Demjén, Z. and Seargeant, P. (eds) Creativity in Language: From

Everyday Style to Verbal Art, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Maybin, J. (ed.) Narrative, Language and Creativity: Contemporary

Approaches, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Philip Seargeant

Series Editor

The politics of language and creativity in a globalised world

10

Biographical information

Deborah Cameron

Deborah Cameron is Professor of Language and Communication at the

University of Oxford. She researches and writes about the way social

divisions and power relations shape language users’ attitudes, beliefs

and behaviour, and has a particular interest in the subject of language,

gender and sexuality. Her books include Language and Sexuality (with

Don Kulick, 2003), The Myth of Mars and Venus (2007) and Verbal

Hygiene (2012). She has also published articles in journals such as the

Journal of Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics and Discourse & Society.

Guy Cook

Guy Cook is Professor of Language in Education at King’s College,

London. He was co-editor of the journal Applied Linguistics (2004–

2009), and Chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics

(2009–2012). This century, his books have included Translation in

Language Teaching (2010) (winner of the Kenneth W. Mildenberger

Prize), Genetically Modified Language (2004), Applied Linguistics (2003),

The Discourse of Advertising (2001), and Language Play, Language

Learning (2000) (winner of the Ben Warren Prize). He is currently

principal investigator on the project The Discursive Representation of

Animals (http://animaldiscourse.wordpress.com).

David Hann

David Hann is a lecturer in English Language Studies and Applied

Linguistics at The Open University. He has a background in teaching

English for business and communication skills. His main research area

is English as a Lingua Franca, with a particular focus on humorous

language play among non-native speakers of the language.

Kristina Hultgren

Anna Kristina Hultgren is a lecturer in English Language and Applied

Linguistics at The Open University. Her research interests include

language and globalisation, call-centre discourse, and English as a

medium of instruction in non-English dominant contexts. She is co-

Biographical information

11

editor of English-Medium Instruction in European Higher Education: English

in Europe (with Slobodanka Dimova and Christian Jensen, 2015) and of

English in Nordic Universities: Ideologies and Practices (with Frans Gregersen

and Jacob Thøgersen, 2014). She has published in the International

Journal of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Sociolinguistics and Multilingua.

Theresa Lillis

Theresa Lillis is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics

at The Open University. She has taught English at primary, secondary,

adult and higher education levels as well as undergraduate and

postgraduate courses in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and literacy

studies. She has authored and co-authored a number of books on the

subject of writing, her main research area, including The Sociolinguistics

of Writing (2013), Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics

and Practices of Publishing in English (with Mary Jane Curry, 2010) and

Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire (2001).

Colleen McKenna

Colleen McKenna works in the area of academic practice at the

London School of Economics and Political Science. Before this, she

was a lecturer in academic literacies at University College London,

where she developed and led the Academic Communication

Programme. Her research interests include literacies, dialogism, the

sociology of texts, academic identity construction and contemporary

Irish poetry. She has also published in the areas of digital education

and online, multimodal communication.

Rob Pope

Rob Pope is Emeritus Professor of English at Oxford Brookes

University and a National Teaching Fellow. He has taught English at

universities in New Zealand, Wales and Russia, been a visiting

professor in Australia and Japan, and presented widely for the British

Council. His books include Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative

Strategies for Literary Studies (1995), Creativity: Theory, History, Practice

(2005), Creativity in Language and Literature: The State of the Art (co-

edited with Joan Swann and Ronald Carter, 2011) and Studying English

Language and Literature: an Introduction and Companion (2012).


12

Book introduction

Why focus on the politics of language and

creativity?

This book explores the many ways in which linguistic creativity is a

resource for political activity, and the politics surrounding the

production, ownership and evaluation of different kinds of creative

activity in contemporary society. At the heart of this book is a

recognition of the recent explosion of ‘production’ activity across texts,

modes, media and technologies which, in turn, is forcing us to ask

questions about what gets counted and valued as ‘creative’ linguistic

and semiotic practice, and why.

‘Creativity’ is treated throughout as a highly contested term, but one

which has enduring appeal as a way of capturing a phenomenon that is

fundamental to individual and social survival, development and

transformation. In exploring the nature and significance of linguistic

and semiotic creativity across different social domains, we approach

creativity in three broad ways:

. Creativity as an everyday phenomenon, referring to making, creating,

producing as a fundamental human activity. Exactly how people

engage in creative activity and what they create varies significantly,

as is discussed across the chapters in this book.

. Creative/ity as an evaluative notion – mainly positive – to refer to

particular kinds and types of linguistic and semiotic activity.

Historically, certain kinds of creative activity (and creative products)

have been more highly valued than others but, as illustrated in the

chapters in this book, there is considerable debate about what is

and should be valued.

. Creativity as a resource for individual and social transformation. While

meanings attached to the terms creative/ity continue to be hotly

debated, creativity is predominantly viewed as a resource for

enhancing and transforming human experience. Chapters in this

book seek to explore the particular significance of linguistic and

semiotic creativity across a range of social contexts.

The book explores a number of key questions: In what ways is

linguistic and semiotic ‘creativity’ a political phenomenon? How are

Book introduction

13

creative acts shaped and constrained by political, social, economic and

technological factors? How is linguistic and semiotic creativity currently

being used as a resource for political activity, and why? How is the

global status and use of English reconfiguring the nature of linguistic

and semiotic practices, and what gets evaluated as ‘creative’?

The seven chapters in this book use authentic examples from across

the spectrum of creative text-making practices – including

advertisements, political speeches, social media posts, plays, hip hop,

poetry, pop songs, memes and digital fiction – to illustrate and debate

the nature, value and significance of creative activity across different

social domains. They draw on a range of approaches and analytical

frameworks including stylistics, social semiotics, multimodality,

aesthetics, discourse studies and rhetoric, each of which is introduced

and defined in relevant chapters.

How the book is structured

The book begins with David Hann opening up key debates about the

politics of language and creativity, which are then pursued throughout

the book. It includes definitions of ‘politics’ and ‘ideology’, and locates

differing contemporary perspectives about ‘creative value’ in long-

standing debates around ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. While acknowledging

the unprecedented scale and nature of contemporary production

activity, the chapter also seeks to draw parallels with significant

historical developments.

The theme of political discourse is further developed in the second

chapter, where Theresa Lillis draws on critical discourse analysis,

sociolinguistics, rhetoric and semiotics to illustrate the different ways in

which language and other semiotic resources are used creatively in a

wide range of political activity. The chapter includes examples from

pre-scripted political performances as well as more spontaneous

grassroots political activity, both on- and offline, involving different

modes and media. It considers the argument that specific creative

forms, such as poetry, have a particular value in transforming political

consciousness.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on a theme which is central to debates about

creativity, that of value and evaluation, with authors adopting

contrastive perspectives. Drawing on approaches from stylistics,

multimodality and performance studies, Guy Cook explores the stylistic


14

and semiotic similarities and differences between literary texts and

marketing, PR, and advertising texts. Cook argues that although there

is a superficial similarity between the kinds of creativity to be found in

these texts, their social value and effects are of a different order:

advertising’s overriding purpose to sell products closes it off from the

transformative effects, experiences and interpretations that literary texts

encourage.

Deborah Cameron adopts a different approach to value and evaluation

in Chapter 4. Rather than argue that a particular type of creativity or

creative product is of more fundamental value than another, or has

specific effects, Cameron discusses the notion of hierarchies of value

and taste. Drawing on sociolinguistics and stylistics, the chapter

explores creativity as a value in itself, as well as an evaluation practice

in relation to a wide range of creative texts, including everyday, popular

and high-status literary texts. In so doing, Cameron interrogates the

particular value attached to the flouting of established rules and

conventions in different contexts, and the extent to which these are

framed as ‘creative’.

The theme of globalisation, which is evident across all chapters,

becomes the central concern of Chapter 5. Anna Kristina Hultgren

explores how key globalising influences are impacting on the range of

linguistic and semiotic practices in which people engage. Drawing on

sociolinguistics and globalisation theories, the chapter foregrounds the

contrast between ‘routinisation’ and ‘creativity’ in linguistic and

semiotic activity, focusing on two global phenomena: hip hop and call

centres.

Chapter 6 turns to the question of the politics surrounding the

ownership of creative products, an issue given particular pertinence in

an era of rapid technological change. Colleen McKenna explores the

regulation of creativity and language in both formal and informal

contexts, including questions around authorship, ownership, copyright

and corporate interests. She investigates freedom of speech and

censorship (both explicit and implicit), intellectual property rights, and

how these are developed in different parts of the world, as well as the

opening up and closing down of internet tools by state agencies. This

chapter also explores the changes to the rights and ownership of

artefacts produced via digital media such as YouTube.

The book closes with a chapter that encourages readers to engage

reflexively with the key themes of the book by re-reading and re-

Book introduction

15

writing their understandings about what constitutes creativity in the

contemporary world. Rob Pope problematises the simple dichotomies

that tend to populate discussion about creativity – literary–non literary,

personal–political, private–public, creative–critical, rational–emotional,

serious–play, reality–art – and highlights the fact that all dimensions are

implicated in processes of production, reception and evaluation.


16

Chapter 1 Politics, creativity and

language: an intimate relationship

David Hann

1.1 Introduction

The two events referred to below made the newspaper headlines at the

time they occurred. On the face of it, they seem to have nothing in

common:

Two men in suits walk into a hairdresser’s in Ealing, west

London. They do not, however, visit the establishment for a

haircut. In fact, they ask the proprietor to remove a poster which

is displayed in his window. He politely but firmly refuses.

(Based on Withnall, 2014)

A hostile exchange occurs between two countries over the release

of a film which is a comedic account of the assassination of a

political dictator. The government of the country where the film

is set warns that its release would constitute a ‘wanton act of

terror’ which would trigger a ‘merciless response’.

(Based on The Telegraph, 2014)

In fact, the hairdresser’s poster featured Kim Jong-un, the leader of

North Korea. Below his smiling face and distinctive haircut were

printed the words ‘BAD HAIR DAY?’ The two men who paid the

establishment a visit were from the North Korean embassy. The

diplomatic row was between the United States and North Korea over

the release of the American film The Interview, a comedic and fictional

account of the assassination of the very same leader.

North Korea’s reaction to the poster and film may not have been

surprising, but it indicates that even a government with a reputation as

one of the world’s most despotic cannot afford to be indifferent to the

ways in which creative output can influence public opinion, whether at

home or abroad. This is especially true in a digitised age in which

linguistic and visual content can be sent across time and space in

Chapter 1 Politics, creativity and language: an intimate relationship

17

previously unimagined ways. For example, the ‘Bad hair day?’ poster

would soon have been forgotten in pre-internet times, but has been

amplified and perpetuated by news websites and individuals, so that a

quick web search produces tens, if not hundreds, of replications and

mutations of the original image and slogan. There has been a shift in

the balance of receptive and productive activity as traditional media –

which provide for both one-to-one communication (e.g. the telephone)

and one-to-many communication (such as the television) – have been

supplemented by the many-to-many platform (Peterson, 2012) that the

internet provides.

Of course, the hairdresser’s poster would probably not have caught the

world’s attention if it hadn’t been amusing to many people. That the

poster caused amusement reveals something of its creative quality. One

of the foci of this and other chapters in this book is the creative

dimension of political expression, one in which humour often has a

role. Furthermore, what comes to be regarded as creative is itself not a

politically neutral process and this chapter examines differing

conceptualisations of the term, which can be traced back, in large part,

to discussions in the late nineteenth century about what constitutes

‘culture’.

In the course of this chapter, you will be introduced to some of the

frameworks and tools that can be useful in analysing the creative

nature of spoken, written and multimodal texts. You will consider the

ideological dimension of everyday language use and look at the special

status of literature when considering the creativity and political impact

of texts. You will also assess the ways in which the recycling and

repurposing of language and images have been used for subversive and

often humorous political ends, a process facilitated by new

technologies. More generally, the implications of the blurring of the

divide between producers and consumers are examined. At the same

time, a historical perspective is provided by looking at the parallels

between the creative dissemination of information and discussion at

the time of the Arab Spring in 2011 and that which occurred during

the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe.

Given that the title of this chapter and the book as a whole feature the

words ‘politics’, ‘creativity’ and ‘language’, the various meanings and

associations attached to each will be discussed, revealing their close

relationship. First, the nature of language itself is examined in relation

to its context of use.


18

1.2 The political dimension of language use

Language is never neutral, even when we might want it to be. There is

significance not only in what we say and write, but in how we say and

write it. The first activity explores this dimension of the nature of

language use.

Activity 1.1

Allow about 30 minutes

Below are three texts, one from a television drama, another from a text

message and the final one from a newspaper headline. All feature ‘non-

standard’ forms of English. Beyond the meaning content, what social

significance do you think the language used has in each case?

Text A

Street scene: two boys are walking past a group of young men. One of

the young men calls to the boys …

Dushane: Yo! Wha gwan, blood!

Ra’Nell: Wha gwan.

Dushane: You know who I am, innit?

Ra’Nell: Everyone knows you, Dushane.

Dushane: Come here (Ra’Nell approaches) … I want to ask you

somethin’. Ain’t it time you started rollin’ with us?

(Top Boy, 2011)

Text B

Hi, how u? R u getting ther? I’m in bank quein up-payin in

stuf4alice-who I Wrk4. We’l av2go out4drink soon-let me no if

u wan2 ova nxt few days-not thur. Sux

(Tagg, 2013, p. 275)

Text C

I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language

(Humphrys, 2007)


19

Discussion

Depending on your knowledge of different varieties of English, you might

have been able to identify Text A’s features as belonging to speakers

who are young, urban, working class and probably of Afro-Caribbean

origin, although some of the younger white characters in the drama from

which the extract is taken also use similar language. This is a clear

example of how language is rooted in its sociocultural context. As such,

its features are not mere linguistic curiosities but bound up with the

identities of the people who speak it. The real-life equivalents of

Dushane and Ra’Nell use their language with varying degrees of

consciousness to project who they are. (The added complication of an

exchange like this being taken from a television drama rather than ‘real

life’ is explored later in this chapter.)

The language in Text B is clearly recognisable as belonging to a

particular genre. Constraints of time and space in the use of text

messages have clearly helped shape the forms of the language here,

with non-essential elements such as verb auxiliaries and articles being

dispensed with, and individual letters and numbers standing for particular

syllables. However, these features are not just pragmatic responses to

technological constraints, but also, as with Text A, carry a certain social

significance. For example, it seems unlikely that the writer is over 40.

Even a brief message such as this signals the author’s identity to some

degree.

The newspaper headline’s use of ‘textspeak’ in Text C can be seen as a

parody of and challenge to the use of texting language, thus reinforcing

the sentiment in the headline. The article is written by the broadcaster,

John Humphrys, who is well known for criticising what he regards as the

widespread ‘misuse’ of the English language (see, for example,

Humphrys, 2004).

The social significance of variations in language has long been

recognised, as evidenced in the words of the Russian literary

philosopher and semiotician, Mikhail Bakhtin, writing in the early part

of the twentieth century:

In any given historical moment of verbal-ideological life, each

generation at each social level has its own language; moreover,


20

every age group has as a matter of fact its own language, its own

vocabulary, its own particular accentual system …

(Bakhtin, 1981 [1935], p. 290)

In considering the political dimension of language use, it is significant

that Bakhtin uses the term ‘ideological’ to discuss linguistic variation.

For him, language is the site and resource of an ideological

battleground. As he sees it, any speaker at a particular moment has to

attempt to negotiate their own meaning in a language which, by its

nature, is full of previous speakers’ meanings and intentions. This

makes language inherently dynamic. The word ‘ideological’ carries a

clear political dimension in English, often linking it to a set of beliefs

about how to govern. However, while there has been much debate

about Bakhtin’s own ideological position (e.g. Hirschkop and

Shepherd, 2001), his use of the term ‘ideology’ is often interpreted as

having a broader meaning. Pam Morris writes:

The Russian ‘ideologiya’ is less politically coloured than the

English word ‘ideology’. In other words, it is not necessarily a

consciously held political belief system; rather it can refer in a

more general sense to the way in which members of a given social

group view the world.

(Morris, 1994, p. 249, cited in Warshauer Freedman and Ball, 2004, p. 4)

This meaning, pertaining to the beliefs of a social group, is, in turn,

important for an understanding of how the word ‘political’ is used and

understood here and in other chapters of this book. ‘Politics’ and

‘political’ derive from the word polis, meaning ‘city-state’ in Ancient

Greek (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015). This clearly relates to the

meaning of ‘politics’ which most readily comes to many people’s minds

– activities associated with the state. However, polis also encompassed

the notion of ‘citizenship’:

Ideally, the polis was a corporation of citizens who all participated

in its government, religious cults, defense, and economic welfare,

and who obeyed its sacred and customary laws.

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015)


21

This notion goes beyond the idea of politics as the business of the

state to encompass a community’s shared beliefs and the duties

associated with defending those beliefs (Hansen and Raaflaub, 1995).

In short, you can find these key terms being used in the following

ways in this and other chapters:

. ideology: the world view or beliefs of a social group

. politics (narrow definition): ‘the art and science of government;

public life and affairs as involving authority and government’

(Allen, 1990)

. politics (broad definition): activities pertaining to the struggle by

different social groups and institutions to communicate their views

and beliefs.

Bakhtin posits that language, as a site of ideological struggle, is in

constant tension between two forces: the centripetal, which pulls

towards the standardisation of language, and the centrifugal, which

pushes towards diversification and change (Bakhtin, 1981 [1935],

pp. 270–2). These forces are very much implicated in the political

dynamic of society, the centripetal being associated with the established

order, while the centrifugal pushes against that order: for example, by

subverting language’s standard forms and meanings. The language used

by Dushane and Ra’Nell in Text A (Activity 1.1) represents the

centrifugal within the broader societal context (although it could be

argued that it is centripetal within the confines of the speakers’ own

social circle). Similarly, the forms of the language in Text B could also

be viewed as part of the centrifugal force pushing against standardising

pressures. However, the texting language featured is becoming part of

its own genre’s norms. In other words, it is in the process of becoming

standardised, demonstrating that what is centripetal or centrifugal

depends on how language is socioculturally situated at any given

moment. The overall sentiment in the newspaper headline in Text C is

indicative of the voices that are raised against non-standard uses of

English and can be regarded as the embodiment of centripetal

pressures at work. Indeed, the terms ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ each

carry implicit value judgements, despite the fact that, in linguistic

terms, a ‘standard language’ is simply one of a number of varieties of a

language which has become codified and promoted in dictionaries and

grammar books, as opposed to ‘non-standard’ varieties, which have not

(Trudgill, 2003). However, in public debate, anxieties over falling

education standards and other perceived societal problems often


22

coalesce around language use, especially that of the young. Language,

then, is not only the means but also the subject of an ongoing

ideological struggle. It is a debate which is often couched in terms of

value and even morality. This phenomenon is explored further by

Deborah Cameron in Chapter 4.

Bakhtin’s framework for understanding language use suggests that

anything we say or write inevitably carries social and ideological

significance in that it either resists or reinforces societal norms and, in

that sense, is inherently political. Important though this insight is in

exploring the political dimension of language use, it does not provide

an answer as to why language use can be political. Furthermore, what

of the third concept this chapter is concerned with: creativity? What is

its relationship to politics and language use? These questions are

examined in the following sections.

1.3 Rhetoric: the art of persuasion

Language’s role in the pursuance and exercise of power, and the

particular ways in which its features can be creatively manipulated

towards such ends, have long been recognised. The Ancient Greeks

were aware of the importance of the art of persuasion in public life

and, although study of its nature predates Aristotle, his treatise Rhetoric

(Aristotle (2004 [350 BCE]), written in the fourth century BC, has

probably had a greater influence on thinking in this field than any

other. Aristotle regarded rhetoric – the art of persuasion – as being at

the heart of life in the community and, as such, he frames it as

political in the broad sense described earlier.

Aristotle saw rhetoric as comprising three persuasive strands:

. logos: the appeal to reason

. pathos: the appeal to emotion

. ethos: the appeal to the good reputation of the speaker.

According to Aristotle, the speaker can draw on a number of

rhetorical devices which can enhance the appeal of their message.

These include the use of figurative language, such as metaphors and

similes, and the manipulation of rhythm by various means, including

repetition.

In order to examine rhetorical devices in action, two speeches will be

analysed, one of which is from the literary genre of drama.


23

Figure 1.1 Aung San Suu Kyi during her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance

speech

Activity 1.2


Read the two texts below and answer the following questions:

. Would you regard these texts as political in nature and, if so, what

makes them so?

. Would you say one is more political than the other? If so, why?

. Which rhetorical devices can you identify? What are their effects?

Text D

This is part of the acceptance speech given by the well-known Burmese

politician and symbol of resistance to political dictatorship, Aung San

Suu Kyi, for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on 16 June 2012, 21 years

after she had originally been awarded the prize while under house

arrest:

Often during my days of house arrest it felt as though I were

no longer a part of the real world. There was the house which

was my world, there was the world of others who also were

not free but who were together in prison as a community, and

there was the world of the free; each was a different planet

pursuing its own separate course in an indifferent universe.

What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again


24

into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area

in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me.

(Aung San Suu Kyi, 2012)

Text E

This is part of a famous speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II. In this

scene, John of Gaunt, uncle of the king, is dying. He rails against the

state of the realm, which he feels is deteriorating under Richard II’s rule,

as the king presides over a court where favouritism is rife and corruption

endemic. In this extract, he recalls when the nation was great:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

…

(From Richard II, 2.1, cited in Greenblatt et al., 1997, p. 967)

Discussion

Both texts are clearly political in the narrow sense as they revolve

around affairs of government or state. The first is given by a high-profile

political figure, while the second describes the perceived glories of a

nation. It could be argued that the first is more obviously political in that

it refers to the real world: Aung San Suu Kyi is talking about events that

occurred rather than ones conjured up by the mind of a playwright (this

idea, however, is challengeable and discussed below).

Looking at the rhetorical devices used, Aung San Suu Kyi repeats a

particular structure (‘There was the …’). This parallel use of a structure

helps to bring out the links and contrasts in the ideas that they contain.


25

The first of these is itself metaphorical – ‘There was the house which

was my world’. The second picks up this concept of the world and

contrasts the Burmese community’s togetherness with her own isolation.

At the same time, both worlds are prisons. These two worlds themselves

are differentiated from ‘the world of the free’.

There is clear pathos here as the repetition sets up a rhythm which

appeals to the heart rather than the head. This rhythm is enhanced by

the fact that the parallel structure is used three times, a common feature

of rhetorical discourse. For reasons which are not well understood, such

three-part lists seem to be particularly effective at eliciting an emotional

response from an audience. It could also be argued that the final

sentence of the three evokes a famous phrase (‘the land of the free’)

from the American national anthem. This phenomenon of language

echoing previous utterances and texts is discussed later in this chapter.

Finally, the metaphor of three separate planets seems to be an appeal to

ethos, as it implicitly recognises the speaker’s political significance,

linking Aung San Suu Kyi to both Burma and the world beyond.

John of Gaunt’s speech makes clear grammatical parallelism in the

repeated use of the structure ‘this’ plus an accompanying noun phrase.

Figurative language is also to the fore, likening England to, among other

things, a moat, a precious stone and a fortress. Perhaps the most

striking and unusual feature is the conversion of the noun ‘sceptre’ into

an adjective to describe the island, the sceptre being a symbol of

authority and even divinity.

Aristotle adopted an explicitly moral stance towards political rhetoric,

arguing that logos, pathos and ethos should be in balance for rhetoric

not only to be effective but also to serve the needs and interests of the

community (Aristotle (2004 [350 BCE]). It could be argued that a

preponderance of one element over another is dangerous: for example,

an overuse of pathos could lead to overtly propagandist texts, where

appeals to the rational are overridden by those to the heart. This may

be one reason why political rhetoric has long been regarded with

suspicion: Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, was particularly wary of its

seductive power (Hamilton and Cairns, 1961). Indeed, echoes of Plato’s

scepticism and suspicion can be found in the ways in which some

academic analysts seek to lay bare the creative manipulation of

language for political ends (see the discussion of critical discourse

analysis in Chapter 2).


26

1.4 Literature’s status in political discourse

To interrogate further the political aspects of the two texts in

Activity 1.2, it is useful to consider their genres. One is from that

prototypically most creative of genres, literature, and the other is not.

This makes their relative truth claims rather different in nature. Unlike

the target audience for Aung San Suu Kyi’s words in Text D, the

audience for John of Gaunt’s speech in Text E is not being encouraged

to respond or take action. After all, the theatre-going public are not

expected to rise from their seats and influence the action on stage,

whereas Aung San Suu Kyi’s words are designed to galvanise her

audience, however indirectly, into helping her secure her country’s

democratic future. In the literary text, there is what Ronald Carter calls

‘displaced interaction’ (1997, p. 135) between text and audience, a

characteristic he identifies as being indicative of literariness. He sees

interaction as being displaced when ‘the reader is asked to perform no

particular action except that of a kind of mental accompaniment to the

text in the course of which he or she interprets or negotiates what the

message means’ (Carter, 1997, p. 135). Nothing is asked or expected of

the people in the auditorium except this act of interpretation.

However, a line of argument that the non-literary text is more political

than the literary because its interaction with the world is direct is

challengeable. Widdowson (2006) differentiates non-literary from

literary texts by regarding the former as referential and the latter as

representational. Non-literary texts ‘indexically refer, and this means

that they should effectively refer readers to some context of situation

that they can recognise in their world’ (Widdowson, 2006, p. 33). On

the other hand, ‘if you read something as literature, you recognise that

it does not have any direct referential connection with your concerns.

… It represents an alternative reality in parallel’ (Widdowson, 2006,

p. 35). Shakespeare’s drama then, like literary texts in general, can be

regarded as representational, but this does not mean it carries no

significance outside its own constructed text world. An episode in the

history of the production of Richard II illustrates this point tellingly.

In early February 1601, supporters of the Earl of Essex (an ex-

favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who was planning a rebellion against

her) commissioned the Lord Chamberlain’s men (Shakespeare’s theatre

company) to put on Richard II at the Globe. The conspirators were

clearly hoping that people would see a parallel between the despotic

and corrupt rule of Shakespeare’s Richard and that of the Queen. As it


27

turned out, Essex’s rebellion was quickly put down. An interesting

postscript to this episode is that Elizabeth ordered the same company

of players to put on the play on the eve of Essex’s execution. Through

this act, she seemed to be sending out the message that not only had

she defeated Essex, but she was confident enough in her own standing

that the public would not (dare to) interpret Richard II as reflecting the

nature of her own reign.

These events may be a footnote in history but they illustrate an

important point about literary texts: they can be seen to resonate

beyond the world in which they are set because of their potential to

represent something beyond their own created context. The leeway for

interpretation that lies at their heart can make them potent vehicles for

political messages. After all, political significance, like beauty and,

indeed, creativity, resides, in part, in the ‘eye’ of the beholder. (The

notion that a defining characteristic of literary texts is their openness

to interpretation is emphasised by Guy Cook in Chapter 3.) It is one

of the reasons why creativity is often viewed with suspicion by those in

power, especially if they have dictatorial impulses. Artists are always

vulnerable at times of political upheaval because their work, even when

it does not make explicit reference to power structures in the real

world, may be seen to be passing comment on them. Richard II is only

one such example. History is littered with others, such as Stalin’s

banning of Eisenstein’s milestone in early cinema Ivan the Terrible Part

II (1958) after the parallels between the Soviet leader’s reign of terror


28

Figure 1.2 Elizabeth and Essex in happier times

and Ivan’s proved too uncomfortable for the dictator to tolerate

(Neuberger, 2003).

In terms of the texts’ creativity, the textual features identified within a

rhetorical framework are much the same as those that would be seen

as ‘literary’ in the influential Russian Formalist tradition dating from

the early twentieth century. The Formalists saw literary language as

being defamiliarising in nature (Mukařovský, 1964 [1958]), standing out

from the ordinary because of either unexpected textual regularity or

irregularity (Jeffries and McIntyre, 2010). The notion of

defamiliarisation was not totally new: Aristotle himself (2004 [350

BCE]) discussed how stylistic devices can have this effect on an

audience. The quality of being unexpected, novel and innovative is

associated with creativity. Indeed, novelty is still regarded as one of

creativity’s defining features. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity

(Kaufman and Sternberg, 2010), for example, conceives of creativity as

being of high quality, appropriate to its communicative purpose and

novel. However, as will be seen later in this chapter, the idea that

creative language has necessarily to be novel (itself a contestable term)

is open to challenge.

Are textual features alone enough to ascertain a text’s creative merits?

A consideration of the relative qualities of Texts D and E suggests

otherwise: the fact that one was written by someone widely thought of

as a literary genius and cultural icon doubtless has some influence on

the regard in which it is held. The question of status, especially in

relation to literary texts, is explored further in the next section.

1.5 The influence of cultural value on beliefs about

creativity

The adjective ‘creative’ itself is often associated with the arts and with

works of people of exceptional talent such as Shakespeare. The very

fact that Text E was written by a figure thought of as one of English

literature’s ‘greats’ inevitably colours an audience’s judgement of its

value. In this regard, it is worth taking a historical perspective, which

reveals (at least) two distinctive approaches to understanding creativity.

These approaches can be traced back to a debate about a closely

associated concept: culture.

In 1869, a highly influential work by Matthew Arnold was published in

Britain called Culture and Anarchy, based on a series of university


29

lectures the author had given. For him, culture was a civilising

influence and a means of providing people with a moral framework.

He saw the education of the nation’s people, and especially its children,

as vital to their spiritual well-being. This was to be achieved by

exposure to culture which, for him, was ‘the best that has been

thought and said in the world’ (Arnold, 1869, p. viii). This is a rather

broad and vague definition but, in practice, Arnold saw culture in

somewhat restricted terms as primarily the literary and philosophical

output of the English and classical greats such as Shakespeare and

Homer. His ideas have been interpreted in an overtly political way by

some to mean that literature is a useful instrument for asserting

stability and control over society. Indeed, the title of Arnold’s volume

invites such an interpretation. For example, George Gordon, a

Professor of English at Oxford in the early years of the twentieth

century, proclaimed that ‘England is sick, … and English literature

must save it. […] English literature has now a triple function: still, I

suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our

souls and heal the State’ (cited in Eagleton, 1983, p. 23).

At about the same time as Arnold was promoting his particular idea of

high culture, another conceptualisation of the term began to emerge.

The British anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor (1871) saw culture as

a complex mix of society’s beliefs, laws, morals and customs. His ideas

were built on, extended and modified by other anthropologists

throughout the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The

differing perspectives of Arnold and Tylor about what constitutes

culture can still be found in current uses of the term. They are evident

in the words of Raymond Williams, the influential cultural critic and

academic, ‘We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a

whole way of life – the common meanings; to mean the arts and

learning – the special processes of discovery and creative effort’

(Williams, 1958, cited in McGuigan, 2014, p. 3). Interestingly, although

Williams sees the word ‘culture’ as encompassing both the arts and

learning (a concept akin to Arnold’s) and ‘a whole way of life’ (one

nearer to an anthropological definition), in this quotation at least, he

attaches ‘creative’ to the former. Arnold’s and Tylor’s contrasting

conceptualisations of culture (albeit implicitly) seem to underpin

current debates about what constitutes creativity. For instance, the

recent academic interest in the creative nature of everyday interaction

and the ways in which the seeds of literary language can be found in

seemingly mundane exchanges (e.g. Carter, 2004; Maybin and

Swann, 2006) – ‘the common meanings’ in Williams’s quotation –


30

might be viewed, in part, as a challenge to the idea of creativity lying

only in ‘high culture’. The focus on everyday creativity therefore

responds to and continues the debate started by Arnold and Tylor a

century and a half ago about what constitutes cultural significance and

value (something which is returned to in Chapter 4 of this book).

These contrasting notions of culture are also evident in the political

discussions which take place around the type of literature which is to

be taught in schools. For instance, in 2014, the UK government’s

Department for Education (DfE) produced a document outlining the

aims of the newly reformed GCSE English Literature qualification.

These included an opportunity for students ‘to develop culturally and

acquire knowledge of the best that has been thought and written’

(DfE, 2014, p. 3). The words, although not attributed to any particular

source, may sound familiar. As you come across the term ‘creativity’ in

the chapters that follow, it is a good idea to reflect on whether the

author’s use of the term relates more closely to the kind of output

which could be regarded as cultural in Arnold’s sense, in Tylor’s sense

or a combination of the two.

‘High culture’ and ‘popular culture’

Shakespeare, of course, was seen by Arnold as an original and unique

voice who is an integral part of the nation’s cultural heritage and so

part of ‘the best that has been thought and said’ – although it is worth

noting that, in his own day, Shakespeare would not have been seen in

quite such elevated terms. His status is such that he pervades today’s

cultural landscape, and the influence of his works can be seen in some

unlikely places.

Activity 1.3


Look at the images in Figure 1.3, which use various parts of John of

Gaunt’s speech in Richard II, and answer the following questions:

. What do the images tell us about the relationship between ‘high

culture’ and ‘popular culture’?

. What do they tell us about the place of the speech in ongoing

representations of Englishness?

. What meanings do you think each of the creators of these posters

and covers was hoping to generate by using elements of John of

Gaunt’s speech?


31

Discussion

The fact that parts of John of Gaunt’s speech are (re)used in these

various ways suggests that they are widely recognised. However, this


32

Figure 1.3 Clockwise from top left: a DVD cover (2010); a magazine cover

(2014); a film poster (2006); and a DVD cover using an original film poster

(1944)

does not necessarily mean that either the creators or the potential

audience for these posters and covers would necessarily know the

provenance of the words used.

These images illustrate how tokens of ‘high culture’ are purloined by

‘popular culture’ for its own ends. It is also worth bearing in mind that

what we now regard as high culture was often the popular culture of its

day, Shakespeare being a prime example. The boundary, then, between

‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture is shifting and permeable.

In the first and second examples, it seems fairly clear that the words

carry associations to do with pride in country and, in the first case at

least, a certain nostalgia. These are reinforced by the accompanying

images. In the first, there are photographs that not only portray the

attractions the country has to offer, but also point to its previous

industrial might (the steam locomotive). The second contains a beautiful

image of the English countryside and, significantly, also carries the

words ‘For all who love our green and pleasant land’. These words are

inspired by Sir Hubert Parry’s anthem Jerusalem, itself based on William

Blake’s preface to his poem Milton (Maclagan and Russell, 1907, p. 2).

What is interesting to note is that the language, in being drawn on in this

way, begins to lose the nuances of meaning that it had in Shakespeare’s

play. John of Gaunt is an ambiguous figure in Richard II, so his words

may not necessarily be understood at their face value. In addition, the

context in which Gaunt utters them is often forgotten. Some 20 lines

after this famous extract, he complains ‘That England that was wont to

conquer others / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself’ (from Richard

II, 2.1, cited in Greenblatt et al., 1997, p. 968).

The DVD cover for David Lean’s film (using an original poster), like the

two preceding examples, uses the words from the speech seemingly in

order to stir up feelings of national pride. This sense of national pride is

enhanced by the time and place of its production. England in 1944 was

at war and this is emphasised by the fact that the character in the top

left-hand corner is wearing a Navy uniform. The message seems to be

that this ‘happy breed’ is resolutely upbeat despite the adversities it

faces.

Finally, the 2006 film poster differs from the others in a number of

significant ways. The reference to John of Gaunt’s speech is less

obvious in that the title is not faithful to the original. However, the use of

colour makes the red ‘This’ and blue ‘England’ stand out in relation to

the white ‘is’, so evoking the famous speech. That the colours

themselves are those of the British flag is also significant. At the time the

film was set, in the early 1980s, the British Union Jack (red, white and

blue) was more associated with England than the red and white English

flag of St George. Another difference is that the poster strikes a


33

discordant note compared to the preceding images. In fact, the picture of

disaffected youth seems to set itself up in opposition to the others: this

England is neither green nor pleasant. As such, it appears to respond,

not so much to the words of Shakespeare, but to those who have

appropriated those words for nationalistic and nostalgic ends.

The way in which language draws on previous usages and intentions is

something which is emphasised by Bakhtin (1981 [1935]). He maintains

that the nature of language means that speakers inevitably draw on

previous speakers’ meanings. He sees language as heteroglossic –

many voiced – in nature, its meanings forged and altered by usage, so

that words carry within them the intentions, connotations and

contextual flavours of previous speakers and usages. He also regards

every utterance and piece of writing as dialogical – responding to

what has been uttered and written before while at the same time

anticipating its own response.

1.6 Creativity and originality: purloining resources

for political ends

For Bakhtin, heteroglossia and dialogicality are properties of language

itself. We cannot help but use words which have been in the mouths

of others and which carry previous speakers’ meanings and intentions.

This raises important questions about what counts as creativity,

especially in relation to its ‘novelty’ (Kaufman and Sternberg, 2010).

However, the conscious redeployment of linguistic resources, such as

that evident in the uses of John of Gaunt’s speech in the examples

above, seems to be of a different order from our inevitable recycling

of words that others have deployed for their own intentions. In order

to capture this conscious redeployment, the further concepts of

entextualisation and recontextualisation are useful.

. Entextualisation: the encoding of some aspect of human

experience and the cultural marking of this representation as a text

(spoken, written, multimodal) (Maybin, forthcoming)

. Recontextualisation: the movement of a piece of text (spoken,

written, multimodal) from one context with which it is closely

associated, to another.


34

In order to bring these into play, another pair of texts that set out to

subvert the meanings of the sources on which they draw will be

examined.

Activity 1.4


Look at the texts below and answer the following questions:

. How could each of these texts be regarded as political?

. In what ways do they each draw on existing ideas and texts?

Text F

A poster of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after he

imposed a ban on Twitter in Turkey (March 2014).

Text G

A tweet showing the Brazilian footballer Neymar pictured with his son,

inspired by fellow professional Dani Alves, who ate a banana thrown at

him as a racial insult during a game (April 2014).


35

Figure 1.4 A poster of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdoğan

Figure 1.5 A tweet showing a photograph posted by Brazilian footballer

Neymar on Instagram

Discussion

Text F is clearly part of a political discourse as it is attacking a policy of

the Turkish prime minister. From the poster alone, it cannot be

ascertained whether it has been produced by a recognised source, such

as an opposition party, or has simply been created by a citizen angered

by the ban. Given the technological tools now widely available, it is of

course possible not only to stick the poster on a wall, but also to publish

it worldwide. It is this very power which Erdoğan seems to be attempting

to combat in his ban on the use of Twitter. Manifestations of grass-roots

political activism, facilitated by digital technology, feature centrally in the

next chapter.

Text G, like Text F, attempts to combat and defuse the power of the act

that it comments on. Its focus is not as narrowly political as Text F’s as it

is not targeting a political figure or party. Rather, it confronts an ideology,

a particular world view which regards some ethnicities as inferior to

others. It is, nevertheless, political in the broad sense that it relates to

people’s beliefs and principles which themselves could form the basis of

a political system. A notorious example from history was the Nazis’ use

of a racist ideology as a core organising principle in their political goals.

Both clearly draw on previous texts and ideas. Text F echoes the famous

‘yes we can’ slogan employed by Barack Obama during his first

presidential campaign in 2008 and has the added advantage of rhyming

with the Turkish Prime Minister’s name. The Neymar tweet uses and

undermines the racist slur relating black people to monkeys through the

indexical sign of the banana.


36

The words on the Erdoğan poster are transformed, not only by the

changing of one letter in the original slogan, but also by the movement

of the phrase from one context with which it is associated to another.

Of course, for it to be identified as coming from Obama’s presidential

campaign, the original slogan needed to stand out from all the other

words that were harnessed for the purpose of securing his place in the

White House. This it did, primarily, through its repetition in

advertisements and, above all, through its liberal use by the candidate

himself in the many speeches that he gave around the country. The

effect of this repetition is like that of the poetic features discussed in

the previous speeches you looked at. It foregrounds the phrase,

decoupling it from a specific time and place and making it reusable in

different contexts. Of course, all language is reusable but it is how a

meaning derived from its association with a particular time, place and

speaker is transformed through this process which is important here.

In this regard, the notion of entextualisation, originating in the field of

linguistic anthropology, is useful. Any text (a word, a phrase, an image)

– and its associated contextual meanings – can be decoupled from its

original setting and reused in another context. For example, in this

section, we have seen how the unusual and memorable use of a noun

as an adjective – ‘this sceptred isle’ – entextualised by Shakespeare, has

been recontextualised.

The effectiveness of both Texts F and G derives from the contrast

between their meaning and intent, and that of the original contexts on

which they draw. In the case of the Erdoğan poster, the

recontextualisation of Obama’s slogan provides a contrast between the

high-mindedness and upbeat idealism associated with it (although time

and experience have probably loosened that association in the minds of

some) and what might be regarded as Erdoğan’s small-minded and

dictatorial action in banning Twitter. The bringing together of these

two concepts produces an incongruity which is both telling and

humorous.

Incongruity has long been recognised as an important characteristic of

humour. In the early nineteenth century, William Hazlitt observed that

‘Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only

animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and

what they ought to be’ (cited in Morreall, 1987, p. 65). In the Erdoğan

poster, the what-things-are is encapsulated in the Prime Minister’s

banning of Twitter, and the what-things-ought-to-be in Obama’s

slogan. Of course, the what-things-are is another way of referring to


37

the status quo, and the status quo is a state which those in power, by

definition, have an interest in upholding. Perhaps, then, it is not

surprising that humour is a weapon often used by those without power

to undermine those with it. Poking fun at a prime minister with

dictatorial tendencies or at a racist slur robs them of their menace.

This relates to another notion of Mikhail Bakhtin’s, that of the carnival

where ‘The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the

structure and order of ordinary, that is noncarnival, life are suspended’

(Bakhtin, 1984, p. 122). By poking fun at the established order, that

order can be subverted, at least on a temporary basis. With regard to

humour’s relationship with power, it is also worth noting that humour

has a get-out clause: ‘I was only joking’. Perhaps this is why it is a

useful means of pushing at the boundaries of what is socially and

politically acceptable. In this sense, it has parallels with the status of

literary output which could claim that ‘it is only make-believe’. This

ambiguity can be a potent political tool, as will be discussed in

Chapter 2.

The Neymar tweet has much in common with the Erdoğan poster. It

too uses recontextualisation, taking the banana and radically changing

its meaning by strikingly contrasting the ugly racist and viciously

exclusive motivation behind throwing the fruit with the innocence

represented by the image of Neymar’s son, and the inclusive nature of

the tag ‘weareallmonkeys’. Furthermore, peeling the banana as if ready

to eat it, much like Dani Alves’ action in eating the banana thrown at

him, is a way of robbing the fruit of its original figurative significance

by reducing it to its literal function – a nutritive resource.

The recycling and repurposing that is present in both these texts

provides a useful perspective on the commonly held view that

creativity must necessarily be novel and original. Carter makes a

pertinent point about this relationship between creativity and

originality:

the creative act is always seen, at least in many modern

industrialised cultures, in terms of making something novel,

i.e. new or innovative. The meaning of original here is of

something new and unexpected (e.g. He’s such an original thinker.

That’s a really original idea). However, the word original also has

the meaning of ‘origins’, or original sources (as in ‘the original

walls of the city’ or ‘the original inhabitants of the town’). The

word derives from Latin origo, meaning a rise or beginning or


38

source, and this meaning links it with the sense of a basic source

from which everything organically grows.

(Carter, 2004, p. 26)

It will be seen throughout this book that texts often draw on a widely

recognised source and that their creativity and effectiveness lie as much

in their use of an original source as in their original exploitation of it.

This potential for recontextualisation is, of course, multiplied by the

affordances which modern technology allows. In fact, both the

featured texts can be regarded as ‘memes’, a term coined by Richard

Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, in his influential book The Selfish

Gene (1976). It is itself a play on the word ‘gene’. Dawkins contends

that there are units of behaviour, beliefs or practices which can be

replicated as they are transmitted from one person to another through

language, music, rituals, and so on. Like the gene, through replication,

they can be modified and changed. Technological tools allow this

replication to spread both widely and rapidly, meaning that texts can

traverse national boundaries and enter a global arena of discourse. It is

significant that the word ‘meme’ has become closely associated with

the internet. For example, definitions of the term include ‘an image,

video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied

and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations’

(Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). The Erdoğan poster is a good example of

a meme: it is a variation on a well-known slogan and can be found on

various web pages. It is noteworthy that the original text that inspired

it is American and that the Erdoğan poster is itself written in English,

suggesting that it is meant not only for domestic Turkish consumption.

The globalised nature of social media, the role of the English language

in that communicative environment and the stretch of shared

intertextual reference points are recurring themes throughout the

chapters in this book.

1.7 The power and wisdom of the crowd: a new

creative landscape

In order to examine the significance of the new digitised and globalised

environment which many people now inhabit, you will now revisit the

Neymar tweet that featured in Activity 1.4.


39

Activity 1.5


Neymar’s tweet appeared in a BBC news item reproduced in Figure 1.6.

Read the article and answer the following questions:

. Would you say that Neymar’s original tweet is more or less effective

at communicating its message than, say, an interview on a television

channel?

. What does the article tell us about the relationship between the ‘old’

and the ‘new’ media?

Discussion

The effectiveness of the tweet is bound up with its creative potential. A

television interview may not have given Neymar the same opportunity to

manipulate the resources available to him. The medium allows him to be

his own one-man production team, unfettered by the potentially different

agenda that a television broadcaster might have. As discussed earlier,

he undermines and defuses a racist slur through his able deployment of

the resources at his disposal – image, and language in the hashtag.

Furthermore, as previously mentioned, the speed and spread of

Neymar’s tweet is an important factor in assessing its effectiveness. The

nature of his audience should also be taken into account. It can be

safely assumed that his millions of ‘followers’ would be more interested

in his concerns than a television watcher who happened across the item

on the news. On the other hand, it could be argued that the message in

his tweet would be less likely to reach members of a general audience

than it might via television.

Another significant factor in assessing the effectiveness of the message

is the ability of the people who read the tweet to resend it, or take up the

meme and reconfigure it in some way before broadcasting their version

of it to the world. This is not the one-to-many model of communication

that a television channel provides, but a many-to-many paradigm which

allows for a proliferation of the tweet and varieties of it. It needs to be

borne in mind, of course, that the tweet might also be repurposed for

different intentions beyond its original author’s control.

The reach of the message is, of course, potentially global, though the

same might be said for many television channels. Neymar’s awareness

of its global reach means that he has shaped his message accordingly,

writing his hashtag in various languages, including English. This

adapting of the message for a global audience and the role of English in

that process is a theme taken up in the next chapter.


40

‘We are all monkeys’By BBC TrendingWhat’s popular and why

28 April 2014

If you can’t beat racism, eat it. That’s whatthousands of people on social media are doing,inspired by footballer Dani Alves eating thebanana hurled at him on the pitch.

Tens of thousands of people around the world aregoing "bananas" over a tweet by Brazilian footballerNeymar. On Sunday, the Brazil international andBarcelona forward posted an image of himself onInstagram with a cheeky smile and a banana, sideby side with his toddler son. Under the picture wasthe hashtag #weareallmonkeys, in English, as wellas in Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan.

Neymar’s picture was inspired by fellow Barca player and Brazil international,Dani Alves - who had a banana thrown at him on the pitch in a match againstVillareal. Alves kept his cool, picked up the banana, peeled it and ate it, prior totaking the kick. Neymar’s tweet seemed like a deliberate attempt to turn eating abanana into an anti-racism meme - he has over 10 million followers on Twitterand 4.6 million on Instagram.

Inspired by Neymar, over 100,000people have used the hashtags -with celebrities and ordinary peoplealike striking humorous poses withbanana in hand. The majority havecome from Brazil, where celebritiessuch as singers Gaby Amarantosand Michel Teló have expressedtheir support. But the trend is global- for example Cesar Barros, aBoston DJ, posted a selfie in whichhe displays a large smile while holding a peeled banana. "What Dani Alves didwas so amazing," he told BBC Trending. "He didn’t stoop to that racist idiot’slevel and instead he made a joke out of the situation. The racist plan backfired ina major way and now the idiot created a worldwide movement against racism."

Monkey noises and throwing bananas are used the world over as a racistgesture at football matches, with mixed race Dani Alves himself previouslyvictimised. By turning the banana from a symbol of racism to a symbol ofdefiance, will the current trend make a difference? Tom Conn, a Spanish footballfan, echoed many others on social media when he tweeted that "in one singleaction, Dani Alves did more to fight racism than any UEFA/FIFA ‘Say No toRacism’ has ever done".

Reporting by Bruno Garcez

Figure 1.6 An article about Neymar’s tweet from BBC News (Source:

Garcez, 2014)


41

In terms of what it tells us about the relationship between old and new

media, the article sheds light on the way in which long-established

media organisations such as the BBC are adapting to and adopting new

media tools. BBC Trending, from which this article is taken, gives its

audience ‘a hand-picked selection of stories on social media around the

world’ (BBC, 2015). As such, it is monitoring what’s happening and, in

selected cases, rebroadcasting it. This is significant as it shows how the

news agenda is no longer the preserve of the traditional broadcasters.

People are becoming increasingly aware of their potential, as ordinary

citizens, to influence the news agenda through their own creative

output. Similarly, in other areas of their lives, they too can be a critic,

an author, a publisher or a consumer watchdog. This shift from

consumption to production that the digital technologies allow has been

noted by cultural commentators such as Gunther Kress (2010). It is

one which was predicted by Alvin Toffler (1980) before the advent of

the World Wide Web in which he envisaged the rise of the ‘prosumer’

who, as the name suggests, not only consumes but produces.

The shift from consumption to production has profound implications

for the power dynamic in the new media landscape. After all, control

of the media has long been recognised as a vital tool in the exercise of

societal power. This is a central concern of media scholar, Henry

Jenkins, in his book, Convergence Culture (2006). He later describes how

he originally conceptualised convergence culture as a place where:

no matter how we imagine the future, it was [going to] involve

different kinds of media, different channels of communication

coming together in some way to shape the way we process the

world around us. …

As everyone was learning how to become a more active

participant in the media environment, as more and more people

were producing and circulating media themselves, they became

part of a larger media landscape.

(Jenkins, cited in The Open University, 2016)

Thus, for Jenkins, convergence culture is both a technological and a

cultural phenomenon.


42

Activity 1.6

Allow about 1 hour and 30 minutes

Turn to Reading A, ‘Convergence culture’ by Henry Jenkins, at the end

of this chapter. Jenkins declares himself an optimist with regard to the

future of the media environment which we inhabit, a place where new

technology can allow for increasing participation rather than mere

consumption.

. In what ways does he think media pessimists have got their

assessment of the media landscape wrong?

. What grounds does Jenkins have for optimism?

. How convinced are you by his arguments and what evidence would

you draw on to support or question his view?

Discussion

Jenkins sees the media pessimists as exaggerating the power of the

established media organisations and disempowering ordinary people by

turning them into mere victims. He regards such a view as ignoring

people’s complex relationship with popular culture and overlooking the

participatory activities emerging that allow grass-roots groups to speak

back to the established media. However, in order to be successful in

combating a concentration of media power, he argues that people need

to collaborate, using their collective bargaining power to form

consumption communities. He sees the potential for new social power to

be exercised through adhocracy – a non-hierarchical coming together on

an ad hoc basis for the sake of the common good.

One example he cites of adhocracy in action is Wikipedia. Through

collaboration and communal effort, Wikipedia has established its own

working norms and produced a databank of knowledge which

endeavours to allow its readership intellectual independence. The

communal nature of much creative production and the forces that resist

it are explored in more detail in Chapter 6.

How you react to Jenkins’s argument may depend in part on how much

power you think the established media multinationals have in shaping

and controlling our media landscape and whether you think people

coming together in virtual space can do so without creating their own

hierarchies, as they tend to do in physical space. It might be argued that

the ad hoc and fluid nature of such communities reduces the risk of this

happening.


43

Looking at the current commercial media landscape, there are

undoubted concentrations of power in the virtual marketplace, such as

that wielded by organisations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and

Amazon. These may well be regarded by some as unhealthy in terms

of the democratisation of the media landscape. At the same time, in

the political arena, platforms such as Twitter allow the dissemination of

ideas and events that might otherwise go unreported. Indeed, it could

be argued that the use of such channels can itself shape events, the

Arab Spring of 2011 being a well-documented example and one which

features in the discussion of grass-roots political activity in Chapter 2.

At the same time, political establishments attempt to control the flow

of such traffic, with greater or lesser degrees of success: the Turkish

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for example, eventually lifted

his ban on Twitter because so many people had found ways to

circumvent it.

A historical perspective on the media landscape

Those with power – political, social, artistic and commercial – will

always try to manage the production of media output, while others will

challenge that control. As will be seen in this section, it is a mistake to

see such a struggle as a modern phenomenon.

Activity 1.7


Turn to Reading B, ‘Social media in the sixteenth century: how Luther

went viral’ by Tom Standage, at the end of this chapter. Read

Standage’s account of the importance of social media during the

Protestant Reformation in Europe, some 500 years ago. As you read,

make a note of the following points:

. What parallels can be seen between the creative use of resources

discussed so far in the chapter and those that Standage points to in

the actions of Luther and his supporters?

. What other parallels does Standage draw between the media

landscape of that period and that of today? Do you find these

parallels convincing?

Discussion

An interesting parallel can be drawn between Luther’s decision to use

standard German to spread his message, and the use of English in

Texts F and G that you examined earlier. In all these cases, the


44

motivation is to spread a particular message to as wide an audience as

possible. It is also why English in the contemporary world is used

alongside local languages by protesters around the world to ensure that

their messages are heard both locally and globally. Another relevant

commonality can be found in the exploitation of different modes and

media. In Luther’s day, ballads and woodcuts helped spread the

message through all levels of society, just as a simple tweeted image

such as Neymar’s can communicate a message with telling effect.

Interestingly, parody was as much a political weapon during the

Reformation as it is today, and similarities can be seen between the way

in which traditional songs were humorously repurposed for the

Protestants’ own ends and the hijacking of Obama’s slogan in order to

attack the Turkish Prime Minister some 500 hundred years later (Text F).

The other parallels that Standage mentions are numerous. He points to

a ‘networked public’ that used a decentralised and relatively cheap

system of distribution. Furthermore, because pamphleteers could

respond to each other quickly, the public was able to read about and

take part in an ongoing debate. Standage also mentions the difficulties

the authorities had in controlling and shutting down media outlets that

were not to their liking, allowing a sort of momentum which acted as

what he calls a ‘collective signalling mechanism’, letting people see that

others thought like they did.

Overall, I find his argument persuasive. The similarities he finds between

Luther’s media world and our own are thought-provoking and show that

the ‘digital revolution’ is not something that has emerged from nowhere,

but has clear historical precedents.

It is illuminating to take other significant moments of technological

change in our media from history – the telegram, the postcard, the

telephone, the television – and reflect on the similarities and

differences in the effects that they had on people’s social and political

lives compared to the technological innovations of today.

1.8 Conclusion

You have seen in this chapter how language, by its nature, is never

neutral and can be both the subject and the medium of ideological

struggle. As a subject, the ways in which it is viewed and valued reflect

wider societal conflicts. As a medium, the influence it can exert

through the creative manipulation of textual features has been

recognised since Aristotle’s time. Furthermore, literature and other art


45

forms are particularly potent means of political expression because of

their openness to symbolic interpretation. At the same time, this makes

them a potential target for suppression. However, the chapter has

demonstrated that creative political output is not the preserve of

literature and ‘high art’. People have always creatively used the

communicative resources available to them both to disseminate their

own views and to undermine the views of others. The digital age has

accelerated both the frequency and the breadth of this process.

Through the recontextualisation of memorable language and other

resources, contrasts ‘between what things are, and what they ought to

be” (Hazlitt, cited in Morreall, 1987, p. 65) are often highlighted,

making such contrasts highly political in nature. Humour invariably lies

at the heart of such political discourse as it is an effective tool in

robbing the powerful of their potency. Humour, like literature, often

operates in the hinterland of meaning where it is open to

interpretation.

In the next chapter, among other things, you will look in more detail at

the use of semiotic resources in the modern world’s political struggles,

and, more particularly, at how grass-roots activism exploits the global

reach of such resources both online and on the street.

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Reading A: Convergence culture

Henry Jenkins

Source: Edited version from Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: WhereOld and New Media Collide, New York and London, New York UniversityPress, pp. 258–66.

Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller

[2005], Noam Chomsky [Herman & Chomsky 2002], and Robert

McChesney [1999], focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a

more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the

power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action.

I don’t disagree with their concerns about media concentration,

but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it

disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far

too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse

about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation,

“propaganda machines” and “weapons of mass deception”. Again

and again, this version of the media reform movement has

ignored the complexity of the public’s relationship to popular

culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and

participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded

on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on

a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing

with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with

previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining

momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more

empowered, not when they are at their weakest.

Media concentration is a very real problem […]. Concentration is

bad because it stifles competition and places media industries

above the demands of its consumers. Concentration is bad

because it lowers diversity – important in terms of popular

culture, essential in terms of news. Concentration is bad because

it lowers the incentives for companies to negotiate with their

consumers and raises the barriers to their participation. Big

concentrated media can ignore their audience (at least up to a

point); smaller niche media must accommodate us.

That said, the fight over media concentration is only one struggle

that should concern media reformers. The potentials of a more

participatory media culture are also worth fighting for. Right now,


50

convergence culture is throwing media into flux, expanding the

opportunities for grassroots groups to speak back to the mass

media. Put all of our efforts into battling the conglomerates and

this window of opportunity will have passed. That is why it is so

important to fight against the corporate copyright regime, to

argue against censorship and moral panic that would pathologize

these emerging forms of participation, to publicize the best

practices of these online communities, to expand access and

participation to groups that are otherwise being left behind, and

to promote forms of media literacy education that help all

children to develop the skills needed to become full participants

in their culture.

[…] [My] most controversial claim […] [is] that increasing

participation in popular culture is a good thing. Too many critical

pessimists are still locked into the old politics of culture jamming.

Resistance becomes an end in and of itself rather than a tool to

ensure cultural diversity and corporate responsibility. The debate

keeps getting framed as if the only true alternative was to opt out

of media altogether and live in the woods, eating acorns and

lizards and reading only books published on recycled paper by

small alternative presses. But what would it mean to tap media

power for our own purposes? Is ideological and aesthetic purity

really more valuable than transforming our culture?

A politics of participation starts from the assumption that we may

have greater collective bargaining power if we form consumption

communities. Consider the example of the Sequential Tarts.

Started in 1997, www.sequentialtart.com serves as an advocacy

group for female consumers frustrated by their historical neglect

or patronizing treatment by the comics industry. Marcia Allas, the

current editor of Sequential Tart, explained: “In the early days we

wanted to change the apparent perception of the female reader of

comics … We wanted to show what we already knew – that the

female audience for comics, while probably smaller than the male

audience, is both diverse and has a collectively large disposable

income” [Allas 2003]. In her study of Sequential Tart, scholar and

sometime contributor Kimberly M. De Vries argues that the

group self-consciously rejects the negative stereotypes about

female comics readers constructed by men in and around the

comics industry but also the well-meaning but equally constraining

stereotypes constructed by the first generation of feminist critics


51

of comics [De Vries 2002]. The Sequential Tarts defend the

pleasures women take in comics even as they critique negative

representations of women. The Web zine combines interviews

with comics creators, retailers, and industry leaders, reviews of

current publications, and critical essays about gender and comics.

It showcases industry practices that attract or repel women,

spotlights the work of smaller presses that often fell through the

cracks, and promotes books that reflect their readers’ tastes and

interests. The Sequential Tarts are increasingly courted by

publishers or individual artists who feel they have content that

female readers might embrace and have helped to make the

mainstream publishers more attentive to this often underserved

market.

The Sequential Tarts represent a new kind of consumer advocacy

group – one that seeks to diversify content and make mass media

more responsive to its consumers. This is not to say that

commercial media will ever truly operate according to democratic

principles. Media companies don’t need to share our ideals in

order to change their practices. What will motivate the media

companies is their own economic interests. […]

We still do not have any models for what a mature, fully realized

knowledge culture would look like. But popular culture may

provide us with prototypes. A case in point is Warren Ellis’s

[2002–2004] comic book series, Global Frequency. Set in the near

future, Global Frequency depicts a multiracial, multinational

organization of ordinary people who contribute their services on

an ad hoc basis. As Ellis explains, “You could be sitting there

watching the news and suddenly hear an unusual cell phone tone,

and within moments you might see your neighbor leaving the

house in a hurry, wearing a jacket or a shirt with the distinctive

Global Frequency symbol … or, hell, your girlfriend might answer

the phone … and promise to explain later. … Anyone could be

on the Global Frequency, and you’d never know until they got the

call” [Ellis 2004]. Ellis rejects the mighty demigods and elite

groups of the superhero tradition and instead depicts the twenty-

first-century equivalent of a volunteer fire department. Ellis

conceived of the story in the wake of September 11 as an

alternative to calls for increased state power and paternalistic

constraints on communications: Global Frequency doesn’t imagine

the government saving its citizens from whatever Big Bad is out


52

there. Rather, as Ellis (2004) explains, “Global Frequency is about us

saving ourselves.” Each issue focuses on a different set of

characters in a different location, examining what it means for

Global Frequency members personally and professionally to

contribute their labor to a cause larger than themselves. The only

recurring characters are those at the communications hub who

contact the volunteers. Once Frequency participants are called into

action, most of the key decisions get made on site as the

volunteers are allowed to act on their localized knowledge. Most

of the challenges come, appropriately enough, from the debris left

behind by the collapse of the military-industrial complex and the

end of the cold war – “The bad mad things in the dark that the

public never found out about” [Ellis 2004]. In other words,

citizen soldiers use distributed knowledge to overcome the

dangers of government secrecy.

Ellis’s Global Frequency Network closely mirrors what journalist

and digital activist Howard Rheingold [2003: xii] has to say about

smart mobs: “Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act

in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who

make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible

because they carry devices that possess both communication and

computing capabilities. … Groups of people using these tools will

gain new forms of social power.” In Manila and in Madrid,

activists, using cell phones, were able to rally massive numbers of

supporters in opposition to governments who might otherwise

have controlled discourse on the mass media; these efforts

resulted in transformations of power. In Boston, we are seeing

home schoolers use these same technologies to organize field trips

on the fly that deliver dozens of kids and their parents to a

museum or historic site in a matter of a few hours.

Other writers, such as science fiction writer Cory Doctorow

[2003], describe such groups as “adhocracies.” The polar opposite

of a bureaucracy, an adhocracy is an organization characterized by

lack of hierarchy. […]

[…]

[…] If one wants to see a real-world example of something like

the Global Frequency Network, take a look at Wikipedia – a

grassroots, multinational effort to build a free encyclopedia on the


53

Internet written collaboratively from an army of volunteers,

working in roughly two hundred different languages. […]

Perhaps the most interesting and controversial aspect of the

Wikipedia project has been the ways it shifts what counts as

knowledge (from the kinds of topics sanctioned by traditional

encyclopedias to a much broader range of topics relevant to

specialized interest groups and subcultures) and the ways it shifts

what counts as expertise (from recognized academic authorities to

something close to Lévy’s concept of collective intelligence). Some

worry that the encyclopedia will contain much inaccurate

information, but the Wikipedia community, at its best, functions

as a self-correcting adhocracy. Any knowledge that gets posted

can and most likely will be revised and corrected by other readers.

For the process to work, all involved must try for inclusiveness

and respect diversity. The Wikipedia project has found it

necessary to develop both a politics and an ethics – a set of

community norms – about knowledge sharing:

Probably, as we grow, nearly every view on every subject will

(eventually) be found among our authors and readership. …

But since Wikipedia is a community-built, international

resource, we surely cannot expect our collaborators to agree

in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes

human knowledge in a strict sense. … We must make an

effort to present these conflicting theories fairly, without

advocating any one of them. … When it is clear to readers

that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion,

this is conducive to our readers’ feeling free to make up

their own minds for themselves, and thus to encourage in

them intellectual independence. So totalitarian governments

and dogmatic institutions everywhere have reasons to be

opposed to Wikipedia. … We, the creators of Wikipedia,

trust readers’ competence to form their own opinions

themselves. Texts that present the merits of multiple

viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept

any one of them, are liberating. [Wikipedia 2001]

You probably won’t believe in the Wikipedia unless you try it, but

the process works. The process works because more and more

people are taking seriously their obligations as participants to the


54

community as a whole: not everyone does so yet; we can see

various flame wars as people with very different politics and

ethics interact within the same knowledge communities. Such

disputes often foreground those conflicting assumptions, forcing

people to reflect more deeply on their choices. What was once

taken for granted must now be articulated. What emerges might

be called a moral economy of information: that is, a sense of the

mutual obligations and shared expectations about what constitutes

good citizenship within a knowledge community.

References for this reading

Marcia Allas, e-mail interview with [Henry Jenkins],

[Autumn] 2003.

Kimberly M. De Vries, “A Tart Point of View: Building a

Community of Resistance Online,” presented at Media in

Transition 2: Globalization and Convergence, MIT, Cambridge,

Mass., May 10–12, 2002.

Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (New York:

Tor, 2003).

Warren Ellis [2004], “Global Frequency: An introduction,” http://

www.warrenellis.com/gf.html.

[Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. (2002) Manufacturing Consent:

The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York, Pantheon

Books.]

[McChesney, R. (1999) Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication

Politics in Dubious Times, Champaign, University of Illinois Press.]

[Miller, M. C. (2005) Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral

Reform, New York, Basic Books.]

Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (New

York: Basic Books, 2003).

“Neutral point of view,” Wikipedia [2001], http://www.

infowrangler.com/phpwiki/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:

Neutral_point-of/view.


55

Reading B: Social media in the sixteenth century:

how Luther went viral

Tom Standage

Source: Standage, T. (2011) ‘Social media in the 16th century: how Lutherwent viral’, The Economist, 17 December [Online]. Available at www.economist.com/node/21541719 (Accessed 24 April 2014).

Five centuries before Facebook and the Arab spring, social

media helped bring about the Reformation

IT IS a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering

discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an

authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their

solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’ message

spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to

suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for

revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology

and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous

efforts had failed.

That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened

during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther

and his allies took the new media of their day – pamphlets,

ballads and woodcuts – and circulated them through social

networks to promote their message of religious reform.

Scholars have long debated the relative importance of printed

media, oral transmission and images in rallying popular support

for the Reformation. Some have championed the central role of

printing, a relatively new technology at the time. Opponents of

this view emphasise the importance of preaching and other forms

of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the

role of media as a means of social signalling and co-ordinating

public opinion in the Reformation.

Now the internet offers a new perspective on this long-running

debate, namely that the important factor was not the printing

press itself (which had been around since the 1450s), but the

wider system of media sharing along social networks – what is

called “social media” today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries,


56

grasped the dynamics of this new media environment very

quickly, and saw how it could spread his message.

New post from Martin Luther

The start of the Reformation is usually dated to Luther’s nailing

of his “95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to

the church door in Wittenberg on October 31st 1517. The “95

Theses” were propositions written in Latin that he wished to

discuss, in the academic custom of the day, in an open debate at

the university. Luther, then an obscure theologian and minister,

was outraged by the behaviour of Johann Tetzel, a Dominican

friar who was selling indulgences to raise money to fund the pet

project of his boss, Pope Leo X: the reconstruction of St Peter’s

Basilica in Rome. Hand over your money, went Tetzel’s sales

pitch, and you can ensure that your dead relatives are not stuck in

purgatory. This crude commercialisation of the doctrine of

indulgences, encapsulated in Tetzel’s slogan – “As soon as the

coin in the coffer rings, so the soul from purgatory springs” –

was, to Luther, “the pious defrauding of the faithful” and a

glaring symptom of the need for broad reform. Pinning a list of

propositions to the church door, which doubled as the university

notice board, was a standard way to announce a public debate.

Although they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an

immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and

then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the

theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared

simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by

Luther’s friends to whom he had sent copies. German

translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-

speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and quickly spread

throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther’s friend Friedrich

Myconius later wrote that “hardly 14 days had passed when these

propositions were known throughout Germany and within four

weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.”

The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted

Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to

another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed

and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in

March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a


57

German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin

and then translating it into German was not the best way to

address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have

spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was

going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his

“Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German,

avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were

intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an

instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the

Reformation.

The media environment that Luther had shown himself so adept

at managing had much in common with today’s online ecosystem

of blogs, social networks and discussion threads. It was a

decentralised system whose participants took care of distribution,

deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing

and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to

participants in such systems as a “networked public”, rather than

an “audience”, since they do more than just consume

information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to a

friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to

ripple through the network of printing centres across Germany.

Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a

pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial

edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first


58

Mubarak and Leo X, the anciens régimes

spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s

sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers

promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling

merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other

towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would

quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in

the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would

thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.

As with “Likes” and retweets today, the number of reprints serves

as an indicator of a given item’s popularity. Luther’s pamphlets

were the most sought after; a contemporary remarked that they

“were not so much sold as seized”. His first pamphlet written in

German, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, was reprinted

14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each

time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in

German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were

editions of a few dozen works by Luther. In all, some 6m–7m

pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the Reformation,

more than a quarter of them Luther’s.

Although Luther was the most prolific and popular author, there

were many others on both sides of the debate. Tetzel, the

indulgence-seller, was one of the first to respond to him in print,

firing back with his own collection of theses. Others embraced

the new pamphlet format to weigh in on the merits of Luther’s

arguments, both for and against, like argumentative bloggers.

Sylvester Mazzolini defended the pope against Luther in his

“Dialogue Against the Presumptuous Theses of Martin Luther”.

He called Luther “a leper with a brain of brass and a nose of

iron” and dismissed his arguments on the basis of papal

infallibility. Luther, who refused to let any challenge go

unanswered, took a mere two days to produce his own pamphlet

in response, giving as good as he got. “I am sorry now that I

despised Tetzel,” he wrote. “Ridiculous as he was, he was more

acute than you. You cite no scripture. You give no reasons.”

Being able to follow and discuss such back-and-forth exchanges

of views, in which each author quoted his opponent’s words in

order to dispute them, gave people a thrilling and unprecedented

sense of participation in a vast, distributed debate. Arguments in

their own social circles about the merits of Luther’s views could

be seen as part of a far wider discourse, both spoken and printed.


59

Many pamphlets called upon the reader to discuss their contents

with others and read them aloud to the illiterate. People read and

discussed pamphlets at home with their families, in groups with

their friends, and in inns and taverns. Luther’s pamphlets were

read out at spinning bees in Saxony and in bakeries in Tyrol. In

some cases entire guilds of weavers or leather-workers in

particular towns declared themselves supporters of the

Reformation, indicating that Luther’s ideas were being propagated

in the workplace. One observer remarked in 1523 that better

sermons could be heard in the inns of Ulm than in its churches,

and in Basel in 1524 there were complaints about people

preaching from books and pamphlets in the town’s taverns.

Contributors to the debate ranged from the English king Henry

VIII, whose treatise attacking Luther (co-written with Thomas

More) earned him the title “Defender of the Faith” from the

pope, to Hans Sachs, a shoemaker from Nuremberg who wrote a

series of hugely popular songs in support of Luther.

A multimedia campaign

It was not just words that travelled along the social networks of

the Reformation era, but music and images too. The news ballad,

like the pamphlet, was a relatively new form of media. It set a

poetic and often exaggerated description of contemporary events

to a familiar tune so that it could be easily learned, sung and

taught to others. News ballads were often “contrafacta” that

deliberately mashed up a pious melody with secular or even

profane lyrics. They were distributed in the form of printed lyric

sheets, with a note to indicate which tune they should be sung to.

Once learned they could spread even among the illiterate through

the practice of communal singing.

Both reformers and Catholics used this new form to spread

information and attack their enemies. “We are Starting to Sing a

New Song”, Luther’s first venture into the news-ballad genre, told

the story of two monks who had been executed in Brussels in

1523 after refusing to recant their Lutheran beliefs. Luther’s

enemies denounced him as the Antichrist in song, while his

supporters did the same for the pope and insulted Catholic

theologians (“Goat, desist with your bleating”, one of them was

admonished). Luther himself is thought to have been the author


60

of “Now We Drive Out the Pope”, a parody of a folk song called

“Now We Drive Out Winter”, whose tune it borrowed:

Now we drive out the pope

from Christ’s church and God’s house.

Therein he has reigned in a deadly fashion

and has seduced uncountably many souls.

Now move along , you damned son,

you Whore of Babylon. You are the abomination and the

Antichrist,

full of lies, death and cunning.

Woodcuts were another form of propaganda. The combination of

bold graphics with a smattering of text, printed as a broadsheet,

could convey messages to the illiterate or semi-literate and serve

as a visual aid for preachers. Luther remarked that “without

images we can neither think nor understand anything.” Some

religious woodcuts were elaborate, with complex allusions and

layers of meaning that would only have been apparent to the well-

educated. “Passional Christi und Antichristi”, for example, was a

series of images contrasting the piety of Christ with the

decadence and corruption of the pope. Some were astonishingly

crude and graphic, such as “The Origin of the Monks” (see

picture), showing three devils excreting a pile of monks. The best

of them were produced by Luther’s friend Lucas Cranach.

Luther’s opponents responded with woodcuts of their own:

“Luther’s Game of Heresy” … depicts him boiling up a stew with

the help of three devils, producing fumes from the pot labelled

falsehood, pride, envy, heresy and so forth.

Amid the barrage of pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts, public

opinion was clearly moving in Luther’s favour. “Idle chatter and

inappropriate books” were corrupting the people, fretted one

bishop. “Daily there is a veritable downpour of Lutheran tracts in

German and Latin…nothing is sold here except the tracts of

Luther,” lamented Aleander, Leo X’s envoy to Germany, in 1521.

Most of the 60 or so clerics who rallied to the pope’s defence did

so in academic and impenetrable Latin, the traditional language of

theology, rather than in German. Where Luther’s works spread

like wildfire, their pamphlets fizzled. Attempts at censorship

failed, too. Printers in Leipzig were banned from publishing or

selling anything by Luther or his allies, but material printed


61

elsewhere still flowed into the city. The city council complained to

the Duke of Saxony that printers faced losing “house, home, and

all their livelihood” because “that which one would gladly sell,

and for which there is demand, they are not allowed to have or

sell.” What they had was lots of Catholic pamphlets, “but what

they have in over-abundance is desired by no one and cannot

even be given away.”

Luther’s enemies likened the spread of his ideas to a sickness. The

papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication in 1520 said

its aim was “to cut off the advance of this plague and cancerous

disease so it will not spread any further”. The Edict of Worms in

1521 warned that the spread of Luther’s message had to be

prevented, otherwise “the whole German nation, and later all

other nations, will be infected by this same disorder.” But it was

too late – the infection had taken hold in Germany and beyond.

To use the modern idiom, Luther’s message had gone viral.

From Wittenberg to Facebook

In the early years of the Reformation expressing support for

Luther’s views, through preaching, recommending a pamphlet or

singing a news ballad directed at the pope, was dangerous. By

stamping out isolated outbreaks of opposition swiftly, autocratic

regimes discourage their opponents from speaking out and linking

up. A collective-action problem thus arises when people are

dissatisfied, but are unsure how widely their dissatisfaction is

shared, as Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of

North Carolina, has observed in connection with the Arab spring.

The dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, she argues, survived for

as long as they did because although many people deeply disliked

those regimes, they could not be sure others felt the same way.

Amid the outbreaks of unrest in early 2011, however, social-media

websites enabled lots of people to signal their preferences en

masse to their peers very quickly, in an “informational cascade”

that created momentum for further action.

The same thing happened in the Reformation. The surge in the

popularity of pamphlets in 1523–24, the vast majority of them in

favour of reform, served as a collective signalling mechanism. As

Andrew Pettegree, an expert on the Reformation at St Andrew’s

University, puts it in “Reformation and the Culture of


62

Persuasion”, “It was the superabundance, the cascade of titles,

that created the impression of an overwhelming tide, an

unstoppable movement of opinion…Pamphlets and their

purchasers had together created the impression of irresistible

force.” Although Luther had been declared a heretic in 1521, and

owning or reading his works was banned by the church, the

extent of local political and popular support for Luther meant he

escaped execution and the Reformation became established in

much of Germany.

Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than

previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of

superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under

the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who

has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary

France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology in

the present have produced a false consciousness about the past –

even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing

of importance to consider before the days of television and the

internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the

continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be

able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of

media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution.


63

Where monks came from, in the Lutherans’ view

Today’s social-media systems do not just connect us to each

other: they also link us to the past.


64

Chapter 2 Creativity in political

discourse

Theresa Lillis

2.1 Introduction

This chapter will explore the different kinds of linguistic and semiotic

creativity that are used in political discourse. Of course, this

immediately raises the questions: What do we mean by ‘linguistic and

semiotic creativity’? and, What do we consider to be ‘political’

discourse? Further questions explored across the chapter are: Why are

particular kinds of linguistic and semiotic creativity used in political

discourse? What effects do they have? On whom? With what

consequences?

Activity 2.1


In order to begin to think about these questions, look at the five

examples below and consider the following:

. In what ways might each of these be considered examples of political

discourse?

. In what ways would you consider the examples to be creative?

. How might you go about analysing these examples: for example,

what type of analytic tools could usefully be applied to each?

Example 1

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a

place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the

dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions

the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

(Cited in Crystal, 2008)

Chapter 2 Creativity in political discourse

65

Example 2

Example 3


66

Figure 2.1 No dash for gas

Figure 2.2 Demonstration, Banco de Espaňa

Example 4

Figure 2.3 ‘Trickle down’ meme

Example 5

Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping soundWhen the spade sinks into gravelly ground:My father, digging. I look down.

(Heaney, 1990 [1966], p. 1 )

Discussion

Examples 1, 2, 3 and 4 are identifiable as political discourse in that they

each reflect an engagement with social concerns and offer a particular

position on these. Examples 2, 3 and 4 are more oppositional,

challenging established positions, whereas Example 1 seeks rather to

reinforce an existing position. Example 1 is an example of the more

traditional political discourse, probably easily recognisable as an extract

from a prepared political speech because of its particular verbal style – a

long propositional utterance (45 words), the three-part structure to the

embedded questions and the rhetorical strategy of opening up the

possibility of negation or doubt (rhetorical question) only to end by

indicating that what is to follow will challenge such doubt. It is an extract

from the celebration speech made by Barack Obama after being elected


67

as US president in 2008. This opening extract is an emotional appeal,

more strongly evident in the performance of the speech than in the

written verbal extract here. The comments made in the opening speech

are premised on several presuppositions: that democracy is a good thing

and that those talking and listening have a shared sense of history.

There is also a familiar narrative at work here about America as a place

where dreams can come true – a place where all things are possible.

Example 2 is an example from an online newspaper, showing an image

of a demonstrator and her campaigning placard, as well as the

reproduction of the slogan of the campaign against ‘shale gas’ or

fracking: ‘No dash for gas’. In contrast to Example 4, and in a tradition

we might recognise as objective news reporting, the article is not

seeking to explicitly subvert the image or slogan. However, the reporting

of any event always involves positionality or stance, and it is evident

here in a number of ways. The photographic image is full of contrasts

that include, but go beyond, a simple recording of the encounter

between campaigners and the police. Contrasts that stand out to me

include: female/male; sitting/standing; full body/torso and legs; bare

arms/fully clothed; white/black; light/dark. The image might be the result

of a practical decision: perhaps it was only possible, for a range of

reasons, to get this shot. Or perhaps the image was the result of

aesthetic considerations, where the photographer chose to create an

image with multiple aesthetic contrasts, with perhaps the main thematic

one being a contrast between human agency – through, literally, the face

of the campaigner – in contrast to a faceless constraining institution.

Example 3 is a photograph showing a participant in a demonstration in

Madrid, Spain, the location identifiable from the metro sign shown. The

protestor is wearing a T-shirt with the wording Una Vez Yo Tuve

Derechos sociales y laborales (‘Once I had social and workplace rights’).

This T-shirt illustrates an example of copying-with-modification – or

remixing. Here the commercial ‘English’ YouTube brand is reversioned

as Yo Tuve, playing with the similarity in sound (phonemes) and look

(graphemes/orthography/colour/shape) between the ‘English’ brand and

the Spanish words. This is a commercially produced T-shirt, by one of

the major Spanish unions, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO): a designer

working for CCOO clearly decided to play with this brand logo,

presumably not only to enhance the propositional meaning of the

political commentary, but also simply for fun. It’s interesting to note here

what this image suggests about the relationship between participation,

observation and (re)representation in contemporary society: the image

shows the person in the foreground and another in the background

participating in an event while also simultaneously recording the event,

taking photos or videos, some of which are likely to have been

distributed via different media. The question of participation and


68

production is a key theme across this book, already discussed in

Chapter 1, and one I return to later with regard to ‘grass-roots’ political

activity and public space.

Example 4 is an instance of the phenomenon often currently referred to

as ‘memes’, where content of some kind – a text, a film, an image, a

sound – is widely circulated (currently via the internet but this is part of

longer traditions of (re)distribution) with the intended meaning of a text,

or part of a text, disrupted, challenged or played with in some way (I

consider critical comments on the use of the term ‘meme’ below). This

can happen, for example, by modifying an existing visual image, adding

a verbal caption or gloss to an image – as in the example here – or

changing the content of the verbal interaction in a film. All these

transformations can be repeated. The meaning of the original image in

Example 4, showing a group of middle-aged men in suits laughing

(perhaps recognisable to some audiences as senior US politicians),

takes on a critical edge through the verbal gloss which offers a particular

interpretation of what they are laughing about – the well-worn metaphor

of ‘trickle down’ for signalling a process of political and social change;

and who they are laughing at – ‘them’. Here, again, contrasts are played

with ‘us’ and ‘them’: as a reader I infer that the ‘them’ being laughed at

here includes me as part of the general public for believing such a

notion (see Fairclough and Fairclough, 2013, p. 184, for newspaper

readers’ posts criticising the discourse of ‘trickle down’ economics).

Perhaps Example 5 is the least ‘political’ in the sense we have been

using so far, in that it is not concerning itself with commentary on social

issues or adopting a position on issues of obvious public concern (see

definitions of ‘political’ in Chapter 1). It is an extract from a poem, most

obviously recognised as such through the layout, the use of rhyme and

simile, and the surprising juxtaposition (an example of linguistic

‘deviation’, see Chapter 3, Section 3.2) of ‘snug’ and ‘gun’. However, this

poem, written by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, can be seen as political

in the broadest sense of the term – in the choice of subject and the

orientation towards the subject. I would argue that by choosing to make

digging the focus of a poem, the poet is making a particular social

comment, most obviously signalling the cultural valuing of physical

labour. The full version reflects the poet’s aesthetic appreciation of such

labour.

In this chapter you will explore and analyse different kinds of linguistic

and semiotic resources that are used for political purposes, and

consider the extent and ways in which they are used ‘creatively’. As is

discussed throughout this book, ‘creativity’ is a value-laden term often


69

reserved for particularly socially prestigious texts, objects and

performances and strongly critiqued for this reason (see Carter, 2004;

Pope, 2005; Swann et al., 2011) on the grounds that creativity is far

more pervasive in everyday life than this restricted use implies.

‘Creative/-ity’ as a notion is increasingly being used in sociolinguistics

and studies of communication to characterise a wide range of everyday

linguistic practice, the considerable productive activity taking place

using new technologies and the mixing and meshing of languages and

modes.

This chapter focuses on exploring creativity in political discourse in

three ways:

1 At the level of creation or production. To consider the array of

semiotic and linguistic resources that are used to create or produce

political discourse, paying particular attention to those features

which have an aesthetic dimension or appeal; that is, they are

intended as, or are taken up as, beautiful, pleasing, fun(ny),

interesting, unusual, surprising, shocking. I would consider all the

examples discussed in Activity 2.1 to be creative in this sense.

2 At the level of purpose. To consider why particular kinds of creativity

are used in political discourse or for political purposes. Of course,

it is not possible to know producers’ purposes by looking at their

products alone, but they all involve an aspect of persuasion,

wanting to convince the audience of particular views and

perspectives. However, they do so in different ways, through style,

humour, language and image. They may also have a moral or ethical

purpose and, indeed, some theorists emphasise the moral purpose

of all aesthetic production (for an overview, see Schellekens, 2008).

3 At the level of value and impact. To consider whether different kinds

and instances of creativity in political discourse have different value

for political engagement. That is, to consider the extent to which

and ways in which they enable, facilitate, affect, influence and shape

people’s involvement and engagement in social and public life and

governance. Throughout the chapter you will consider the value of

different kinds of linguistic and semiotic activity in and for political

discourse.

Before turning to further examples of political discourse, first you will

be introduced briefly to some of the tools and approaches that are

available to us for analysing creativity in political discourse and

illustrated in this chapter. Developing an adequate set of tools for


70

description and analysis is a key challenge we face when seeking to

understand any linguistic and semiotic phenomenon.

2.2 Analysing creativity in political discourse

How do we describe and analyse the type of phenomena we have just

considered in Activity 2.1? In the descriptions of the examples so far,

you will have noticed the use of terms and categories drawn from a

number of interrelated fields of language study. The text that follows

outlines several key approaches that are evident in the discussion above

and which will be used throughout this chapter.

Discourse is an overarching term to refer to specific instances of

language use in their social and historical context. The use of

‘discourse’ to describe language reflects the view that language is always

historically situated and represents particular ways of being in the

world, or particular ways of representing knowledge. As stated above, it

is useful to conceptualise all the examples or instances of political texts

in Activity 2.1 as ‘discourse’. Given the use of a range of semiotic

resources or modes in most instances of communication, it is also

important to conceptualise discourse as a potentially multimodal

phenomenon (rather than purely linguistic). Later in the chapter, you

will consider an example of critical discourse analysis (CDA), which

involves paying particular attention to uncovering hidden or ideological

intention in texts. An example of this is Example 1 in Activity 2.1

where I commented on what the extract presupposed rather than what

was stated. Intertextuality is an important notion here (Bakhtin, 1981

[1935]; Kristeva, 1986), referring to the ways in which all language use

is connected to existing and prior language use, and presupposition is

one important aspect of intertextuality.

Social semiotics is the study of signs in society and how they are

used in and for communication. In this chapter this includes attention

to language but also to other signs or modes. So, for example, you will

have noticed that in commenting on Example 4, I implicitly suggested

a link between middle-aged men in suits and power – precisely because

signs, such as suits, may often index power in certain socio-historical

contexts. This particular sign, like all signs, is both referential – that

is, referring to a specific object or phenomenon, here they are wearing

suits – and indexical – that is, pointing to a particular social meaning

associated with a particular object, here the wearing of suits signals

formality and (again depending on the specific context) power,


71

authority. You may be able to think of the ways in which other signs in

the examples index particular social meanings: for instance, what does

the image of the sitting demonstrator index? What does the verbal

reference to ‘dream’ index?

Multimodality is an approach to communication which draws on

social semiotics to foreground the range of modes in any act of

communication. Whereas linguists have tended to focus only on the

verbal dimension, researchers in multimodality point to the multimodal

nature of communication, paying attention to images, colour, shape

and material. Mode is used to refer to different aspects of the material

nature of communication, such as spoken, written, visual and aural.

The significance of the different modal elements has been

foregrounded above, as in Example 2 where I commented on not only

the juxtaposition of verbal language and image, but also the particular

contrasts set up in the image.

Rhetoric is concerned with the study of how texts persuade and, in

many ways, underpins much contemporary analytic work on political

discourse. This chapter draws on some of the more obvious classical

rhetorical categories of different kinds of ‘appeal’ or persuasion: logos

(using reasoned argument), pathos (using emotional appeal) and ethos

(appealing to the good reputation of the speaker), of which the latter

two are evident in Example 1 (and the first is evident in the speech as

a whole) and are discussed below (see also Chapter 1).

Stylistics provides an array of categories for describing and analysing

verbal language in written texts. While many of these were developed

in relation to literary texts, they are increasingly used when analysing a

whole range of texts and language uses. In the examples here we can,

for example, identify the following stylistic features: metaphor

(e.g. ‘trickle down’), simile (e.g. ‘snug as a gun’), rhyme (‘sound’/

‘ground’), assonance (‘No dash for gas’) and multilingual phonemic and

graphemic play (Yo Tuve).

Aesthetics refers to the study of beauty, but also includes the study of

‘taste’ – what people like, dislike, recognise as beautiful, artful, etc. –

with a recognition that ‘taste’ is very much a social phenomenon and

that particular tastes may reflect and enact particular moral or ethical

values. As you read this chapter it will be important to reflect on your

own ‘tastes’, why your tastes are as they are and whether you think

that particular aesthetic practices have particular ethical, moral or

political significance.


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While analysts often draw on one particular analytic approach, there is

a wealth of tools for us to use in analysing creativity in political

discourse. The rest of this chapter continues to draw on the range of

approaches summarised here, starting in the next section with the use

of specific tools for analysing political speeches.

2.3 Political speeches

Formal speeches have played a key role in political activity, and the

study of the artful design and take-up of such speeches (or particular

aspects of them) has a long history, with (as discussed in Chapter 1)

Aristotle’s Rhetoric (2004 [350 BCE]) commonly cited as a highly

influential early text. The different types of rhetorical discourse

categorised and deployed in classical rhetoric are still used and

recognised in political speeches today, and the study of political speech

has continued to attract significant academic attention. This section will

illustrate how categories from stylistics, rhetoric and critical discourse

analysis are used to analyse political speeches.

Activity 2.2

Allow about 1 hour

Turn to Reading A, ‘On Obama’s victory style’ by David Crystal, at the

end of this chapter. Read the extracts from David Crystal’s blog on

Barack Obama’s celebration speech, given in November 2008. You have

already read the opening of this speech in the previous activity

(Example 1). As you read, consider which particular analytic tools

Crystal uses to analyse the speech. What other analytic tools do you

think could have been used?

Discussion

Crystal draws on stylistics and rhetoric to analyse the speech. Pointing

to specific features – utterances in groups of three, structural parallelism,

‘pairs’ structures, following the ‘rule of seven’, similar lengths of

utterances in each paragraph, moving from the general to the particular,

invoking a well-repeated response from the audience, making a powerful

intertextual reference – Crystal makes visible the stylistic mechanisms

which made the speech successful. Of course here he is focusing

explicitly on the verbal dimension, although he signals that other

semiotic and modal dimensions were important, through his mention, for

example, of Obama’s performance: ‘You have to put it across right, of

course, with an appropriate prosodic climax. Obama is brilliant at that


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too.’ Considerable attention has been paid to Obama’s speech making

and performance, and much commentary has focused on how he as a

handsome, young black man, the first black president of the USA, has

negotiated prevailing stereotypes of black masculinity (see, for example,

Hoston, 2014).

What’s striking to me about Crystal’s blog – and of course this is a more

personal and informal genre than, for example, an academic article – is

his obvious enjoyment of the speech. As a reader you get a sense of his

personal experience of the speech, his concern that Obama might not

pull it off and his own pleasure that he does (‘it blew me away’, ‘it was

real daring’).

What also strikes me about Crystal’s analysis is that he seems happy to

identify the features which he explicitly notes are pre-scripted and

therefore consciously designed (‘the speech-writers had a trick up their

sleeve’) without expressing concern about whether the use of such

features amounted to manipulation of any kind. This is presumably

because he considers Obama to be a ‘good’ man: thus, the stylistic

features that Crystal identifies as contributing to the persuasive force of

the speech – logos (reasoned proof) and pathos (emotional appeal) –

are successful (from the perspective of Crystal and many millions of

others) because of the third persuasive force, ethos (appeal to the good

reputation of the speaker).

Crystal’s positive appraisal of Obama’s speech contrasts with

widespread scepticism about the conscious use of language and

rhetorical devices by politicians to persuade, manipulate or deceive.

There has long since been mistrust – from Socrates to modern-day

publics – of the words and intentions of politicians, evident currently

in terms such as ‘spin’ and ‘spin doctors’ and indeed the pejorative

meaning attached to the term ‘propaganda’ (see Jowett and

O’Donnell, 2006). Concern about how language is used to represent

reality in order to persuade or manipulate an audience is central to

CDA. Within this approach, a key concern is not only to identify the

stylistic–rhetorical features of discourse, but also to make visible the

ideological intent or effect of such features.

Activity 2.3


Read the extract below, from a speech given by Tony Blair, UK Prime

Minister from 1997 to 2007, and an analysis of the extract by Norman


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Fairclough. This is part of Fairclough’s larger analysis of the discourse of

‘New Labour’, a political programme claiming to transform traditional

Labour party politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. As you

read, consider the following questions:

. Which stylistic and linguistic features does Fairclough identify?

. How might the analysis of this specific speech contribute to making

visible the ideological orientation of a particular political party at a

specific historical moment?

Extract from a speech by Tony Blair

I believe in this country, in its people and our capacity to renew

Britain for the age in which we live.

We all know this is a world of dramatic change. In technology; in

trade; in media and communications; in the new global economy

refashioning our industries and capital markets. In society; in family

structure; in communities; in life styles.

Add to this change that sweeps the world, the changes that Britain

itself has seen in the 20th century – the end of Empire, the toil of

two world wars, the reshaping of our business and employment

with the decline of traditional industries – and it is easy to see why

national renewal is so important. Talk of a modern Britain is not

about disowning our past. We are proud of our history. This is

simply a recognition of the challenge the modern world poses.

The choice is: to let change overwhelm us, to resist it or equip

ourselves to survive and prosper in it. The first leads to a

fragmented society. The second is pointless and futile, trying to

keep the clock from turning. The only way is surely to analyse the

challenge of change and to meet it. When I talk of a third way –

between the old-style intervention of the old left and the laissez-

faire of the new right – I do not mean a soggy compromise in the

middle. I mean avowing there is a role for government, for

teamwork and partnership. But it must be a role for today’s world.

Not about picking winners, state subsidies, heavy regulation; but

about education, infrastructure, promoting investment, helping small

business and entrepreneurs and fairness. To make Britain more

competitive, better at generating wealth, but do it on a basis that

serves the needs of the whole nation – one nation. This is a policy

that is unashamedly long-termist. Competing on quality can’t be

done by Government alone. The whole nation must put its shoulder

to the wheel.


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[Extract from analysis by Norman Fairclough]

There are various processes and social actors represented here,

[…] but I focus first on processes involving agents of a more

abstract and impersonal character in the global economy: ‘the new

global economy refashioning our industries’, ‘change that sweeps

the world’, ‘to let change overwhelm us, to resist it or to equip

ourselves to survive and prosper in it’, ‘the challenge the modern

world poses’. Notice the metaphorical character of these processes:

‘change’ is successively metaphorised as something like a tidal

wave (‘change that sweeps the world’, ‘let change overwhelm us’),

implying inevitability; as a person or group to ‘resist’; and as a

place we can ‘survive’ and ‘prosper’ in. And the ‘modern world’ is

personalised as someone who ‘poses challenges’. The inevitability

of change is also implicit in the representation of resistance as

‘trying to keep the clock from turning’ – ‘change’ is as inevitable as

the passage of time.

Although change is most obviously seen as a complex set of

processes, it is not represented here as a process but rather as a

causal entity in other processes. It is ‘nominalised’, the word

‘change’ is used not as a verb but as a noun. Nominalisation

involves abstraction from the diversity of processes going on, no

specification of who or what is changing, a backgrounding of the

processes of change themselves, and a foregrounding of their

effect. In backgrounding the processes themselves, nominalisation

also backgrounds questions of agency and causality, of who or

what causes change. Yet many of the changes listed have been

substantively contributed to by decisions on the part of business …

and governments to act in one way rather than another, for

instance in negotiating multilateral agreements on trade and the

movement of capital. The absence of responsible agents further

contributes to constructing change as inevitable. And one effect of

the lists of changes in the third and fourth sentences (beginning ‘In

technology …’) is to iron out important distinctions in this regard –

changes in ‘family structure’ are more adequately represented as

changes without responsible agents than changes in ‘trade’.

(Fairclough, 2000, pp. 25–7)

Discussion

Fairclough points to a range of linguistic and stylistic features which he

argues serve to create a particular world view. These include transitivity


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and grammatical metaphor, or ‘nominalisation’ (see Fairclough, 2000, for

full analysis). Fairclough argues that these features serve to background

the agents behind the changes mentioned, making the specific changes

mentioned seem inevitable and therefore unstoppable. The ways in

which key social changes are marked as inevitable is, Fairclough

argues, a key feature of the discourse of ‘New Labour’, standing in

contrast to an older Labour party discourse which foregrounded cause

and effect and thus opened up spaces for people to challenge

(Fairclough, 2000).

It is useful at this point to consider one of the questions raised at the

beginning of this chapter: why are particular kinds of creativity used in

political discourse? The answer in part depends on the different

positions and interests of analysts. The stylistic analysis of a political

speech by Crystal is perhaps similar to Formalist approaches to texts

conventionally acknowledged as ‘creative’ (literary works) in that his

goal seems to be to identify the formal features that make the text

‘work’ (for a definition of Formalist approaches, see Swann et al., 2004,

p. 115). Likewise, Fairclough and CDA analysts focus on the formal

features of texts, including categories which are commonly considered

to be creative, such as metaphor. However, in CDA the purpose of

identifying such features is not to celebrate artfulness, but to show

how such artfulness might be being used to offer particular

representations of reality, and indeed to manipulate truth in order to

sustain particular ideologies and political activity. Analysing the range

of features is important to the goal of identifying what version of

political reality is being represented and, thus, the type of political

understandings or action these may constrain or enable.

It is also important to note that in CDA, ‘creativity’ is valued but is

used in a specific way. Creativity is rarely used as a positively loaded

notion to categorise features of text or to praise the skills of an

author/performer. It is used to signal possibilities for discursive

change: that is, the ways in which people seek to use discourse to

transform dominant ideologies and practices:

The immediate origins and motivations of change in the

discursive event lie in the problematization of conventions for

producers or interpreters, which can happen in a variety of ways.

For example, the problematization of conventions for interaction


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between women and men is a widespread experience in various

institutions and domains. Such problematizations have their bases

in contradictions – contradictions in this case between traditional

gendered subject positions into which many of us were socialized,

and new gender relations. … When problematizations arise,

people are faced with what Billig et al. (1988) call ‘dilemmas’.

They often try to resolve these dilemmas by being innovative and

creative, by adapting existing conventions in new ways, and so

contributing to discursive change. The inherent intertextuality and

therefore historicity of text production and interpretation …

builds creativity in as an option. Change involves forms of

transgression, crossing boundaries, such as putting together

existing conventions in new combinations, or drawing upon

conventions in situations which usually preclude them.

(Fairclough, 1992, p. 96, emphasis added)

The last sentence in the quotation above signals that creativity consists

of using conventions in unusual or transgressive ways, and to this

extent Fairclough’s use of ‘creative/-ity’ seems to mirror common

definitions of creativity which foreground ‘novelty’ (see Chapter 1).

However, ‘novelty’ is valued to the extent that it enables discursive and

therefore political change. The aesthetic value of creative or

transgressive practices is usually backgrounded in CDA of political

discourse. Yet, as illustrated in the following section, the aesthetic

dimension to discursive and political change clearly has a strong value

for participants, and is increasingly evident in many types of popular

political activity.

2.4 Grass-roots political activity

In the previous section you considered some examples of pre-scripted

speeches by major politicians, and the semiotic resources that are used.

This section focuses on what is often referred to as ‘grass-roots’

political discourse: that is, discourse from popular campaigns

challenging mainstream dominant political programmes or ideologies.

In recent years, such public demonstrations have taken the form of

‘occupations’, literally occupying key locations in cities around the

world, often large squares where people can congregate and express

dissent. In terms of focus, participation and production, these public

demonstrations are both local and global, with people participating in

local events often seeing themselves as part of globalised movements,


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notably the Occupy movement. The explicit goal of Occupy is to

transform society:

since we can no longer trust our elected officials to represent

anyone other than their wealthiest donors, we need real people to

create real change from the bottom up.

(#OCCUPYTOGETHER, 2013)

Occupy involve people from around the world in their demonstrations

and concerns, with estimated calculations of the number of cities

involved in Occupy-related protests standing at between 750 and 950

in late 2011 (Rogers, 2011).

Such demonstrations involve a wide range of linguistic and semiotic

practices: in the immediate physical context where occupations take

place such practices include the circulation of informational or

propositional content – maps, health and safety information, schedules

– and the organisation of opportunities for debate through public

assemblies, for example, discussing both immediate actions and also

larger political issues. But what is also striking about these public

demonstrations is the strong creative–aesthetic dimension: this is

evident in the design and play of public signage in the form of

handheld banners, decorations of the self or public buildings,

performance (such as theatre and dancing), the use of classical poetry

and popular music. The examples below show just some from the

range of ways in which people play with linguistic and semiotic

resources for grass-roots political purposes, and in which explicit – or

‘manifest’ (Fairclough, 1992, p. 117) – intertextuality is central. The

image in Figure 2.4 is taken from many examples provided by Liesbeth

Zack (2012) on humour in the Egyptian demonstrations of 2011,

referred to as the ‘laughing revolution’ because of the considerable

propensity for humour even in the most violent of circumstances.

Samia Mehrez, for example, reports that after hundreds of

demonstrators were deliberately shot in the face by the Central Security

Forces in January 2011, and again the following November, social

media groups circulated a joke that the digital smiley sign ‘:)’ would

now be changed to ‘.)’ to signal the loss or damage to eyes (Mehrez,

2012, p. 18).


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Figure 2.4 Expiry date (Source: Zack, 2012, p. 725)

Figure 2.5 is an image taken from occupations in Madrid in the square

Puerta de Sol, where the name of the square, Sol (sun), is used as a

metaphor for hope and change and, in this example, is built into the

wording Sol-ucion to the economic and political crisis. It is also used

alongside Arabic script which indexes at least two levels of meaning:

(1) participation of local Arab migrants in Spanish protests; and (2)

popular global revolution indexed by the use of Arabic script.

Figure 2.6 shows how covering buildings and advertising hoardings are

used in another context to resignify a main square – as belonging to

the public rather than the central government or authority. Figure 2.7

shows the body as a resource for and site of public signage.

Figure 2.5 Sol-revolution (Source: Martín-Rojo, 2014, p. 643)


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Figure 2.6 Large banners covering buildings

Figure 2.7 ‘I beg you leave’ (Source: Gribbon and Hawas, 2012, p. 129)

Researchers focusing on public protests signal the relationship between

space, creative practice and political participation – how reconfiguring the

public space opens up different ways of meaning making or

semiotising such space. Some of these mark the space in very obvious


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ways, as in Figure 2.5. Martín-Rojo (2014), writing about the Indignados

movement in Spain (for further details see Hesserl, 2011), and the

occupations of major Spanish cities such as Madrid, explains the

political significance of such occupation:

Squares are the nerve centres of many cities, their physical and

symbolic core, as well as the centre of power, where we find

churches, town halls, the head offices of banks, clocks that

identify the city, etc. In capitalist cities, the squares are also the

centre of commerce and of the political institutions

(Lefebvre 1968). In fact, siting the protest camps in the nerve

centres of the city contributes to the significance of the messages

of protest, while these in turn transform the urban space and the

experience of its inhabitants. Otherwise we could not grasp the

meaning, in this context, of some of the repeated slogans whose

whole point is to draw attention to their positioning, in front of

or surrounding these vital centres of government and commerce.

This is epitomised in the slogan displayed in Syntagma Square,

Athens: “We are here” (είμαστε εδώ), where here is in the square

in front of the parliament building. The slogan alternates with

“We are in the streets/squares” and “We are everywhere”

(είμαστε παντού) …

(Martin-Rojo, 2014, p. 627)

Activity 2.4


Turn to Reading B, ‘Creating a counter-space: Tahrir Square as a

platform for linguistic creativity and political dissent’ by Mariam Aboelezz,

at the end of this chapter.

As you read, consider the following questions:

. What kinds of creative/aesthetic activity are described as taking place

in the occupation of Tahrir Square?

. What does the reading suggest about why people engage in this kind

of creative activity?

. In what ways do you think that the creative discourses contribute to

building the Square as a political ‘counter-space’?


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Discussion

Aboelezz describes a range of creative activity on the Square: poetry,

jokes, banners, chanting, singing, dancing, graffiti and multilingual play.

Modally, the signs tend to be ‘verbal heavy’ (Lillis, 2013, p. 42): that is,

involving substantial amounts of verbal language in several scripts. But

the inscripted verbal signs are at the same time clearly multimodal –

using a range of scripts, colour, shape, size; and are used alongside or

nested within other modes involving different kinds of materials – the

body, buildings, statues, tanks – and as part of different forms of

production, including spontaneous performance as well as the holding,

carrying and wearing of signs.

Aboelezz draws on Lefebvre (1991) to argue that creativity is essential

to create (or recreate) public spaces and to build ‘counter-spaces’ which

serve to challenge the existing political and social order. The view of

creativity here echoes that of Fairclough, discussed above, whereby

discursive creativity as transgression of existing practices is both a

reflection of, and a resource for, social and political change. Aboelezz

points to a number of examples of such transgression: the linguistic

order is challenged by using Egyptian Arabic alongside Standard Arabic;

the political authority is challenged through a range of creative activity, in

particular humour, through parody of political leaders and their actions;

and of course the physical space itself is transgressed and reconfigured,

as it becomes a counter-space that people inhabit, or occupy, rather

than pass through, in order to communicate their dissent to each other,

political leaders and the wider world.

Several languages are mentioned in the paper. Standard Arabic,

Egyptian Arabic, English and Chinese each seem to have different

purposes and effects: Egyptian Arabic is used alongside Standard Arabic

to communicate views, to play with ideas and to perform. Aboelezz

argues elsewhere (2014) that Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic have

different specific purposes. Poetry in standard Arabic serves as a

unifying force for people in the Arab world, transcending dialectal and

geographical difference, and, thus, to unify not only those physically

present in the Square but also more distant people, via social media and

platforms such as YouTube (as discussed below). Egyptian Arabic, in

contrast, seems to have been used to draw in commentary from popular

culture, such as proverbial sayings and lines from songs and films.

The use of English is evident in the examples, usually alongside Arabic,

both to ensure that the nature of the political dissent is communicated

globally (‘Go to Hell Mubarak’) and as part of the playful semiotic

activities on the Square (consider the hard copy reconstruction of a


83

Facebook wall and phrases such as ‘GAME OVER’). Chinese is also

used in one example in the reading, as are hieroglyphics, both of which

Aboelezz refers to as ‘language play’. The Chinese sign is language play

because the protesters are not expecting the Chinese sign to be

understood for its propositional content (the Arabic translation does that)

but for what it indexes – an ‘exotic’ language that is also difficult to

understand – paralleling (and playing with) Mubarak’s apparent inability

to understand the Arabic signs. Hieroglyphics are used to index Mubarak

as a ‘pharaoh’ figure.

What stands out for me is the importance attached to aesthetic activity

by many participants in popular political demonstrations, evidenced by

the recreating of space, the decorating/dressing of the body and the

creative use of humour, languages and scripts. The importance of play

(including humour) in, and as a resource for, grass-roots protests

seems to be an instance of the ‘carnivalesque’, the historical tradition

of which has been explored by Bakhtin:

The serious aspects of class culture are official and authoritarian;

they are combined with violence, prohibitions, limitations and

always contain an element of fear and of intimidation. These

elements prevailed in the Middle Ages. Laughter, on the contrary,

overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its

idiom is never used by violence and authority.

(Bakhtin, 1968 [1965], p. 90)

In some epochs, and still today in many places in the world, there are

moments in the calendar where the official is played with and

challenged (an obvious example is the way carnival takes place in the

Christian calendar before Lent in many parts of the world, where strict

religious practices are challenged through excessive eating, drinking and

public displays of sexuality, and where authorities are mocked and

satirised). And some of the activities in grass-roots political movements

seem to echo these. The conscious or orchestrated nature of such

activity for political purposes is reflected in the term ‘tactical frivolity’,

used initially by a group of women activists demonstrating against the

International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings in

Prague in 2000. Dressed in silver and pink in the flamboyant style of

Rio de Janeiro carnival, their goal was to challenge through explicitly

frivolous or playful behaviour (Chesters and Welsh, 2004).


84

Of course, a key feature of contemporary society is that new

technologies mean that the carnival does not necessarily stay local but

spills out across the world, so that whatever happens locally can be

connected in important ways to many other people and places. The

affordances of technologies – and specific platforms, such as YouTube

– for not only reproducing but glossing and manipulating content in

some way mean that demonstrations can be meaningfully circulated

globally. A common example is the use of songs as soundtracks to

videos of demonstrations; a specific example is an English-medium

introduction and translated text of a 1930s poem set to music at the

time of the demonstrations in Egypt 2011 (Arab Freedom

Anthem, 2011). Taking part in grass-roots political activity can thus

include participating both in immediate events and from a distance by

producing or watching content that becomes part of what we can

describe (following Bakhtin) as a virtual carnival.

2.5 Copying, remixing, irony and play

Copying and re(en)contextualising is a feature of all human

communication (see Chapter 1) and is particularly powerful when used

for ironic or parodic purposes in political discourse. We have

considered many types of reuse across the chapter and there is of

course a long tradition of such reuse across all genres. Consider the

title of one the most famous anti-war poems in English, ‘Dulce et

Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen, which is completed in the last line of

the poem pro patria mori. This statement (‘It is sweet and honourable

to die for one’s country’) is an ironic reuse of an extract from an ode

by Horace, an irony picked up in many anti-war films of the twentieth

century (Winkler, 2000).

The reuse and recombining of existing semiotic products across all

genres has grown considerably with the use of the internet. Consider

the reuse and remixing of a pop song in Figure 2.8. Extracts from the

lyrics are provided in Table 2.1.


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Table 2.1 Comparison of song lyrics

‘Party in the USA’, Miley Cyrus ‘Party in the CIA’, Weird Al

Yankovic

I hopped off the plane at L.A.X. with

a dream and my cardigan

Welcome to the land of fame,

excess, whoa! am I gonna fit in?

Jumped in the cab, here I am for

the first time

Look to my right, and I see the

Hollywood sign

This is all so crazy, everybody

seems so famous

My tummy’s turnin’ and I’m feelin’

kinda homesick

Too much pressure and I’m nervous

That’s when the taxi man turned on

the radio

And the Jay-Z song was on



(Source: MetroLyrics, 2016a)

I moved out to Langley recently

With a plain and simple dream

Wanna infiltrate some third-world

place

And topple their regime

Those men in black with their

matching suitcases

Where everything’s on a need-to-

know basis

Agents got that swagger

Everyone so cloak and dagger

I’m feelin’ nervous but I’m really

kinda wishing

For an undercover mission

That’s when the red alert came on

the radio

And I put my earpiece on

Got my dark sunglasses on

And I had my weapon drawn

(Source: MetroLyrics, 2016b)


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“Weird Al” - Party In The CIA (Parody of “Party In The U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus)“Weird Al” - Party In The CIA (Parody of “Party In The U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus)Miley Cyrus - Party in The U.S.A - YouTube - Windows Internet ExplorerMiley Cyrus - Party in The U.S.A - YouTube - Windows Internet Explorer

Figure 2.8 Remixing pop songs as political discourse

The internet has become a key resource not just for generating content

(including political content), but also for sharing with vast numbers of

people, which leads to further remixing and reusing. One specific and

common example of a form which rapidly proliferates are ‘memes’ (see

Example 4 in Activity 2.1), whereby content of any kind – images,

parts of films, cartoons, etc. – are reversioned in some way and

recirculated via the internet. Of course, while many are circulated as

spontaneous acts of fun, as with any semiotic resource, these can be

more consciously designed, reproduced and spread for specific political

purposes. And here it is important to remind ourselves that while it

may sometimes be difficult to track down or trace the origins of

particular memes, they are not ‘autonomous’. Jenkins et al. (2013) are

critical of the widespread use of terms such as ‘meme’ – attributed to

Dawkins (1976) as the cultural parallel of ‘gene’, as noted in Chapter 1

– and ‘viral’ because of the way these tend to obscure human agency:

While Dawkins stresses that memes (like genes) aren’t wholly

independent agents, many accounts of memes and viral media

describe media texts as “self-replicating.” This concept of “self-

replicating” culture is oxymoronic, though, as culture is a human

product and replicates through human agency.

(Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 19)

Jenkins et al. (2013), drawing on work by Phillips (2009) to provide a

political example, trace the circulation by the right-wing US ‘Tea Party’

of Barack Obama as the Joker from the film Batman to ‘4chan’ as the

creators of this particular meme. 4chan are described as ‘an online

community that actively encourages behaviour which is often described

as “antisocial” or “troll-like”’ (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 28). Similarly,

Penney (2010) charts the way in which the iconic red-and-blue Obama

‘HOPE’ image of 2008 (designed by graffiti artist and street fashion

entrepreneur Shepard Fairey) was copied and reversioned by

conservatives challenging Obama and his policies.

Activity 2.5


Find an example of a remix of a text or performance that you consider

has a political goal or angle. It could be a remix of a political speech as

a meme, a political comment as a comedic performance, or a song

which takes on a political stance. Analyse the key features of the remix


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using some of the approaches and categories illustrated in this chapter.

How would you evaluate its creative or aesthetic value and its political

effect?

Discussion

At the time of writing, I particularly enjoyed the memes made to

challenge a Turkish politician’s statement that it was improper for women

to laugh out loud in public. This gave rise to much sharing across social

media of photographs of women laughing aloud in a range of public

contexts. I also thought that a meme generated by Chinese

environmentalists to campaign against the killing of elephants for ivory

was playful and clever: it involved the re-presentation of an elephant

using the colours of a panda, an animal considered a national treasure.

What interests me here is the impact of such reuse on our political

understandings in the world. When I laugh at a meme, how is it

shaping my understandings? And this takes us back to the questions at

the beginning of the chapter: Why are particular kinds of linguistic and

semiotic creativity used in political discourse? What effect do they

have? On whom? When? With what consequences? The next section

will conclude this chapter by considering these questions in relation to

a culturally prestigious creative genre – poetry.

2.6 The value of creativity for political discourse

What seems clear from the discussion so far in this chapter is that

creativity, play and attention to the aesthetic aspects of communication

are strongly evident in political discourse. The propositional content

(what is said) of political discourse is important to producers and

receivers, but so too are the creative and aesthetic dimensions (how it

is said). Also, while persuasion of ideas might be considered to be the

longer-term goal, attention is also paid to what might be considered

the more immediate goals of having fun, and enjoying and playing with

a wide range of semiotic resources. Creative practices clearly have value

in the production of, and participation in, political discourse.

Just as political discourse uses a range of features typically defined as

creative or literary, there is a long-standing tradition of creative

discourse or works marked as ‘literary’ being produced and used both

explicitly and implicitly for political purposes. In this section you will


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explore why and how one literary genre, poetry, is used to express

political concerns, and consider a poet’s perspectives on the value of

this particular genre for making political commentary and effecting

social change. Does poetry have a different kind of value for political

commentary from, for example, a pop song, a meme, a banner? And, if

so, what is its particular value? Here you will focus briefly on some of

the works and ideas of one poet, Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), the

Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet who explored the tensions surrounding

the poet’s creative commitments and political responsibilities through

both his poetry and his essays. You have already seen an extract from

one of his earliest published poems ‘Digging’ in Activity 2.1. Let’s

consider a full version of another of his more obviously political

poems.

Activity 2.6


Now read one of Heaney’s poems, ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, which

generated considerable debate and controversy. In what ways would you

describe the poem as political? What stylistic features does the poet

use?

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley –

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp –

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people, hardly marching – on the hike –

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

The retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

(Heaney, 1990 [1966], p. 12)


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Discussion

The poem’s theme is the rebellion of Catholics against the British

in 1798. The ‘croppies’ were the Irish Catholic rebels of 1798 who wore

their hair cut close to the head as a token of sympathy with the French

Revolution. The poem is written in the first person with the poet-narrator

adopting the persona of a croppy. There is parallelism in the first and

last lines of poem: reference to barley which began in their pockets and

ends growing from their graves, a contrast between those living and

working the soil and those dying and buried beneath it. The poem is a

narrative involving the description of a specific place and an account of

events leading to a particular outcome. The metaphor – ‘The hillside

blushed’ – signals both the blood of the battle and shame. Although of

course the ‘voice’ of the poet-narrator cannot be assumed to be the

voice of the poet Heaney, the political orientation to this particular event

seems clear: by choosing it as a topic for poetry, Heaney is making a

statement about the importance of remembering this event. By writing in

the first person ‘we’, he aligns himself with the croppies and foregrounds

the unequal resources for the rebellion, juxtaposing the rural peasantry

and their weapons (pike, cattle, scythes) against the military machinery

of the conquerors (cannon, infantry).

Heaney’s vast work includes poems which are overtly political in the

sense of aligning himself with a particular group and voice (as in this

example here), as well as many more works which can be considered

political in a much broader sense of his choice of focus, often on

ordinary people, Irish traditions and histories (as in Example 5 in

Activity 2.1). Making Irish history (which included ‘Irishness’ in all its

many forms) visible was something that was a lifelong interest to

Heaney. This does not mean that he didn’t identify with aspects of a

particular social group – the specific positioning of Irish Catholics in

Northern Ireland during the 1960s – during which period he

considered it important ‘to let Irish nationalist or republican feeling

breathe in this atmosphere’ (Archive on 4, 2015).

But Heaney defines himself as a political writer in the broadest sense

of everyone being immersed in a specific historical context and

moment. This cannot be avoided:

You’re in the polis as a writer – ‘political’ comes from the word

polis in Greek, the community, the city, state whatever and if there


90

was anything close to a city state intimacy in our life in Ireland, in

Britain wherever, Northern Ireland is a cockpit. I don’t know how

big Athens was but I mean Derry and Belfast put together are a

kind of Athenian situation. So I think responses to that and

holding that either in focus, at bay or taking it in necessarily

makes you a political writer.

(Archive on 4, 2015, emphasis added)

The writer is always political, therefore, in Heaney’s eyes. However, he

also makes it clear that he wasn’t interested in building a specific

party/partisan political position. When his poem ‘Requiem for the

Croppies’ was taken up by the IRA (Irish Republican Army) as an

expression of their ideology, Heaney stopped performing the poem in

public. And reflecting on this specific poem and its take-up, he makes

an important distinction regarding how he views the political position

of the poet: ‘I think it was perfectly in order to have a disposition, but

not a propagandist position’ (Seamus Heaney Talks to Kirsty

Wark, 2012).

Activity 2.7


Turn to Reading C, ‘The redress of poetry’ by Seamus Heaney, at the

end of this chapter. As you read, consider the following questions:

. What does he mean by the ‘redress’ of poetry?

. What does he see as the value of poetry?

. What does he see as the role of the poet in society?

Discussion

As already discussed, Heaney argues that poetry (as language, form

and ideas) cannot fail but to be located socio-historically, and is

therefore always engaged in a response to social and political contexts.

In Reading C he points to the pressure that poets can be under to take

up one particular side in any conflict. However, what he also makes clear

is that poetry is not and should not be political in the sense of

advocating one set of views, one response. Rather, it should be used to

work ‘against the grain of the usual’, to open up new ways of

understanding and envisioning the world. Heaney points to what he

refers to as Auden’s ‘trinity of poetic faculties’ which are ‘making,

judging, and knowing’. Heaney argues that ‘making’ (which in this

chapter and book we have been calling ‘creating’) offers something


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above and beyond ‘judging and knowing’ – that is, rational and critical

orientations to understanding, knowledge and truth – without being

totally separate from it. The relationship between the ‘creative’ and the

‘critical’ is the focus of the final chapter in this book.

In this making or creative space, Heaney argues that poets work within

and against not just the grain of existence but the grain of canonical

literature and canonical views of language. Here, language and form are

key resources: what poetry is cannot be restricted by conventions but

must draw on existing forms and be open to new ones. Of course, using

language as the material for the expression of such high ideals is not

straightforward. Even so, he argues that poetry is a special resource,

offering new horizons and imaginations.

Heaney clearly has a view of poetry as something special, as art as

compared with life (even if it is born in life), and as having a particular

political value in developing and harnessing human consciousness to

worlds that might be imagined and created. But in offering reflective

commentaries on the nature and purpose of poetry, he argues that it is

not linked to immediate action – which of course does not mean that

it cannot or will not be. Rather, Heaney is offering a longer view of

poetry, across time and space, as a resource for political action and

imagination. In this way his position is that the creativity of poetry has

a particular social value.

2.7 Conclusion

This chapter started by asking what we mean by linguistic and semiotic

creativity, and why particular kinds of linguistic and semiotic creativity

are used for political purposes. At the level of creation or production,

there is considerable creative activity across all types of political

discourse: we have seen how people make use of an array of linguistic

and semiotic resources to create political discourse which is pleasing,

funny, inspiring, shocking and playful. At the level of purpose, what

seems clear is that the creative-aesthetic contributes to the political

messages being produced, but has a purpose that goes beyond or is

additional to the propositional content. Why is this creative-aesthetic

dimension so common? It seems to me that there are three possible

reasons. First, creativity is a fundamental aspect of human life;

therefore, it is not surprising that it is also evident in political

discourse. Second, creativity, as understood in Bakhtinian terms as a


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carnivalesque activity, often involves transgression of conventional

social, cultural and political norms which can be mobilised for more

planned political purposes, such as challenges to established authorities

and the status quo. Third, in the twenty-first century, for a range of

reasons, not least the increased access to the material means of cultural

production through the use of the internet, there seems to be what

Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999, p. 95) call a ‘heightened reflexivity’:

this refers to the fact that people are paying increasingly explicit

attention to discourse, both in the production of discourse for

particular purposes (buying, selling, persuading, etc.) and in the

production of the self (how we talk, dress, move, etc.).

As to the question of the value of different kinds of creativity in

political discourse, this chapter raises a key question: ‘Are some forms/

genres of more profound value in raising human consciousness and

imagining new political practices and ways of reorganising social lives,

as Heaney suggests?’ My personal conclusion would have to be ‘yes

and no’. The importance and potential impact on individuals and large

numbers of people of creating and sharing a banner or meme which

laughs at dictators cannot be underestimated. At the same time, the

impact, and value, of a poem which stirs a sense of vague unease or

articulates a feeling of hope or despair cannot be measured. Exactly

what value these different forms have may depend on when and how

they are experienced, and by whom.

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Reading A: On Obama’s victory style

David Crystal

Source: Edited version from Crystal, D. (2008) ‘On Obama’s victory style’,DCBlog [Online]. Available at http://david-crystal.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/on-obamas-victory-style.html (Accessed 25 May 2016).

Speaking as a stylistician – as opposed to a human being (if you’ll

allow me the distinction), as excited as anyone about this event –

it blew me away. As the speech started, I turned to my wife and

said, ‘He’ll never do it!’ What was I noticing? It was the opening

if-clause, a 41-word cliff-hanger with three who-clause embeddings.

Starting a major speech with a subordinate clause? And one of

such length and syntactic complexity? I thought he would be

lucky if he was able to round it off neatly after the first comma.

Try it for yourself: get a sense of the strain on your memory by

starting a sentence with a 19-word if-clause, and see what it feels

like. But he didn’t stop at 19 words. The first who-clause is

followed by a second. Then a third. It was real daring. It’s difficult

for listeners to hold all that in mind. But it worked. And then the

short 4-word punch-clause. And deserved applause.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a

place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream

of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power

of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

How did it work? How can you get people to process 41 words

easily? By following some basic rules of rhetoric. One is to

structure your utterance, where possible, into groups of three.

who still doubts that America is a place where all things are

possible,

who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our

time,

who still questions the power of our democracy

The other is to make sure that none of these chunks exceed what

is easy to process in working memory. Psycholinguists once

worked out a ‘magic rule of seven, plus or minus two’ – that


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most people find seven ‘bits’ of information the most they can

handle at a time. […]

People start sensing a difficulty when the sequence reaches five.

Some can’t get beyond this. Most of us get into trouble if we try

to remember more than seven, though some people can handle

up to nine without a problem. […]

Here are those three who-clauses with the main information-

carrying words in bold and tallied:

who still doubts that America is a place where all things

are possible, 7

who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in

our time, 6

who still questions the power of our democracy 4

As the sentence progresses, note how the demands on our

memory get shorter. In fact the demands are even less than the

numbers suggest because of the structural parallelism: who still

doubts… still wonders… still questions…. With still set up as part

of the pattern, we do not need to devote any processing energy

to it, and can concentrate on the following verb.

The rhetorical ‘rule of three’ is an important feature of the

speech. It’s something that all famous speech-makers use.

Churchill was brilliant at it. But all public speakers know that they

can get a round of applause if they use a triptych with structural

parallelism:

I was with you yesterday

I am with you today

And I shall be with you tomorrow!

You have to put it across right, of course, with an appropriate

prosodic climax. Obama is brilliant at that too.

What you mustn’t do is overdo it. For Obama to follow this first

paragraph immediately with another triptych wouldn’t work. A

different stylistic technique is needed to provide variety and

maintain pace. He switches to a ‘pairs’ structure – and pairs


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within pairs. The ‘lines’ vs ‘people’ contrast is itself a pair – but it

contains paired noun phrases:

lines that stretched around schools and churches…

people who waited three hours and four hours…

Note how, strictly speaking, the pairing is unnecessary. He could

have said simply:

lines that stretched around buildings…

people who waited hours…

but the pairing is more effective. A triptych is unwise here, for

the underlying meaning is banale, and to keep it going would be

to produce a sense of padding:

people who waited three hours and four hours and five hours…

He rounds the paragraph off with another pairing:

they believed

that this time must be dif ferent,

that their voices could be that dif ference.

And then he produces what, to my mind, is stylistically the most

daring piece in the whole text: a list entirely consisting of pairs.

From a content point of view, lists are dangerous, as they prompt

people to notice who might have been left out. But that evening,

I don’t think anyone was counting. Yet it’s worth noting that he

respects the ‘rule of seven’ – there are just seven groups

mentioned (or six, if you put the ethnic groups together):

young and old

rich and poor

Democrat and Republican

black, white,

Hispanic, Asian, Native American

gay, straight

disabled and not disabled


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Why omit the ands in the middle group? Precisely because the

omission of and reduces the force of the contrast and allows the

suggestion that the list can be extended. Unlike ‘young and old’

and the others, the list of ethnic groups is open-ended. Maybe the

same open-endedness applies also to ‘gay, straight’ – I'm not sure.

This first section of the speech ends with more pairs within pairs:

we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection

of red states and blue states

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Having devoted so much rhetorical energy to pairs, it’s not

surprising to see him round off this first section with more

triples:

cynical and fearful and doubtful…

on this date, in this election, at this defining moment…

And we should also notice that the whole of this first section is

structured as a triptych. Each of the paragraphs after the first

begins in the same way:

It’s the answer told…

It’s the answer spoken…

It’s the answer that led…

And the paragraph lengths are almost the same: 52 words, 53

words, 48 words. So we have threes within balanced threes.

Elegant.

[…]

When he reached the end of his ‘challenges’ section, I thought the

speech was about to end. It used two time-honoured ending

motifs. First there is a sequence of four rather than three:

the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity

and unyielding hope.


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And then an appeal to the future:

What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and

must achieve tomorrow.

He could have stopped there. But then there was an electrifying

change, as he moved from the general (‘America can change’) to

the particular (‘Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old’).

It was a risky strategy. The end of the speech was not far off. He

had just produced several hundred words of highly crafted

rhetoric, with many vivid and climactic images – ‘from

parliaments and palaces’, ‘America’s beacon still burns as bright’,

‘the true genius of America’. The audience is being brought to the

boil. To tell a quiet, intimate story now could have produced an

anticlimax. But it didn’t. Why?

Because the speech-writers had a trick up their sleeve. The

Cooper story starts quietly:

She was born just a generation past slavery…

but within a few words she is part of a new rhetorical build-up,

first with a pair:

…a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the

sky…

and then a stunning triptych, with each element containing a pair:

I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in

America –

the heartache and the hope;

the struggle and the progress;

the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed

on with that American creed: Yes we can.

There’s the trick that gets the speech out of any possible trouble.

The audience has already shouted ‘Yes we can’, three times, at an

earlier point. It has become a catch-phrase, used throughout the

campaign. The real climax of the speech is going to build on that.


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But an audience has to be taught what to do, by way of reaction.

People won’t intervene en masse in the middle of a story. They

have to be invited. And Obama uses the rule of three to teach

them.

…with that American creed. Yes we can. [no noticeable

response]

…and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. [no noticeable

response]

…a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can. [audience: Yes

we can.]

From then on, he’s home and dry. Every ‘Yes we can’ trigger is

going to get a response. The triptych rhetoric continues to flow:

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in

Birmingham, a bridge in Selma…

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin,

a world was connected…

to put our people back to work… to restore prosperity… to

reclaim the American dream…

And there, with ‘dream’, he ends as he began. ‘Dream’ is a

powerful word in American political rhetoric, thanks to Martin

Luther King. King is not mentioned in the speech, but he is there

in spirit, from the beginning to the end. Obama’s opening words

link dreams to questions. His closing words link dreams to

answers. The speech is a Martin Luther King sandwich, and it

went down very very well indeed.


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Reading B: Creating a counter-space: Tahrir

Square as a platform for linguistic creativity and

political dissent

Mariam Aboelezz

[Please note: this reading contains language that may be considered

offensive.]

Prior to January 25th, 2011, the name Tahrir Square would have

meant very little to people outside Egypt. The name of this

location in downtown Cairo has now become synonymous with

the 2011 revolution in Egypt and has come to symbolise people

power for anti-government demonstrators across the world. Tahrir

Square is therefore no longer a simple place name, but space has

come to represent many layers of meaning. A useful frame within

which the role of Tahrir Square in the 2011 revolution can be

meaningfully studied is that of the counter-space (cf.

Lefebvre, 1991). In this essay I discuss how Tahrir Square was

constructed as a counter-space, drawing on a qualitative analysis

of approximately 2000 protest messages drawn from images

captured in Tahrir Square between 25 January and 11

February 2011 (see Aboelezz, 2014 for full details of study).

What do I mean by ‘counter-space’? According to Lefebvre

(1991), a counter-space is a type of social space which is forged in

resistance to spaces which embody the power of the established

order, and in so doing presents “an initially Utopian alternative to

actually existing ‘real’ space” (p. 349). Hence, a counter-space is a

space which has “escaped the control of the established order”,

and – crucially – includes “deviant or diverted spaces” which

“show distinct evidence of a true productive capacity” (p. 383).

Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the counter-space is particularly

relevant here, not least because it associates creativity with dissent.

Tahrir Square has a long history of representing a space for

political dissent and has served as a rendezvous point for many

political protests in the past (Nassar, 2011), but never on the scale

seen during and since the 2011 revolution. The political

significance of Tahrir Square was clear from the first day: it was

the middle ground where protesters marching from various parts


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of Greater Cairo would meet on the evening of January 25th, only

to be forcefully evicted later that night. Protestors battled to

regain the square over the next two days. They succeeded on

January 28th and maintained it as their stronghold until the

revolution climaxed in Mubarak’s resignation. This battle for

control over Tahrir Square was significant at a symbolic level

“displaying the extent to which political dissent became the

politics of settlement. Being present day and night became itself a

form of political expression” (Tawil-Souri, 2012: 90).

One of the most iconic chants of the Jan25 revolution – seen

printed on a banner hanging over Tahrir Square in Image 1 – was

al-šaʿb yurīd isqāṭ al-niẓām (the people want to topple the

regime). The chant was inspired by the recent Tunisian revolution

and it reverberated in Tahrir Square on the evening of

January 25th before protestors were expelled from the square later

that night. The Arabic word niẓām also translates into order, and

it could be argued that it was not just the political order which

was challenged in Tahrir Square during the following eighteen

days, but also social and linguistic order.

Despite the seriousness of the protesters’ demands and the

sombre affair of the fallen protesters, a festive, creative

atmosphere prevailed over the Square. There was singing and

dancing, there was poetry-reciting and stand-up comedy, there was

graffiti-spraying and mural-painting, and of course, there was a

multitude of witty, creatively displayed protest messages.


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IMAGE 1. “THE PEOPLE WANT TO TOPPLE THE REGIME”. [TAKEN 08/02/11 © ISLAM EL

SHAZLY]

Underground bands which had hitherto appealed to a small niche

audience thrived in this atmosphere, and so did graffiti artists.

Graffiti (sprayed and painted) covered the ground and walls of

Tahrir Square, various monuments in the square, and even the

army tanks stationed along its perimeter from the evening of

January 28th (Image 2).

The square became a thriving environment for transgressive

discourses which violated the “sensibilities and laws of

emplacement” (Scollon & Scollon, 2003: 166). Graffiti is only one

example which “by its very nature (the use of non-legitimated

surfaces for writing) is beyond the control of the usual

authorities” (Sebba, 2003: 155), making it a particularly marked

act of transgression or rebellion against the established order.

Other examples of transgressive discourses which could be found

in Tahrir Square included protestors using various everyday props,

sometimes their own bodies, as surfaces for displaying protest

messages (Image 3). In another clear example of defiance to the

‘laws of emplacement’, a characteristic monument in Tahrir

Square, the statue of Omar Makram (1750–1822) – a historical

figure of popular Egyptian resistance – is seen in Image 4 made

to hold protest signs against Mubarak’s regime.

The celebratory spirit which marked (particularly the final week

of) the protests has caused some to refer to the protests in Tahrir

Square as a mūlid [festival] (Keraitim & Mehrez, 2012). The


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IMAGE 2. ANTI-REGIME MESSAGES ON AN ARMY TANK STATIONED IN TAHRIR SQUARE.

[TAKEN 06/02/11 © R. ELEISH] (These are the translations of some of the

messages on the tank: “Allah is great… Egypt’s revolution shall not fall”; “No

to tyranny, no to corruption”; “No to Egypt’s tyrant, Mubarak the oppressor”;

“This tank has witnessed Egypt’s liberation from Mubarak’s era, 25/1/2011”.)

playfulness and mirth of this mūlid was perhaps most apparent in

the humorous character which hallmarked the protests. In a

Foreign Policy article published immediately preceding the Egyptian

revolution, El Amrani (2011) states matter-of-factly that Egyptians

are “notorious for their subversive political humour”. Similarly,

Zack (2012) alludes to the same stereotype stating that “for

decades, making jokes about their circumstances had been a way


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IMAGE 3. PROTESTORS USING THEIR BODIES AS SURFACES FOR PROTEST MESSAGES

(THE ARABIC WORD IN RED TRANSLATES TO ‘LEAVE’). [TAKEN 10/02/11 © YASMIN MOLL]

IMAGE 4. ANTI-REGIME MESSAGES HANGING FROM THE ʿOMAR MAKRAM STATUE IN

TAHRIR SQUARE. [TAKEN 01/02/11 © ROWAN EL SHIMI]

for Egyptians to vent their frustrations at a time when saying

what one really felt was not always possible” (Zack, 2012: 712).

Examples of these political jokes could be seen on protest signs

such as the one pictured in Image 5. The joke translates to:

Question: There is much talk that your sons have looted the

country?

Mubarak: These are mere rumours. [All there is that] Gamal

opened a kiosk in Aswan [South of Egypt] and Alaa opened a

kiosk in Alexandria [North of Egypt] and their businesses

expanded a little so they connected the two kiosks to each other.

Such political jokes which were previously whispered in private

gatherings were now boldly displayed for the world to see.

Indeed, there were no boundaries of societal expectations of

politeness which the protestors’ messages did not cross. Mubarak

was called everything from a cow and a donkey to testicles. Taboo

language in protest messages was not uncommon. One protestor

was pictured holding an Arabic sign with the message “Leave

already, you …” followed by a drawing of a pile of eggs (a

derogatory way of referring to testicles; a form of insult). Another

Arabic message sprayed across an army tank read in Arabic

“Down with the tyrant son of a whore”. Swear words could also be

seen in English messages: one message read “Bollocks to you

Mubarak”, another said “America fuck your aid”.


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IMAGE 5. POLITICAL JOKE ON A PROTEST SIGN IN TAHRIR SQUARE. [TAKEN 09/02/11 ©

MAGED HELAL]

On a linguistic and stylistic level, Tahrir Square was an unregulated

space which escaped the policing of the language authorities (cf.

Sebba, 2003). The language situation in Egypt is a textbook

example of classical diglossia (Ferguson, 1959), where Standard

Arabic is the predominantly written variety of formal use, while

Egyptian Arabic is the predominantly spoken variety of everyday

interaction. Tahrir Square clearly escaped the written hegemony of

Standard Arabic, with Egyptian Arabic being as common a sight

as Standard Arabic on protest messages. It was also common to

see messages in other languages, particularly English, with many

instances of creative language play, often for comic effect. An

example of this language play is seen in Image 6, where the

placard reads “if you do not understand Arabic [in Arabic] leave

Mubarak [in Chinese]”. In Egypt, Chinese is seen as an exotic

language spoken by people who live very far away. Hence, if you

are saying something which is difficult to understand, people will

say that ‘you might as well be speaking Chinese’. Another example

of rhetorical language use could be seen in messages directed to

Mubarak in hieroglyphics, implying that Mubarak is a ‘Pharaoh’

(see Aboelezz, 2012 for a detailed discussion of language play in

the protestors’ messages).

One linguistic tool which was frequently employed in the protest

messages was intertextuality, broadly defined as the reproduction

of a text or its structure in a different context for a range of

purposes, e.g. irony, parody, humour, reverence, etc. Intertextuality


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IMAGE 6. A MESSAGE TO MUBARAK IN CHINESE. [TAKEN 01/02/11 © ESSAM SHARAF]

of the sort found in protest signs may be divided into three types:

material intertextuality, structural intertextuality and constitutive

intertextuality. Material intertextuality, “the establishment of an

intertextual relation is dependent on the existence of concrete

texts” (Duszak, 2009: 45), occurred the most frequently and was

the easiest to detect. These usually involved direct quotes from

scripture, poems or public figures. Structural and constitutive

intertextuality on the other hand involved a greater degree of

creativity.

Structural intertextuality refers to cases where a “kinship between

texts is conceived of in terms of style, textual format, ideologies

or writing conventions” (Duszak, 2009: 45). Here, “our general

ability to reason, conceptualize abstractions or establish analogies”

is central to identifying the intertextual link (ibid.). I use this term

to refer to instances where the original message (though still

detectable) is reworked in some way in what effectively becomes a

parody of the original message, and in so doing produces a comic

effect. Examples of this in the protest messages included

reworked references to traditional sayings, verses of poetry, and

lines from popular movies, TV series or songs. For example, an

iconic verse from a poem by the late Tunisian poet, Abul Qassim

Al Shabi (1909–1934), which originally translates to “If the people

one day will to live, then destiny must respond”, was reworked into

“If the people one day will to live, then the cows must respond, where

the Arabic words for destiny and cows rhyme. Another example is

the reworking of the proverbial saying “honour the dead by burying

them” into “honour the regime by burying it”. Again the integrity

of the original structure is maintained and this contributes to the

comic effect.

I distinguish between structural intertextuality and constitutive

intertextuality which Fairclough (1992) refers to as

interdiscursivity. The constitutive intertextuality of a text,

Fairclough (1992: 104) explains, “is the configuration of discourse

conventions that go into its production”. It may be said that

constitutive intertextuality occurs when a text adopts or borrows

from the discourse conventions of a certain genre, style or

register. I use this term for cases where the intertextual link

cannot be traced to a particular message but rather to the

conventions of a certain discourse field. In some cases, these links

may have to do partly or entirely with the visual presentation of


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the message rather than with linguistic aspects of it. An example

of this is a protest sign fashioned after a birth certificate

chronicling the birth of ‘Egypt’ on the 25th of January 2011.

Another represented a pink slip relieving Mubarak from

presidential duties. One carried the image of a pack of an

Egyptian brand of cigarettes with the message “Caution: Mubarak

harms the health and can lead to death” printed on it. Other examples

included automobile license plates with the word “leave” in

Arabic inscribed on them, a Mubarak expiration bar code, and

several messages with a technological theme, such as the snapshot

of Mubarak’s (imaginary) Facebook wall seen in Image 7.

While only one of various linguistic tools employed by the

protestors, intertextuality exemplifies the creativity of the

protestors and the mocking tone, the satire, the parody and at

times dark humour that permeated many of the protest messages.

Humour, creativity and dissent were all intertwined in a collective


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IMAGE 7. SNAPSHOT OF MUBARAK’S ‘FACEBOOK WALL’. [TAKEN 08/02/11 © MAGED

HELAL] (The Arabic in the status translates to “I will not leave it (Egypt) until

it is in ruins”. The Arabic wall posts roughly translate to (from top to bottom):

“leave already, dude; have some feelings”; “scram already, I’m fed up with

you”; “The letters in Mubarak’s name stand for = imposter; ridiculous; must

leave; Mummy’s boy; corruption”; “Murtada Mansour (director of Zamalek

football club): leave already, we can hardly believe that Zamalek is about to

win the league”.)

statement against the status quo. Every aspect of the protest

messages – what they said, how they said it and the way they

were displayed – spelled defiance to the regime and reinforced the

status of Tahrir Square as a counter-space which challenged the

established political, social and linguistic orders.


Aboelezz, M. (2012). ‘Out!’ in Any Language. The Linguist, 51(3),

14–15.

Aboelezz, M. (2014). The Geosemiotics of Tahrir Square: A study

of the relationship between discourse and space. Journal of

Language and Politics, 13(4).

Duszak, A. (2009). Discourses “off course”. In J. Renkema (Ed.),

Discourse, of Course (pp. 37–51): John Benjamins.

El Amrani, I. (2011). Three Decades of a Joke That Just Won’t

Die: Egyptian humor goes where its politics cannot. Foreign

Policy, Jan/Feb 2011.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change: Polity Press.

Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word, 15, 325–340.

Keraitim, S., & Mehrez, S. (2012). Mulid al-Tahrir: semiotics of a

revolution. In S. Mehrez (Ed.), Translating Egypt’s Revolution: the

language of Tahrir (pp. 25–67). Cairo: The American University in

Cairo Press.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (D. Nicholson-Smith,

Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Nassar, A. (2011). Ramziyyat Maydān al-Taḥrīr [The Semiotics

of Tahrir Square]. Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies 21-

04-2011. Retrieved 27-07-2012, from http://www.dohainstitute.

org/release/c4cb65cb-77c8-409e-99c7-3faf0fe1b92a

Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. B. K. (2003). Discourses in Place:

Language in the material world. London: Routledge.

Sebba, M. (2003). Spelling Rebellion. In J. Androutsopoulos & A.

Georgakopoulou (Eds.), Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities

(pp. 151–172). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


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Tawil-Souri, H. (2012). It’s Still About the Power of Place. Middle

East Journal of Culture and Communication, 5(1), 86–95.

Zack, L. (2012). “Leave, I want to have a shower!” The Use of

Humour on the Signs and Banners Seen During the

Demonstrations in Tahrir Square. In R. Genis, E. de Haard, J.

Kalsbeek, E. Keizer & J. Stelleman (Eds.), Between West and East.

Festschrift for Wim Honselaar (pp. 711–729). Amsterdam:

Uitgeverij Pegasus.


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Reading C: The redress of poetry

Seamus Heaney

Source: Edited version from Heaney, S. (1990) The Redress of Poetry, NewYork, Oxford University Press, pp. 3–11.

Politically speaking, … the redress of poetry does not reside in its

placing of a symbolic truth in the balance against an historical

situation. That is all very well as an aesthetic project, but it will

not satisfy either party in the actual vehemence of a conflict. For

them, the redress of poetry would consist rather in poetry’s

renunciation of complexity and self-division and its embrace of

one or other side of the question, without ambivalence. Its

redress would be in the simple act of adding leverage to one or

other arm of the scale.

So: if you are an English poet at the Western Front, the political

pressure is to contribute to the war effort, preferably by

dehumanizing the face of the enemy. If you are an Irish poet in

the wake of the 1916 executions, the pressure will be to revile the

tyranny of the executing power. If you are an American poet at

the height of the Vietnam War, the official expectation will be for

you to wave the flag rhetorically. In these cases, to see the

German soldier as a friend and secret sharer, to see the English

government as a body who might keep faith, to see the South-

East Asian expedition as an imperial betrayal, to do any of these

things is to add a complication where the general desire is for a

simplification.

Still, although such actions frustrate the common expectation of

solidarity, they do have political force, all the more so because

they are directed against the grain of the usual. Their exacerbation

is the very guarantee of their effectiveness. …

…

If we take W. H. Auden’s famous trinity of poetic faculties,

namely, making, judging, and knowing – a triad which he defined

with casual genius in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry

twenty-three years ago – then we can say that the making faculty

seems to have a kind of free pass and can range beyond the

jurisdiction of the other two. And yet, limber and absolved as


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linguistic inventiveness may seem in poetry, it is not disjunct from

or ever entirely manumitted by the critical intelligence. …

… The redress of poetry, however interpreted, continues to be a

topic of urgent concern. Whether one understands redress in the

sense that I have been admitting up to now, namely poetry’s

instrumentality in adjusting and correcting the world’s imbalances,

or whether one goes for another meaning of the word and

understands ‘redress’ as the setting-upright of poetry, its erection

into a distinct eminence as itself – either way, the subject remains

a central preoccupation and dilemma for contemporary

practitioners.

Think, for example, of the conflicting awarenesses in the work of

a contemporary white Australian poet like Les A. Murray,

sensitive to the historical desecration of aboriginal culture in his

country; or think of black Caribbean poets like Edward Kamu

Brathwaite and Derek Walcott, who would retrieve an Afro-

consciousness through an Anglo-idiom; or consider an American

feminist poet like Adrienne Rich; or contemporary rap and rasta

poets like Benjamin Zephaniah; or even centrally placed English

poets like Tony Harrison or Ted Hughes who might well think of

their original selves as tributaries rising very far away from the

main English stream. All of these experience a pressure to refuse

the exclusive civilities of established canonical English literature,

to alter if not deform the modes and decorums of poetry as they

are understood by the education system and the influential

cultural media.

The pressure comes from an accumulation of experiences long

unspoken or unacknowledged, the need to give voice and

retaliatory presence to suppressed life, be it ethnic, sexual, social,

or political. The pressure expresses itself, of course, in terms of

argument and theme, but also more subtly and necessarily in

terms of language itself, at the intimate level of rhythm and

diction and echo and allusion. Yet when it comes to that intimate

level of their art, all of these poets, however divergent from or

irreconcilable to the established poetic modes, all of them are

involved at some previous formative level with these very modes,

since poetry makes itself heard and begins to know itself only

within the context of all existing poetry. Their original ‘ear’ may

offend them because they have come to think of it as acquired or

imposed; yet if they deafen or deaden it on behalf of some


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political or cultural programme, they are going to feel that they

are committing an offence against their auditory imagination. A

sin against the ear is the poetic equivalent of the sin against the

Holy Spirit. Somehow their sensibility, formed in a sort of ancien

régime of poetic taste, must develop to accommodate their

revolutionary intent, for unless the redress of poetry is effected

primarily by work that sets itself upright by virtue of free,

uncensored impulse, its other aspiration to correct the world’s

imbalances will be seriously debilitated.

To say this, however, is not to deny the propriety of a poetry that

deliberately seeks to effect cultural and political change. The

history of Irish poetry alone over the last hundred and fifty years

is sufficient demonstration that a motive for poetry can be

grounded to a greater or lesser degree in an overall movement of

national self-recovery. Obviously, patriotic or propagandist intent

cannot of itself be a guarantee of artistic success, but in emergent

cultures the authentic struggle of an individual consciousness

towards affirmation and distinctness can be analogous if not

coterminous with the common straining towards self-definition;

there is a mutual susceptibility between the formation of a new

tradition and the self-fashioning of an individual talent. …

… [A]s an Irish writer whose education was undergone in

Northern Ireland, on the crest of the 1947 Education Act (a

definite British benefit) and in the wake of the Irish Literary

Revival, I am sensitive to the claims and counter-claims exerted

by the terms ‘English Literature’ and ‘Irish’ or ‘Anglo-Irish

Literature’. And I am well aware of the complications which

English-language poetries must encounter as they attempt fission

from the central English canon and seek redefinition within a new

historical, geographical, and political framework. Writers, after all,

are among the most sensitive of readers, and they will certainly

have internalized the form of the dominant literature. Whether

they are feminists in reaction against the patriarchy of language or

nativists in full cry with the local accents of their vernacular,

whether they write Anglo-Irish or Afro-English or Lallans, all

writers of what has been called ‘nation language’ are caught on

the forked stick of their love of the English language itself.

Helplessly, they kiss the rod of the consciousness which

subjugated them. No matter that the black poet from Trinidad or

Lagos, or the working-class writer from Newcastle, can cry out


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that their education in Shakespeare or Keats was an exercise in

alienating them from their authentic experience, devalorizing their

vernacular and destabilizing their instinctual at-homeness in their

own non-textual worlds: this may be a demonstrable fact of life,

but its truth should not obliterate other truths about language and

self-valorization ….

Certainly in any culture moving towards self-determination or its

own demarginalization, it will be imperative to question the

normative place of the colonizer’s literature or of the dominant

literature, which in our case comprises the English poetic

tradition. At a special moment in the Irish Literary Revival, this

was precisely the course adopted by Thomas MacDonogh,

Professor of English at the Royal University in Dublin, whose

book on Irish Literature in English was published in the year of

his execution for being one of the signatories of the 1916

proclamation of an Irish Republic. At a more seismic level of

effect, it was also the course adopted by James Joyce. But

MacDonogh knew the intricacies and delicacies of the English

lyric inheritance which he was calling into question, to the extent

of having written a book on the metrics of Thomas Campion.

And even from looking through Finnegans Wake darkly, it would

appear that Joyce knew everything. Neither of them, evidently,

considered it necessary to proscribe within his own reader’s

memory the riches of the imperial culture whose imprint they

were, in their different ways, intent on displacing within the

general consciousness. Neither of them curtailed his susceptibility

to the truth of poetry in order to prove the purity of his truth to

a cause. Which is why both of them are instructive when we

come to consider the scope and function of poetry in the world.

They remind us that poetry’s integrity is not to be impugned by

its status as symptom of some particular cultural moment or

political system.

Clearly then, nothing is simple; and the deconstructionist critics,

with their unmaskings and destabilizings, are prolonging by other

means the political and intellectual wars that have marked modern

times, most especially the war between the shorers-up and the

tearers-down. Yet the poetic intelligence is not absolved of its old

responsibility to find bearings just because it wakens in a

quandary, in a quagmire where it can touch no solid linguistic

ground. Even in these conditions, it is still possible to conceive of


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the poem travelling the troubled element of consciousness with all

the volition and integrity of a shock wave travelling through

water. Not so much a momentary stay as a reactive heave against

confusion. Indeed I am still enough of a humanist to believe that

poetry arises from the same source as that ideal future which

Derek Mahon, in his poem ‘The Sea in Winter’, envisages as

follows:

The ideal future

Shines out of our better nature

…

Poetry, let us say, whether it belongs to an old political

dispensation or aspires to express a new one, has to be a model

of active consciousness. It has to be able to withstand as well as

to envisage, and in order to do so it must contain within itself the

co-ordinates of the reality which surrounds it and out of which it

is generated. When it does contain these co-ordinates, it becomes

a power to which we can have recourse; it functions as the rim of

the silence out of which consciousness arrives and into which it

must descend. For a moment, we can remember ourselves as fully

empowered beings.


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Chapter 3 Creativity on sale

Guy Cook

3.1 Introduction

Creativity is often associated with the arts and therefore, where

language is concerned, with literature. Definitions of creativity often

refer to it as the bringing into existence of something new and

valuable, a process by which original and imaginative ideas are

instantiated in the production of an artefact of some kind. In the case

of literary creativity, this artefact is a play, poem, novel or short story.

Yet the term ‘creativity’ is also used in the world of commerce, and in

particular in the advertising, marketing and promotion of goods and

services. But to what extent, where linguistic creativity is concerned,

are these two uses of the term ‘creativity’ in literature and commerce

actually manifestations of the same process, and to what extent are

they similar achievements? Is it just a question of the same creative

force and process finding a different outlet, or is there some more

fundamental difference?

The purpose of this chapter is to explore these difficult questions but,

as will become evident, I have a clear position: I argue that, although

texts found in both literature and advertising can be innovative, many-

voiced and invested with meanings, their respective effects are of a

different order. The overriding purpose of advertising to make a profit

closes it off from the multiple interpretations that literary texts – with

their more open-ended purposes and motivations – encourage. As you

read through this chapter, reflect on the extent to which you agree

with the argument I develop and whether you are persuaded by the

evidence I draw on.

I shall begin at the textual level with consideration of the kind of

language associated with creativity, before moving on from there to

consider how this language achieves meaning in particular contexts,

and also how it interacts with other modes of communication, such as

the visual.

As well as interrogating the commonalities and contrasts in the

creativity to be found in advertising and literature, I shall also consider

the political dimension to advertising, by looking at the ideological

assumptions of the industry as revealed through the language its


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practitioners use between themselves, and by exploring the factors at

work in its contribution to the global spread of English.

Activity 3.1


Before you read on, take a look at the product descriptions on food and

drink packaging that you have at home. Do you find the wording of these

descriptions poetic in any way? Items which are marketed as ‘treats’

may provide particularly good material. Dove® ‘Almond’ chocolates, for

example, are described as ‘silky smooth promises’. Brookside Chocolate

Bowl ‘Dark Chocolate Pomegranate’ (see Figure 3.1) is described as:

‘Masterfully prepared sweetened real fruit juice pieces, made from a

blend of pomegranate and other select concentrated fruit juices, are

dipped in our extra creamy pure dark chocolate to create this decadent

taste sensation.’

Discussion

If you have found any product description which you consider poetic, try

to pinpoint what exactly it is in the choice of words which prompted that

judgement. Is it rhythm or other sound effects, the choice of words,

unusual grammar, elaborate structures, appeals to the senses, fanciful

metaphors, or something else? It may help to list both the features you


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Figure 3.1 Brookside Chocolate Bowl ‘Dark Chocolate Pomegranate’

consider poetic and the factors you feel may undermine that impression.

You will notice that the product description only works as part of a whole

label, in conjunction with the product, and with pictures and packaging

too. There is also a lot on any label which is decidedly not poetic:

ingredients, nutrition information, net weight, barcode, etc.

The activity you have just undertaken presupposes an intimate

relationship between the poetic and the creative. This relationship is

explored in more depth in the next section.

3.2 Literary stylistics and the ‘poetic function’

The study of literary stylistics, which seeks to investigate the links

between literary language and its effect, was founded on the

assumption that it is the patterning of formal elements, together with

deviations from ‘normal’ language use, which is the bedrock of literary

creativity, meaning and power. Early literary stylistics took its cue from

a theory of language functions advanced by Russian linguist Roman

Jakobson at a conference in 1958 and published in 1960. Jakobson

proposed a taxonomy of the many things that language can do. Thus,

language can express emotion, influence others, convey information

and ideas, effect social relations, check that the channel of

communication is working, and talk about itself. In addition, Jakobson

suggested, language has a ‘poetic function’ when words are chosen not

only for their meaning but for the formal relationships they enter into

with the words around them.

We can see this in a line of poetry such as ‘The sky is blinding mind-

unwinding blue’. Here words are chosen as much for the sound

patterns that they create as they are for their meanings: the repeated

vowel sound /aɪ/, the alliteration of ‘blind’ and ‘blue’, and the

alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The fundamental idea

behind this kind of stylistics approach is that the idiosyncrasies,

patternings and deviations of literary language create a parallel meaning

which amplifies and extends the literal.

Yet before we get carried away with such descriptions as an

explanation of literary creativity, or even as a definition of literature

which distinguishes it from other types of discourse, we need to

address a troubling problem. There are many other types of discourse

which share some or all of the linguistic features associated with


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literature, making us wonder whether the poetic function is, after all,

an aspect common to much language use.

Advertising is a prominent example. For, although advertising language

may at times seem poetic, its purpose, and the way we relate to it, is

different. An advertisement is seldom actively sought. Most people do

not go online, read a magazine, watch a television programme or go to

the cinema in order to see advertisements, but for some other purpose.

The successful advertiser must rather come to us, capture our

attention, hold it, however briefly, and leave us with something we will

remember and which will influence our behaviour. Typically, this must

be done within a very short time or a very small space. It must be

achieved in the minute or less of a television advertisement, the single

page of a magazine or the corner of the computer screen. Some

advertisements do this in very brash and inartistic ways – by just being

big or loud, by pulsing irritatingly in a section of the screen, by

arousing sexual interest through the image of a conventionally

attractive young woman or man, or by forcing themselves on us, like

the advertisements that precede some YouTube videos or those that

are part of the ‘full programme’ in a cinema. Yet many also do it by

using techniques of compressed and powerful expression similar to

those used in poetry. Squeezed in space and time, vulnerable to being

flicked past, zipped or zapped by the remote control, or just closed

down with a click of the computer, they aim to use a few very well-

chosen words to maximum effect. It is these clever, verbally skilful

advertisements with which I am concerned in this chapter.

IF YOU’RE

NOT FAST

YOU’RE FOOD

(Timberland)

THE MOMENT

LASTS A SECOND.

THE LEGEND

LASTS FOREVER

(Nike)


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Slogans such as these deploy rhythm, alliteration and parallel structures

to make their points elegantly, concisely and memorably. Indeed,

Jakobson himself, when advancing his theory of the poetic function,

chose a snappy slogan rather than a poem as an example (thus

demonstrating, incidentally, that his notion was not intended to be

confined to, or to define, poetry). Writing shortly after the US

presidential election of 1956, he pointed to the three-syllable slogan

adopted by the campaign to re-elect General Dwight Eisenhower,

whose nickname was ‘Ike’. The words on the balloons, buttons and

placards in the Eisenhower camp were not ‘I support Eisenhower’, but

the much more potent and memorable ‘I like Ike’. Here there is a

threefold repetition of the same vowel sound /aɪ/ and the rhyme of

‘like’ and ‘Ike’. The poetic function of language, in other words,

extends beyond poetry.

3.3 Linguistic creativity in an advertisement and a

poem

In order to delve further into the issue of whether the creativity

associated with high art and literature is fundamentally different from

that in advertising, we need to look at examples from each genre,

asking to what extent they are similar in nature.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion

The 1980 advertisement for the perfume Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion,

shown in Figure 3.2, contains just 12 words, with the lines aligned

centrally to form a distinctive shape.

It manifests intense patterning and creativity: phonologically,

grammatically and visually. Phonologically, if we annotate the stressed

syllables by emboldening them as follows we can see that there is a

pattern: unstressed syllable + stressed syllable + unstressed syllable:

Be touched by the fra grance that touch es the wom an

It divides, in other words, into four regular rhythmic units or ‘feet’:


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dee dum dee| dee dum dee | dee dum dee | dee dum dee

Be touched by | the fra grance | that touch es | the wom an

This particular kind of foot is called an amphibrach. The name

‘Elizabeth Taylor’ has the same rhythmic pattern:

E li za | beth Tay lor

dee dum dee | dee dum dee

Grammatically, the 12-word copy is a single imperative sentence: ‘Be

touched by the fragrance that touches the woman.’ It uses a very

unusual construction: a passive imperative, ‘Be touched’. (There are


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Figure 3.2 Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion

one or two set phrases in English, such as ‘be seated’, but these are the

exception rather than the norm. ‘Be touched’ is markedly odd.) The

subject of this sentence is you, but in this case, as is usual in

imperatives, this subject is ellipted – that is, understood without being

said: ‘(You) be touched’. The phrase ‘the fragrance’ is modified by a

relative clause (‘that touches the woman’) in which the relative pronoun

(‘that’) stands for the fragrance. In other words, if we fill out

everything, the sentence could be represented as illustrated in

Figure 3.3, which shows that the relative clause is a mirror image of

the main clause.

Visually, the layout of the wording mimics the shape of the bottle

which in turn (as the publicity claimed) is in the shape of a heart. So

this short advertisement contains a very concentrated and intensive

patterning of language.

The Clod and the Pebble

Let us now examine the patterning of language in a short poem:

William Blake’s ‘The Clod and the Pebble’ from Songs of Innocence and

of Experience (Blake, 1970 [1794], p. 32).

The Clod and the Pebble

“Love seeketh not itself to please,Nor for itself hath any care,But for another gives its ease,And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sung a little Clod of ClayTrodden with the cattle’s feet,


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the fragrance … that touches … the woman

You the woman … Be touched … by the fragrance

Figure 3.3 Patterns revealed

But a Pebble of the brookWarbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only self to please,To bind another to its delight,Joys in another’s loss of ease,And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

The language seems straightforward and accessible with an apparently

childlike simplicity. Even the archaisms – ‘seeketh’ for ‘seeks’, and

‘metres meet’ (meaning something like ‘appropriate lines’) – cannot

obscure the clarity of the description. Yet even in its simplicity, it has

many of the rhetorical and linguistic features which typically distinguish

literary from non-literary communication. It personifies abstract ideas

and dramatises the contrast between them, bringing into existence a

fantastic reality: non-selfish love becomes a lump of clay and selfish

love a small stone who sing to each other in a stream. The choice of

these two characters is appropriate and powerful. A clod is soft and

easily damaged, perhaps unattractive too, evoking standard metaphors

such as ‘soft-hearted’ and ‘downtrodden’. Depressingly, given its use

here to symbolise goodness, the word ‘clod’ is also used to denote a

foolish person. The pebble, on the other hand, is hard and shiny and

not easily damaged, evoking parallel standard metaphors such as ‘hard-

hearted’ or ‘heart of stone’.

The poem also has rhythm. Each line is an iambic octameter. That is

to say that it can be divided into eight two-syllable units (eight ‘iambs’),

the first syllable unstressed and the second syllable stressed:

dee dum | dee dum | dee dum | dee dum

so sung | a li | ttle clod | of clay.

The poem also rhymes (ABAB CDED AFAF) and has other sound

effects as well, such as the alliterations of ‘Clod of Clay’, ‘Heaven in

Hell’, ‘metres meet’, and the assonance (repeated vowel sounds) of

‘seeketh … metres … meet … please’. It is also markedly full of

parallels, reversals and contrasts. The third stanza almost repeats the

first, except that, by means of very slight changes, it expresses

completely the opposite meaning: suggesting perhaps that the

difference or transition between selfish and unselfish love is very slight

and volatile. The chillingly contrasted opening and closing stanzas are


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balanced on the fulcrum of the central stanza, whose first two lines

refer back, and whose last two lines refer forward. The poem thus

divides into two exactly balanced halves. It is as though when the

clod’s song is finished, it is answered and mocked by the retort of the

pebble.

Linguistic creativity, meaning and significance

Both the advertisement and poem you have just looked at are intensely

crafted, full of language choices and patterns which, even when they

appear to be simple, are on close inspection dense and intricate. Both

convey a great deal in very few words, not only by the conventional

signification of the words (what they refer to in the real or a fictional

world), but also by the formal relations between them, such as rhyme,

rhythm and structural parallelism. Both create a symmetric reversal of

structure so that the second half seems significantly to mirror the first.

But does this patterning enhance their meaning, or achieve significance

in comparable ways?

In the advertisement, the linguistic and visual devices generate a

number of potential meanings. As already mentioned, ‘Be touched’ is a

marked construction which is subsequently echoed in the active verb

‘touches’, thus foregrounding its polysemy – it has meanings which are

sexual (physical contact) and affective (emotional arousal). These

meanings are reinforced by the heart-shaped bottle – the heart, of

course, is conventionally seen as the seat of the emotions, most

notably that of love. Finally, in this regard, the name of the perfume

itself – Passion – emphasises this link between the product and the

needs and yearnings it represents. So, the advertisement does not

merely sell the product as a perfume with a nice aroma, but invests it

with the potential buyer’s desires. Its aim is to persuade a woman to

choose this particular perfume (or perhaps someone to choose it for

her) and the language and design work together to suggest an

equivalence between the purchaser and Elizabeth Taylor – ‘the woman’

in the picture and the woman looking at it. Interestingly, potential

buyers know this to be an advertisement and the advertiser knows they

know. Yet the latter counts on the audience’s desires, as triggered by

the meanings the advertisement generates, to override this knowledge

that the text is designed to manipulate them.


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It is noteworthy that some advertisements, especially in today’s

knowing age, deliberately seem to eschew an appeal to people’s

aspirations and vulnerabilities. A good example of this is the series of

advertisements for DIY products by Ronseal® with the well-known tag

line in the UK, ‘Ronseal: Does exactly what it says on the tin’.

However, even in these cases, I would argue that the advertisements

are not merely selling a product but also attempting, through it, to

reinforce the potential purchasers’ positive image of themselves as

shrewd, honest and down-to-earth.

So, advertisements do not merely try to sell products but, through

sometimes implicit and multiple meanings, make appeals to consumers’

positive or aspirational self-images. Nevertheless, the aim at the heart

of such texts remains a commercial one – to sell, even though what is

being sold may be more than the goods themselves.

Blake’s poem also uses language in a compressed and skilful way, but

in addition it deals with something more important than a purchase.

Although written in English in eighteenth-century London, it

dramatises a contrast of universal relevance, between selfish and

unselfish love. This is expressed through images which are

comprehensible across differing languages and cultures – clods,

pebbles, cattle, running water. Even contemporary urban societies have

an agricultural memory instantiated in standard symbolisms, metaphors

and sayings (‘greedy pig’, ‘dog in a manger’, and so forth). Similarly,

the reference to Heaven and Hell, although drawn from a Christian

cosmology by Blake, has echoes in the cosmologies of other religions

too. The poem thus creates a miniature but very accessible fictional

world, in which clods and pebbles sing rival songs like people, and in

doing so brings vividly and powerfully to life a banal but important

idea: that love can be egocentric or altruistic. Tellingly, the meaning of

the poem has been the subject of much discussion and disagreement

(Willmott, 2011), suggesting another difference between literary and

advertising texts: that the former are more resistant to a single

interpretation than the latter.

Activity 3.2


William Blake was an engraver as well as a poet, and many of his poetic

works were published with his own illustrations. In the case of Songs of

Innocence and of Experience these illustrations are not merely alongside

the text, as they are with some of his longer poems. Rather, text and


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illustration are integrated. Consider the following two pages from Songs

of Innocence and of Experience illustrating respectively the poems ‘The

Clod and the Pebble’ (Figure 3.4) and ‘The Tyger’ (Figure 3.5). In your

view, is the effect of the poems changed in any way when taken together

with the illustration? If so, is the effect enhancing or detrimental? Is the

combination of the two modes in any way analogous to the integration of

image and words in advertisements?

Choose an advertisement which integrates image and text (i.e. almost

any advertisement!) and compare the effect with that in Blake’s

illustrated poems.


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Figure 3.4 ‘The Clod and the Pebble’

Figure 3.5 ‘The Tyger’

Discussion

Anyone familiar with Blake’s illustrations will recognise his inimitable

style in these two pages. His images have an other-worldly look to them,

in part because of the distinctive methods by which he produced his

etchings, giving them an unfinished and ethereal quality. I would say that

the illustrations enhance the mystical dimension of Blake’s works,

inviting a spiritual interpretation of his words.

One obvious difference between advertisements and poetry which has

not been discussed above is that images (and other modes such as

music) are often central to the effect of advertisements, whereas poems

and novels generally rely on words alone. (Drama is a more complex


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case, as although a play can be read as a text, it is intended to be

realised on stage.) In the advertisement for Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion

the picture is very important, and related to the words – the bottle is a

similar shape to the copy; its sparkle is echoed in Elizabeth Taylor’s

eyes and jewellery. Blake’s illustrated poems are unusual in that, like

advertisements, they present words and images together. You may feel,

however, as I do, that the words of the poem are effective without the

image in a way which is not the case with an advertisement.

The Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion advertisement is remarkably short,

including just 12 words. ‘The Clod and the Pebble’ (though short for a

poem at 73 words) is much longer. So perhaps it is unfair to point out

that the poem has ‘more to say’. Yet in advertising and marketing it is

not only brief slogans that have elements of the poetic, but longer

advertising copy too.

The two stanzas below are the first of eight in an advertisement in the

McDonald’s ‘Favourites’ campaign. The words seem eligible to be

considered as not just poetic, but a poem.

Now the labourers and cablers

and council motion tablers

were just passing by.

And the Gothy types

and scoffy types

and like-their-coffee-frothy types


Let us look at these opening stanzas of the advertisement from a

purely technical perspective and the ways in which they manipulate the

forms of the language that they use. It certainly has both rhythm and

rhyme, which it uses in an intense and sophisticated way to reflect and

amplify both its mood and its meaning. The rhythm of the first two

lines of each stanza is fast and pulsing, while that of the repeated final

line of each stanza abruptly slows the pace. This is achieved by using a

kind of stress-timed verse in which the stressed syllables fall on a

regular beat, and the unstressed syllables must be squeezed in between.

This means that where unstressed syllables are many, the rhythm

speeds up; where they are few, the rhythm slows down.


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In the McDonald’s advertisement, the major stresses fall as follows:

Now the labourers and cablers

and council motion tablers


And the gothy types

and scoffy types

and like-their-coffee-frothy types


Thus, the long sequences of syllables on which there is no major

stress, such as ‘and like-their-coffee’ accelerate the pace, while the two

adjacent stresses in the last line slow it down markedly – capturing

perhaps, as the accompanying film does, the feeling of relieved

relaxation as the characters described leave behind their hectic lives to

relax in the dependable atmosphere of McDonald’s (the refrain). In this

way, as in the best poetry, ‘poetic’ patterning does not exist merely for

its own sake, but amplifies and adds to meaning and effect. In addition

to this use of rhythm, there are internal rhymes – ‘labourers …

cablers’, ‘Gothy … scoffy … coffee’ – as well as lexical and

grammatical innovation. ‘Gothy’ and ‘scoffy’ are neologisms, while the

words ‘like-their-coffee-frothy’ (which have the grammatical structure

of a predicate comprising verb phrase + direct object + complement)

are used here hyphenated as a premodifier to the noun ‘types’. In

short, the use of language in these opening two stanzas is as clever,

skilful and dense as anything one might find in a conventional

canonical poem. In the actual advertisement, however, which is a short

film with the words recited over footage of people arriving at a

McDonald’s, it is immediately clear from the setting that it is an

advertisement, even though there is no explicit reference to

McDonald’s until the third stanza (not given here), which mentions

‘McNuggets’.

3.4 Linguistic creativity and purpose

So the questions persist. Can a text such as the one featured in the

McDonald’s advertisement be both a poem and an advertisement? Or

are they, for some reason, mutually exclusive categories? Does the

purpose of this poetic ingenuity – to promote a product – somehow


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override its poetic credentials and achievement? Does the fact that

‘The Clod and the Pebble’ is not selling anything, but apparently has

the sole purpose of reflecting and representing an idea for its own

sake, somehow underwrite its integrity as art? Does the elusive quality

of literariness reside at this macro level of intention and effect and

subject matter, as suggested above, rather than at the micro level of

verbal ingenuity and technique (i.e. rhymes, rhythms, and so forth),

which the McDonald’s advertisement amply displays in a highly skilled

and effective manner?

The thrust of my argument up to this point suggests that advertising

texts, despite the fact that they can be invested with meanings beyond

the products they are trying to sell, nevertheless remain limited by their

purposes. However, before rushing to any conclusions it will be

salutary to consider other ‘poetic’ uses of language, in the Jakobsonian

sense, which have ulterior motives and effects.

Activity 3.3


Look at Figure 3.6 and Figure 3.7, which are from a campaign website.

Comment on how the images, the poem, and the campaign as a whole

draw on poetry and poetic effects.

Figure 3.6 Saving Tigers


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Figure 3.7 ‘Tiger Burning’

Discussion

The website uses poems (with varying degrees of success) that are

clearly based on William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. The one in Figure 3.7

attempts to imitate the rhythm, rhyme and alliterative patterns of the

original. It might also be argued that the juxtaposing of the two images in

Figure 3.6 is poetic in effect, bringing out the contrast between the

magnificent living beast (on the right) and the skins to which it and its

kind can be reduced by poachers (in the picture on the left).

So far I have been talking about advertisements as ‘selling things’ and

suggesting that this profit motive bars them from achieving the nobler

purposes and more universal relevance of literature. Yet, as you may

have already reflected, not all advertisements sell things. Some

advertisements promote health campaigns (Wear a condom, Stop

smoking), charities (Save the Children, Save the Tigers) or a political

party (Vote Scottish Nationalist). Advertisements can therefore have

purposes other than the commercial. However, they still seek to change

or influence their audience’s behaviour in some way, to get us to do

something. So, even in advertisements that feature literary texts such as

poems, the referential function narrows the potential interpretations that

can be made of such texts.


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The overriding referential function in advertising is evident in one of

its key characteristics: its predominantly ‘monologic’ rather than

‘heteroglossic’ nature. This characteristic is considered in the following

section.

3.5 Multiple voices

Beyond a multiplicity of potential interpretations, another discursive

quality sometimes presented as characteristic of literature is the

unresolved multiplicity of voices. Structuralist critic and philosopher

Roland Barthes commented on this in his essay ‘The death of the

author’ (2008 [1968]) with reference to Sarrasine, a novella by Honoré

de Balzac (2013 [1826]), in which the eponymous main character falls

in love with Zambinella, a castrato male singer, under the false belief

that Zambinella is a woman. At one point the narrator of the story

writes of Zambinella that:

This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational

whims, her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her

fussings, and her delicious sensibility.

(Quoted in Barthes, 2008 [1968], p. 313)

However, as he is telling the story retrospectively, in full knowledge of

Zambinella’s identity, this narrator already knows that this was not a

woman. Barthes comments:

Who is speaking thus? Is it the hero of the story bent on

remaining ignorant of the castrato hidden beneath the woman? Is

it Balzac the individual, furnished by his personal experience with

a philosophy of Woman? Is it Balzac the author professing

‘literary’ ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic

psychology? We shall never know, for the good reason that

writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin.

Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our

subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting

with the very identity of the body writing.

(Barthes, 2008 [1968], p. 313)


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The voice of this narrative, in other words, is unresolvably multiple.

There is an author and a narrator who is also a character in the story;

then within the narrative there are the voices of other characters,

expressed in indirect speech (‘She said that x’) or direct speech (She

said, ‘x’) with multifarious degrees of commentary and colouring by the

author as well as the voices of whole sections in society (Leech and

Short, 2007, pp. 255–74). Indeed, many of the most popular and highly

successful novels are characterised by an extreme ambiguity and

multiplicity of voices.

The famous opening lines of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice are a

case in point:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in

possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be

on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in

the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the

rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

(Austen, 1985 [1813], p. 51)

Here a contradiction between the two opening sentences creates an

intriguing puzzle. For while the assertion in the first sentence seems

absolute and unequivocal, it is immediately undermined by the caveat

and qualification in the second. The categorical ‘It is’, ‘universally

acknowledged’ and ‘must be’ give way to the reservation of ‘however’

and the tentative ‘may be’ in the first half of the second sentence, so

that the initial ‘truth’, far from being universal, shrinks to being a

belief ‘fixed in minds of the surrounding families’, suggesting that it is

by no means either universal or correct – indeed, how can it be if the

feelings of the man in question are neither known nor certain? One

might take this further and suppose that these ‘surrounding families’,

by assuming their own views to be shared by everyone, are in fact

rather blinkered and parochial in their outlook. The overall effect is to

create a complex interplay of voices vying with each other so that what

initially appeared to be a clear and decisive opening declaration by the

author or narrator is immediately refuted and becomes the opinion of

some of the characters only. The voice in the first sentence, which

seemed to be the author’s, now becomes that of someone else, and the

author herself, like Balzac above, is no longer there.


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The Russian literary critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1984

[1929]), writing about the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, described such

characteristic multi-voicing in novelistic discourse as heteroglossic

(literally ‘variously voiced’), contrasting it with monologic (one-voiced)

discourse. Drawing on Bakhtin’s discourse approach, we might say that

the extracts from Balzac and Austen are heteroglossic: the genre of

story is juxtaposed with that of gossip, or one sub-genre of the novel –

a straightforward confident third-person narrative – is juxtaposed with

another kind of less authoritative storytelling in which there is no

magisterial omnipotent narrative viewpoint, but a jostling of first-

person narratives, in which characters vie with each other to tell their

version of events.

Activity 3.4


Look at Figure 3.8. Consider this 2009 advertisement for Dixons (now

part of Currys, a major electrical retailer across the UK) and the multiple

voices and different genres it evokes. To what extent are they realised

through language and to what extent through visual effect? Note down

some examples of each.

Discussion

This advertisement works by juxtaposing, in a humorous way, at least

two voices. One is Dickensian, evoking in particular A Christmas Carol,

the other the contemporary world of shopping and online purchase. The

contrast is effected at many levels: the typeface, appearance of the page


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Figure 3.8 Dixons’ Christmas advertisement (2009)

and layout imitate an antique book; the language and name of the

character are also reminiscent of Dickensian times. However, this

impression is gradually disrupted by the anachronistic intrusion of

contemporary realia: the 94 bus, the 700,000 watts of Christmas lighting

and particularly the concluding reference to the Dixons website. In sum,

there are multiple voices in this text, suggesting that advertising texts

can, like literary texts, be heteroglossic in nature. Indeed, a line such as

‘Dixons … The last place you want to go’ seems to run contrary to what

is usually supposed to be the main purpose of such texts – to promote a

product and its producer. This question of the degree to which

advertising texts are truly heteroglossic is one which is explored further

in the next section.

A key question is whether, or to what degree, the heteroglossia to be

found in some advertising and marketing has monofunctional or

multifunctional goals, and whether its ultimate purpose means that one

voice dominates. It could be argued that some advertisements are

monofunctional, bound always to promote one monologic viewpoint:

the company is wonderful, the product is the best, and that is all.

While this may indeed have been the case in early advertising and

public relations – such as can be seen in the 1910 Chivers’ carpet soap

advertisement in Figure 3.9 – it is very much not the case with some

of the most successful contemporary brands which need to promote

themselves in a more knowing, even sceptical age. One might even

observe a parallel with successful novels – popularity goes hand in

hand with heteroglossia.

Take, for example, the following ‘history’ of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream – a

highly successful upmarket brand dedicated to producing ice cream –


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Figure 3.9 An early twentieth-century advertisement

which states: ‘Our Social Mission compels us to use our Company in

innovative ways to make the world a better place’ (Ben&Jerry’s, 2016).

History

Back in ’66, in a school gym class, Ben Cohen and Jerry

Greenfield were brought together by a special bond... they both

hated running but loved food. Years later in ’78, Ben had been

fired from a series of McJobs while Jerry had failed for the

second time to get into medical school. So, armed with a $5

correspondence course in ice cream making, they opened their

very first scoop shop in a dilapidated gas station in downtown

Burlington, Vermont.

They soon became popular in the local community for the finest

ice cream. Ben had no sense of taste so he relied on what he

called ‘mouth feel’, so big chunks of chocolate, fruit and nut

became their signature. While they disagreed at times over the

chunk size, they did agree that they wanted to enjoy themselves –

as Jerry put it ‘if it’s not fun, why do it?’

(Unilever, 2015)

Humour here is created by the conflict of discourses and genres. The

honest opening voice of middle America, ‘Back in ’66’, is soon

subverted. The standard tale of rags to riches, hard work, loyal

friendship and commitment is evoked and then immediately

undermined through facetious detail. Far from being the self-

disciplined young men one might expect to encounter in promotional

biographies for entrepreneurial success, the two boys turn out to be

self-indulgent and unfit. In the terms of the genre being parodied, their

sybaritic approach to the sensual pleasures of ice cream consumption

might well be described as positively decadent. The two voices clash

linguistically in the second sentence. The phrase ‘were brought together

by a special bond’ comes straight from the genre being ridiculed. For

this bond is not strength of character or adherence to the American

Dream, but (the ellipsis says it all!) ‘they both hated running but loved

food’. A key to the clash of values which gives the edge to this parody

can also be found in the dates. The two boys met in 1966, the heyday

of the hippy movement, and went into business in 1978. The phrasing

of the company tag line on their website ‘spreading peace, love and

ice-cream’ evokes this very explicitly, an allusion presumably aimed to


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appeal to a major market, the now ageing but prosperous ex-hippy

consumers who eat expensive but environmentally friendly ice cream.

Activity 3.5


Go to the Ben&Jerry’s website (www.benjerry.com) and have a look

around. Then think of some other highly successful brands for services

or products. Try to choose a variety of different types: both luxuries and

essentials, both cheap and expensive, for both children and adults, and

so forth. Go online and explore the web pages. Do you find the same

kind of multi-voicing as that in the marketing of Ben&Jerry’s?

Discussion

As with formal linguistic patterning, it seems that while there is great

ingenuity and wit in multi-voicing in advertisements, it is also constrained

by purpose. However many voices may be present, the injunction to buy

the product must in some way shine through and be the ascendant or

dominant voice. Indeed, advertisements often seem to rely on our very

own knowingness to come to an interpretation which suits their

purposes. For example, in attempting to interpret the line in the

advertisement you saw earlier, ‘Dixons … The last place you want to go’,

the fact that we know the advertisement must be pushing us to buy the

goods on offer makes us search for a positive meaning – that the

company is the ultimate, reliable port of call for Christmas shopping.

I would argue that a key difference between literary and advertising

texts is that literary texts are more fundamentally heteroglossic and that

the reader of literary multi-voicing is not pushed towards one

particular interpretation or response.

3.6 Multimodality, literature and advertising

The theories of literary creativity on which we have drawn so far – a

Jakobsonian stylistics and a Bakhtinian discourse analysis – have in

common a view of creativity and complexity as a property of the text.

The former approach dwells on the manipulation and patterning of

linguistic forms – the phonology, grammar and lexis. The latter, though

it sees the act of communication as always contextualised and subject

to infinitely various interpretation, is nevertheless, in application, also

very much concerned with text and the ways in which different voices


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are written into the text through devices, nuances and intertextual

echoes. (The Austen opening resonates with the voice of gossip; the

Ben&Jerry history evokes sentimental success stories and hippy

manifestos.)

Yet literary discourse, like any other discourse, cannot achieve meaning

through text alone. In order to be realised as communication it needs

in some sense to be performed, to take on life in a particular place, for

particular people, who interpret in specific and various ways. Post-

Jakobsonian stylistics has moved very much in this direction, adding to

the Jakobsonian perspective a concern with the process of

understanding, and the ways in which literariness is as much a product

of reception as text (Jeffries and McIntyre, 2010). Marketing too is

necessarily obsessed with both predicting and monitoring actual

audience response.

When a work of literature is realised in physical performance – the

production of a play, the recitation of a poem – the written language

becomes inseparably associated with other modes of communication.

Performance is, in other words, multimodal. When a play is produced

and performed, the words of the text are firmly linked to particular

sights and sounds – the costumes, gestures, props and movements of

the characters. It matters whether it happens inside or in the open air,

in a packed theatre with an excited audience, or in some cold, empty

hall with sparse and indifferent auditors. A performance is, in other

words, a conjunction of semiotically laden elements – sight, sound,

clothing, layout, movement, temperature and even smell are all part of

(and can all play a part in) effect and interpretation. Again, this is as

true of non-literary performances as it is of literary ones. Think of the

conjunction of robes, incense, light, chanting and stained glass involved

in some ritualistic religious observance.

And yet there are degrees of importance and salience among the

different modes involved. There is a sense in which, in the

performance of literary texts, while the realisation of a written text

through other modes is inevitable and important, the text (the

linguistic resource on which the performance is based) takes

precedence over the other modes which accompany its realisation. It is

the text which is the starting point. There may be an infinity of

possible Hamlets and Hamlets (i.e. interpretations of the character and

productions of the play), but they all draw on the same resource, and it

is this resource which gives them significance, interest and value, and

remains at the core of what we are watching. A play encountered in a


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particular production, or a poem known only through performance, is

inevitably interpreted and performed – but there is also a printed text

against which to interpret that interpretation. Conversely, even a novel

– at least when encountered ‘cold’ without the guiding hand of a

literature teacher or literary critic – still needs to be realised by a

particular reader in a particular place, to be ‘performed’ by the reader

to themselves (albeit if this use of ‘performance’ is partly

metaphorical).

In advertising and marketing this hierarchical relationship between the

modes is usually different. Words and other modes are indissolubly

linked and have come into being together: an interdependence which is

arguably becoming stronger as communication technology develops

and options for visual effects become greater. There are no alternative

possible performances of an advertisement or a campaign as there are

for a play or poem. Thus, while it is possible to isolate the text of an

advertisement or a campaign, as we have above, this has a quite

different feel from the act of going back to the text of a play or poem

after seeing it performed, in order to interpret the interpretation. In

advertising and marketing, texts and visual effects are inseparable. The

words of the McDonald’s advertisement, for example, have no available

separate textual existence (other than in academic analyses, such as this

one, or suggestions for their pedagogic use). The Ben&Jerry marketing

texts are – when looked at online – realised through a choice of fonts,

colours, layout, pictures and hyperlinks, all of which contribute to their

light-hearted appeal, just as much as, or even more than, the words.

The discussion so far has moved outwards from the formal features of

text towards consideration of the communicative effects of these

features, and to their interaction with other modes of communication,

such as visual images. The underlying assumption has been that the

phenomenon of creativity, whether in literature, advertising or other

discourse, cannot be understood or assessed without consideration of

its full communicative context. This includes the political dimension of

the communicative context, a theme explored in the following section.

3.7 The political dimension of the global reach of

advertising

The nature of advertising is not politically neutral, its very existence

being predicated on some form of capitalist system. Although

capitalism in its various realisations is the dominant and thus, perhaps


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for many people, natural political system of the twenty-first century, it

is not so long ago that an alternative, Communist ideology held sway

in large parts of the world. It is therefore illuminating to look back to

the time of the collapse of the centrally planned economies of Eastern

Europe in the 1990s to examine what the advertising industry itself

was saying about these new potential markets, and how the words used

reveal an underlying ideological world view.

Activity 3.6

Allow about 2 hours

Turn to Reading A, ‘The discourse of Western marketing’ by Helen Kelly-

Holmes at the end of this chapter. This reading provides an interesting

perspective on the spread of Western marketing discourse into Eastern

Europe at a politically significant period of history. Kelly-Holmes takes a

CDA approach to identifying the underlying ideology to be found in the

descriptions of this new market by the advertising industry.

As you read, consider the following questions:

. What underlying ideological assumptions are revealed in the

language of the marketing and advertising industry that Kelly-Holmes

analyses?

. What sort of textual evidence does Kelly-Holmes draw on?

. How creative or poetic would you regard the language which is

highlighted in the reading?

Discussion

Kelly-Holmes argues that there are assumptions in the language of the

advertising and marketing world which are revealed through close

analysis. She identifies the ways in which capitalism is equated to

democracy and how the Western political model is seen as normal while

the previous Communist system is described in terms of its aberrance.

Kelly-Holmes uses the ‘Textline’ database which comprises a range of

text types, such as interviews, reports and speeches. By searching key

words such as ‘advertising’ and ‘Eastern Europe’, she sought to identify

texts which were explicitly discussing advertising at a particular moment

in ‘Eastern European’ history.

Some of the language highlighted by Kelly-Holmes is clearly poetic. As

shown earlier in this chapter, figurative language can be striking. For

instance, the images of the Wild West that are identified by Kelly-Holmes

add colour while reinforcing their ideological message. However, as the


143

author herself points out, much of the language used is probably done

so subconsciously. This lays bare interesting questions with regard to

intention and its role in both creative and political texts: to what extent

should intention be seen as a prerequisite to creativity? Is political

ideology all the more powerful when it is unconscious and taken for

granted?

It is unsurprising that advertising is a ubiquitous feature of people’s

lives in countries which operate in political systems that are essentially

capitalist. After all, it is an important tool in facilitating the buying and

selling of goods. However, it can be argued that it has had an

ideological impact beyond its promotion of a capitalist political system.

It is also seen as an important channel for the global spread of

English, a language regarded by some as a threat to the world’s

linguistic and cultural diversity and as a means of inculcating an Anglo-

Saxon viewpoint and imposing it on others. For a long time English

has been widely used in advertising to markets where it is not the first

language. In The Future of English, David Graddol (1997) makes

frequent references to the role of advertising in the growth of English

as the pre-eminent international language, placing ‘Advertising for

global brands’ high in a table of ‘Major international domains of

English’ (Graddol, 1997, p. 8).

There is, however, a tension in international marketing between

motives for ‘localisation’ – the tailoring of campaigns to specific

markets and thus to a greater use of ‘local’ languages – and an impetus

for globalisation – in which the same campaign is used across different

locations, effectively ignoring, or at least downplaying, these local

languages (for discussion of localisation, see Chapter 5). And in some

quarters ‘localisation’ seems to be gaining strength. In a later

publication on a related topic, Graddol (2006) has much less to say

about the role of advertising in the spread of English and reports

instead an opposite tendency:

In response to the spread of English and increased

multilingualism arising from immigration, many countries have

introduced language laws in the last decade. In some, the use of

languages other than the national language is banned in public

spaces such as advertising.

(Graddol, 2006, p. 116)


144

However, it is very easy to oversimplify the picture when discussing

the spread of English globally and see it simply in terms of two

opposing forces: the globalising, homogenising effect of the spread of

English and the resistant localising forces that insist on the use of

‘local’ languages. To illustrate this point, Reading B provides an insight

into the potential elements at play in deciding which language is most

effective when advertising products in an Indian setting.

Activity 3.7


Turn to Reading B, ‘Language choice in advertising to bilinguals’ by

Aradhna Krishna and Rohini Ahluwalia, at the end of this chapter. As you

read consider the following question:

Which factors, according to the authors, should a company selling in

India take into account when choosing a language to advertise in?

Discussion

Krishna and Ahluwalia’s findings indicate that, unsurprisingly, a company

needs to bear consumers’ preconceptions in mind. These relate to the

symbolic significance given to different languages – in this case, English

and Hindi. Although both are positively evaluated by the research

informants, they have contrasting associations: English being seen as

sophisticated and modern, while Hindi carries a sense of national pride

and of community. As a result, for example, English seems to ‘fit’ the

advertising slogan for a luxury product more easily than it does for a

product seen as a necessity. However, consumers’ attitudes are even

further complicated by other considerations beyond the product and its

slogan. It seems that whether a company is local or multinational also

influences the degree to which potential consumers consider its choice

of language or languages appropriate or not. The findings suggest that

multinational companies are allowed less leeway in this regard than local

ones are. Krishna and Ahluwalia’s article points to the complexity that

often operates in multilingual environments in advertising and other

communicative fields.

The symbolic significance of different languages is clearly an important

factor in deciding which language to advertise in. Even in

advertisements for English-speaking consumers in English-speaking

countries, other languages are used to give certain flavours to certain

products, by drawing on national stereotypes. Thus, French may occur


145

untranslated in perfume names and copy to connote elegance, high

fashion and sophistication. The perfume Ma Griffe, for example,

maintains its French name when sold in the UK, presumably to lend it

the kudos of Frenchness, rather than because many English-speaking

purchasers appreciate the pun (une griffe can mean both ‘a designer

label’ and ‘a claw mark’.) The German phrase Vorsprung durch Technik

(roughly translated as ‘advancement through technology’) is used by

the German car manufacturer Audi, presumably to evoke stereotypical

associations of German manufacture with efficiency and reliability.

Italian may be used in food advertisements for English-speaking

markets to connote excellent traditional home cooking.

The use of English in advertisements across the world may be partly

motivated by similar considerations, but is also more complex, driven

additionally by the ascendancy of English as the main international

language. English is used not only for aesthetic or entertainment

reasons, but because it is a major communicative resource in the

delivery of services to an international clientele.

Literature too may appear to be implicated in the spread and

ascendancy of English and arguably in a corresponding detrimental

effect on the languages it eats into or replaces. Among postcolonial

writers there has been a parallel earlier debate to that between

‘localisers’ and ‘globalisers’ in marketing. Some, such as the late

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (e.g. 1999 [1976]) have argued for the

virtues of writing in English because of its global reach, while others,

such as Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (e.g. 1986), insist on writing

only in their own ‘local’ language. Yet there are key differences

between this debate about the use of English in literature and that

about its use in advertising. For while the effects of the global use of

English in commerce may be perceived as being generally

homogenising, spreading particular ideologies and perspectives

associated with the UK and the USA, the effects of postcolonial

literature in English (at least in intention) is quite the contrary, as these

words of Chinua Achebe make clear:

[M]y answer to the question Can an African ever learn English well

enough to be able to use it ef fectively in creative writing? is certainly

yes. If on the other hand you ask: Can he ever learn to use it as a

native speaker? I should say, I hope not. It is neither necessary nor

desirable for him to be able to do so. The price a world language


146

must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of

use.

(Achebe, 1999 [1976], p. 212)

3.8 Conclusion

The superficial similarity but fundamental dissimilarity between literary

and commercial uses of English may serve as a cue for us to reflect in

conclusion on all the aspects of creativity in the two spheres that have

been examined in this chapter. You have looked at formal linguistic

characteristics of literary creativity, their functions and purposes, their

integration with other modes of communication and, lastly, their

relation to the continuing growth of English in the world. From all

these perspectives it is very hard to establish any decisive unequivocal

boundary between linguistic creativity in literary and commercial

discourse. The borders of literary language have been, and will

continue to be, a vexed problem for scholars. In my view, there

remains some deeper distinction, which stylistic analysis – whether at a

micro or a macro level – cannot quite reach. The problems of

distinguishing literary from commercial creativity linguistically may

serve to point us elsewhere and to conclude that while surface features

are important to both, it is in effects and values that a more

fundamental difference resides.

A good poem can move us to tears, illuminate our deepest human

experiences and will bear thousands of repetitions. A good novel

creates an alternative world, whose characters become important

figures in our lives. Literary creativity can create new ways of seeing,

aid our understanding of the most important aspects of life (love,

sexuality, friendship, family, ageing, death, suffering, failure), widen our

cultural and social perspectives and imbue us with a sense of beauty

and profundity. The use of superficially similar creativity in advertising,

while it may achieve incidental heights of wit and ingenuity, remains

fatally constrained by its limited overriding purpose – to make a profit.

References

Achebe, C. (1999 [1976]) ‘Morning yet on creation day’, in Ogbaa, K.Understanding Things Fall Apart: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, andHistorical Documents, Westport, CT, The Greenwood Press, pp. 216–22.

Austen, J. (1985 [1813]) Pride and Prejudice, Harmondsworth, Penguin.


147

Bakhtin, M. M. (1984 [1929]) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (trans. C.Emerson), Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Balzac, H. de (2013 [1826]) Sarrasine, Project Gutenberg ebook [Online].Available at www.gutenberg.org/files/1826/1826-h/1826-h.htm (Accessed 12February 2016).

Barthes, R. (2008) [1968]) ‘The death of the author’, in Lodge, D. and Wood,N. (eds) Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, 3rd edn, Harlow, PearsonEducation, pp. 313–16.

Ben&Jerry’s (2016) ‘Our values’, Ben&Jerrry’s [Online]. Available at www.benjerry.co.uk/values (Accessed 12 February 2016).

Blake, W. (1970 [1794]) Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the TwoContrary States of the Human Soul, London, Oxford University Press.

Graddol, D. (1997) ‘The future of English: a guide to forecasting thepopularity of the English language in the 21st century’, Bournemouth University[Online]. Available at https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/business-postgraduate/files/2014/09/CIGBE-The-Future-of-English.pdf (Accessed 26May 2016).

Graddol, D. (2006) ‘English next: why global English may mean the end of“English as a foreign language”’, The British Council [Online]. Available athttp://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/books-english-next.pdf(Accessed 26 May 2016).

Jakobson, R. (1960) ‘Concluding statement: linguistics and poetics’, in Sebeok,T. A. (ed.) Style in Language, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, pp. 350–77.

Jeffries, L. and McIntyre, D. (2010) Stylistics, Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press.

Leech, G. and Short, M. (2007) Style in Fiction, 2nd edn, London, Longman.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) Decolonising the Mind, London, James Currey.

Unilever (2015) Ben&Jerry’s: History [Online]. Available at www.unilever.ca/our-brands/detail/ben-and-jerrys/396352/ (Accessed 29 April 2015).

Willmott, R. (ed.) (2011) William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience,Oxford, Oxford University Press.


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Reading A: The discourse of Western marketing

Helen Kelly-Holmes

Source: Edited version from Kelly-Holmes, H. (1998) ‘The discourse ofWestern marketing professionals in central and eastern Europe: their role inthe creation of a context for marketing and advertising messages’, Discourseand Society, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 339–62.

INTRODUCTION

One of the inevitable consequences of the collapse of the planned

economies of central and eastern Europe has been the banishing

of a rival, alternative discourse to the sidelines in many spheres of

economic, cultural and political thought. In its place, the

dominant or dominating discourse has indeed proclaimed the

triumph and legitimacy of the market. It seemed that a turning

point, a fundamental break with the past dichotomy of Left and

Right had been reached in the discourse of the market; for some

– most prominent among these Fukuyama (1992) – it was more

of a dead-end, the end of a search for alternative forms of socio-

economic order and the accompanying grand narrative. The

ideology of consumption and self-actualization through lifestyle

purchase seemed to have been vindicated, and consumers and the

producers of market discourses could now be comforted by the

fact that the alternative had been disproven in what was now seen

as a brief and ultimately flawed exercise. As Jameson states,

Everyone is now willing to mumble, as though it were an

inconsequential concession in passing to public opinion and

current received wisdom (or shared communicational

presuppositions) that no society can function efficiently

without the market. (Jameson, 1991: 263)

The rush to fill the vacuum left behind by ‘socialism’ and

‘communism’ has been led by marketers and entrepreneurs, and,

as Cook (1992: 16) predicted, advertising and other ‘capitalist’

discourses have become more widespread in the countries of the

former ‘Soviet Bloc’.

[…]


149

Advertising is always carefully planned in minute detail with an

above-average awareness of the extra-lingual task. But advertisers

and markerters operating in East Germany were not only very

aware of the micro strategy, in terms of a particular campaign, but

also of the macro task, in terms of restructuring the economy as a

whole and implementing the process of consumerization. As one

West German banking executive put it, ‘Our task is to turn those

brought up under communism into fully-functioning capitalists’

(Waller, 1992). […]

SOCIALIZATION, CONSUMERISATION,

INTERTEXTUALITY AND CONTEXT

In the market society, the social conditions for the production

and consumption (Fairclough, 1989) of marketing and advertising

texts are present due to the existence of the institutions of the

market and its discourses which not only assume but also

reinforce the status quo of the consumer society. As Fairclough

states, ‘discourse and practice in general … are both the products

of structures and the producers of structures’ (1989: 39).

The notion of ‘market discourse’ is particularly complex and

multi-layered. It relies for its success on not only highly

sophisticated intertextuality, but also on a multi-dimensional and

reflexive relationship between texts, commodities, individuals and

societies. The whole relationship and the constituent parts are all

market discourses. If we confine our objects of study to obvious

genres such as advertising and public relations, we miss out on

much of today’s market discourses and their functioning. Thus,

not just advertising and public relations, but also shop fronts and

windows, packaging and labelling, information leaflets and

mailshots, direct mail and telesales communicate their message by

intentionally and unintentionally appealing to a variety of both

practical and obscure culture-based needs and by relying on

consumer familiarity with the discourse of marketing and

knowledge of the market system. […]

For the producer of market discourses in the existing market

society, the social conditions of production and consumption are

taken for granted; they are part of the framework of that society

and therefore much of this socialization is actually undertaken

unintentionally. For most members of the consumer society who

now participate in the market, there is no sense of


150

consumerization, of the deliberate construction or imposition of a

consumer identity or discourse. Since their earliest memories,

market discourses – i.e. discourses which not only originate from

but also assume the market society – have permeated all aspects

of their lives. They are, therefore, socialized consumers, and

producers of market discourses thus focus on the micro

advertising task in terms of presenting a new product, lifestyle,

service etc.; their preoccupation is with the ‘new’ (Halliday, 1985)

or ‘entropic’ (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) component of the

advertising text, taking consumer understanding of the framework

of the market, its vocabulary, its rituals, its truths and common-

sense assumptions, as ‘given’ (Halliday, 1985) or ‘redundant’

(Shannon and Weaver, 1949). Market discourses are read within

the ‘pattern of “preferred” meanings’ (Hall, 1993: 207), supported

by the frameworks of knowledge, relations of production and the

technical infrastructure (Hall, 1993: 207) of the consumer society.

In the former planned economies of central and eastern Europe,

the case is reversed. Here, the process of consumerisation could

be observed. Rather than simply communicating with the

socialized consumer, advertising, marketing and media agencies

were faced with ‘unconsumerised’ citizens. As Ferguson (1990)

states, public discourse in today’s society constitutes and is

constituted by processes of informational and cultural exchange

‘which are shared, widely available and communal in character’

(1990: ix). This was clearly not the case when western advertisers

and marketers brought their discourses East. […]

THE STUDY

Fifty texts were selected for study through the ‘Textline’ database

(published by Reuters), using the key words ‘advertising’ and

‘eastern Europe’. The selection contains a variety of text types,

principally interviews, reports and speeches. The database

comprises a very comprehensive source of texts dealing with

economics, marketing, advertising and finance from the British,

European, American and international business press and also

specialist journals for marketing and advertising professionals. On

the surface, the discourse community appears relatively

homogeneous in terms of occupation and education and also in

terms of assumptions about the market, since the texts are being

produced and consumed within the context of the international


151

business community. The members of the discourse community

could be said to operate within a ‘professional code’ (Hall, 1993:

209). However, the cultural diversity in the ethos, interpretation

and operation of market systems would lead to caution in

assigning producers and users to a uniform category – with one

exception: these are all people talking about the formerly planned

economies of central and eastern Europe to others who are

interested in these economies for a variety of reasons, many in

terms of marketing objectives. The discourse objects – the

citizens of these countries – are thus not generally part of the

discourse community.

The objective of the study was not a detailed analysis of the

discourse of these marketers, an in-depth study of the ‘how’ of

what they are saying; instead the emphasis was on the ‘what’ –

specifically what they are saying about the necessity for an

ideologically compatible context and intertextual sphere within

which their texts can be received; what their discourse tells us

implicitly and what they themselves tell us explicitly about the

operation of a dominating, hegemonic discourse on an everyday

basis.

The selected texts were examined with the objective of answering

the following questions:

. What intertextual relations exist? Can we hear echoes of the

triumphal incantation of capitalism? Are the status quo of the

market economy and the consumer society and the common-

sense assumptions and truths of consumerism given and

uncontested? To what extent does the discourse of marketers

and advertisers feed on the narratives and myths of triumph

and conquer?

. Does the discourse display an awareness of the macro

function, the need to construct an ideologically compatible

context and intertextual sphere? How do the producers of

these texts see their role in the process?

. Do marketing and advertising professionals construct

themselves triumphalistically in relation to the pre-existing

context? Do the agents construct themselves as economically,

educationally, culturally superior? How do they refer to the


152

objects of the discourse? What role do the citizens of these

countries play in the discourse?

INTERTEXTUAL RELATIONS – ECHOES OF THE

TRIUMPHAL INCANTATION OF CAPITALISM

‘Capitalism’ = democracy

The assumption underlying many of the textual features of the

discourse is the common-sense truth among economists and

politicians of the Right and centre that the ‘free’ market equals

democracy and that the market has brought democracy and

freedom. The market is presented as a fundamental part of the

democratic process and so are its discourses. […]

[…]

The texts of international organizations with explicit ideological

aims form an (unconscious) intertextual sphere for advertisers and

marketers in central and eastern Europe and their texts are

echoed in the discourse of these individuals. For example, this

perceived equation of the market with freedom is especially

pronounced in the media, where advocates express the conviction

that ‘only free markets can guarantee diversity of expression’

(Murdock, 1992: 21). Thus, private media are assumed to be

democratic and incorruptible, unlike their state-owned

counterparts. Murdock’s use of the limitor ‘only’ and the modality

of ‘can’ are indicative of this widespread belief in private media as

guarantors of democracy and incorruptibility, unlike their state-

owned counterparts:

Boguslaw Chrabota, programming director of Poland’s

national commercial channel Polsat, cited recent national

elections in the country as proof that private stations were

less subject to political pressures than their public

counterparts. (TEXT 46)

An ad firm executive who declined to be named said foreign

agencies are often kept out of bidding for governmental

advertising contracts. One thing that is likely to help the

growth of advertising is the end of the state monopoly over

airwaves which has allowed the establishment of private

television stations. (TEXT 46)


153

[…]

Westernizing = Normalizing

The triumphalism of the pro-market commentators and the self-

satisfaction of western ‘capitalism’ echo Fukuyama’s contention

that we have now reached the end of History in terms of the end

of a search for the ideal economy and society (Fukuyama, 1992).

Such intellectual discourse forms part of the intertextual sphere

within which the texts of the advertising and marketing agencies

[sic] – not in a direct, explicit way, but rather in a subconscious

way through the infiltration of the discourse into all aspects of

public life in western economies and societies. As Barthes (1981)

puts it, they are ‘unconscious or automatic quotations, given

without the quotation marks’ (p. 39).

Excluded from their considerations is any counter discourse, no

alternative is heard, although, as Keegan points out, ‘Communism

has failed, but capitalism has not succeeded’ (1992: vii).

[…]

Thus, underlying the discourse of marketing and advertising

agencies are the texts of the western market society and the

intertextual relationships and assumptions upon which they are

based. The period of ‘actually existing socialism’ or ‘communism’

in its varieties is seen as something transient – a temporary

deviation from the norm, as illustrated by the following extract:

Shell had its first links with Eastern Europe last century,

links which were interrupted by the arrival of

Communism, but which gradually resumed during the 50s.

It was not until the last few years that trade has blossomed

again. (TEXT 28)

Here, too, we see the penetration of positive, growth metaphors

in the discourse and their association with trade, the market and

‘capitalism’. The process of economic reform and the

introduction of the consumer society is viewed by media and

advertising professionals as something normalizing, stabilizing; the

economy and society are being returned – with the aid of these

new market discourses – to an assumed norm of ‘capitalism’, the

ideal of the market which allows things to ‘blossom’. In these

texts, the problems – economic and otherwise – being


154

experienced by these countries are presented as being inherently

linked to the system of the planned economy. The market system,

on the other hand, is presented as providing the solution:

… when will Western investment penetrate other parts of

Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent

States, where advertising conditions are chaotic and

problems of political instability and geographical barriers

to distribution recall Gogol. (TEXT 23)

There is still a great deal of disorganisation on some of the

channels and advertising practices have a long way to

develop. (TEXT 23)

Conditions are ‘chaotic’ because they do not conform to the

western model; western investment in the media is presented as

the great white hope, the civilizing, stabilizing and normalizing

influence, as evidenced by the use of the rhetorical question,

which gives the question experiential value.

[…]

Go East to the Wild West – Dominant myths and narratives

A key characteristic of the discourse of marketing, advertising and

media professionals in the sample selected is the use of symbolic

language which invokes the imagery of the Wild West and

colonization – two grand narratives of triumph and conquer in

western culture. The economies and societies of central and

eastern Europe are presented as wild and lawless frontiers, the

advertisers and media professionals as the civilizing, pioneering

spirits. They are invariably ‘pushing forward’, settling ‘new

territories’. Investigating the use of metaphor in the discourse is

particularly revealing, since ‘different metaphors imply different

ways of dealing with things’ (Fairclough, 1989: 120) and evidence

‘different ideological attachments’ (p. 119).

Central and Eastern European commercial television

pioneer, Central European Media. (TEXT 41)

I really enjoyed the pioneering spirit of the place. (TEXT

24 – young advertising executive talking about his work in

Budapest)


155

Hungary offered us the chance to go where no ad men

had gone before. (TEXT 24)

Sony Broadcast and Professional Europe has furthered its

push into Eastern Europe by opening a branch in Warsaw,

Poland. (TEXT 19)

The countries themselves are referred to in terms of frontier

imagery:

[The former Soviet Bloc] is probably the last

underdeveloped market. (TEXT 29)

Over the next couple of years, I see a tremendous amount

of new territory. (TEXT 13)

Others … have already established a strong foothold in

other East and Central European territories. (TEXT 18)

In fact, much of the language used is reminiscent of the colonial

discourse of the last century:

Poland is perceived as the jewel in the crown. (TEXT 18)

An image of lawlessness, implicitly linked to the Wild West

mentality, also pervades the discourse. The cowboy tactics which

advertising agencies get away with tend to be blamed on the

perceived lawlessness of these states:

‘The rules change so fast, and often nobody takes notice of

new rules: it’s like the Wild West,’ said Bernd Ahlbrecht,

Hamburg-based marketing manager for Central and Eastern

Europe at German cigarette marketer H.F. and Ph.F.

Reemtsma. ‘We have to do whatever we can.’ As a result,

cigarette marketers ignore the law and advertise everywhere

except broadcast media (TEXT 15)

The speaker’s choice of the pronoun ‘we’ not only refers to the

actions of his agency; ‘we’ is extended to encompass all ‘right-

minded’ people. The pious intention contained in the statement

‘We have to do whatever we can’, is reminiscent of the discourse

of aid workers in reports brought back from the sight of a human

tragedy.


156

It is ironic that this lawlessness in the area of advertising

regulations is linked inherently with the legacy of the centrally

planned economy, rather than being blamed on unfettered

‘capitalism’ – the ‘pure market’ or the ‘extreme free market’

(Keegan, 1992: 99) – which exists in many of these countries and

regions.

[…]

CONCLUSION

Examining the discourse of western marketing and advertising

professionals in former centrally planned economies of central

and eastern Europe not only provides key insights into how these

‘reconstituted’ societies are evolving and being directed to evolve,

it also shows how the triumphal discourse of capitalism both

feeds and is fed by the texts and context-building activities of

these individuals. There is a fundamental textual interrelationship

between them – both are the expression of the other, both rely

on each other for legitimacy. The hegemonic discourse can too

easily be seen as something unattached, something different which

hovers and provides a nebulous framework, but does not exist or

operate on a micro, everyday basis. As Jameson states ‘the

ideology of the market is unfortunately not some supplementary

ideational or representational luxury or embellishment that can be

removed from the economic problem … it is somehow generated

by the thing itself, as its objectively necessary afterimage’ (1991:

260).

[…]

The discourse of consumerization in central and eastern Europe

also highlights the key role which the producers of market

discourses often unwittingly play in socialization. Again, they are

usually highly aware of the immediate micro educational/

socialization task of the particular market discourse; however, the

role they play in constructing and reaffirming the status quo of

the market and imparting its rituals and discourses to socialized

consumers takes place at a far more ‘passive’ level – passive being

understood here as non-deliberate or not conscious rather than

non-active or non-participatory. On the part of consumers, the

socialization is also far more ‘passive’ than, for instance, deliberate

socialization through pedagogy or religious instruction. By

observing the awareness among advertising and marketing


157

professionals operating in central and eastern Europe of this

pedagogical/socialization function and its more direct, less subtle

manifestation in these countries, we also gain an insight into how

much of socialization in the market society takes place at a non-

deliberate, non-conscious level through media and market

discourses.

[…]

[…] There is no formal ideology to which these marketers and

advertisers adhere; they would not consider themselves to be

ideologues and in fact the term ‘ideology’ does not occur in their

discourse, except, significantly, in reference to the former Soviet

bloc. They do not see themselves as part of some grand

conspiracy, but rather as doing their job. This is, perhaps, the true

triumph of market ideology and its discourses: its assumed

normalcy, its status as the given way of life from which there may

be minor deviations but not serious alternatives. It is at the

ordinary, everyday level that the discourse has truly come to

dominate and that its triumphal incantation – by virtue of its very

mundanity – is most audible.


Barthes, R. (1981) ‘Theory of the Text’, in R. Young (ed.) Untying

the Text – a Post-Structuralist Reader. London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul.

Cook, G. (1992) The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge.

Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. Harlow: Longman.

Ferguson, M. (1990) Public Communication: The New Imperatives.

London: Sage.

Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man.

London: Hamish Hamilton.

Hall, S. (1993) ‘Encoding/Decoding’, in D. Graddol and O. Boyd-

Barrett (eds) Media Texts: Authors and Readers, pp. 200–11.

Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar.

London: Edward Arnold.


158

Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism. London: Verso.

Keegan, W. (1992) The Spectre of Capitalism. London: Radius.

Murdock, G. (1992) ‘Citizens, Consumers and Public Culture’, in

M. Skovmand and K.C. Schroder (eds) Media Cultures –

Reappraising Transnational Media, pp. 17–41. London: Routledge.

Shannon, C. and W. Weaver (1949) The Mathematical Theory of

Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Waller, D. (1992) ‘Germany: European Finance and Investment,

Germany 2 – Spearheading the Transition’, Financial Times (1

July): 2.

Texts from Textline corpus used in this reading

Text 15: EASTERN EUROPE: Mussey, Dagmar and Kariel, Ken

(1993) ‘Reemtsma Takes West Cigarettes East’, Advertising Age

(Apr.).

Text 18: EASTERN EUROPE: Bateman, Louise (1995) ‘Rising in

the East’, Broadcast (7 Apr.).

Text 19: POLAND: Sony Eastern Push. Broadcast (11 Nov. 1994):

11.

Text 23: EASTERN EUROPE: Syfret, Toby (1992) ‘Advertising

Budgets are Growing at a Rate of 700 Per Cent a Year and Selling

Out Fast’, Broadcast (9 Apr. 1992): 42.

Text 24: HUNGARY: Marshall, Caroline (1995) ‘Postcard from

Budapest’, Campaign (9 June): 28.

Text 28: EASTERN EUROPE: ‘Campaign Report on

International Advertising – Shell and OGILVY and MATHER

Tread with Care’, Campaign (25 Sep.): 34.

Text 29: EASTERN EUROPE: ‘Campaign Report on

International Advertising – Soho meets Warsaw’, Campaign (25

Sep. 1992): 31.

Text 41: SLOVAKIA: ‘CME Losses Rise. BIPCIT’, CBSEXP

(May 1996): 16.


159

Text 46: UKRAINE: ‘Polish Media Focus’, CBSEXP (Apr. 1996):

16.


160

Reading B: Language choice in advertising to

bilinguals

Aradhna Krishna and Rohini Ahluwalia

Source: Edited version from Krishna, A. and Ahluwalia, R. (2008) ‘Languagechoice in advertising to bilinguals: asymmetric effects for multinationalsversus local firms’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 35, December,pp. 692–705.

Several countries in Southeast Asia (e.g., Singapore, Japan, and

India), Europe (e.g., Holland, Belgium, and many Western

European nations), North America (e.g., United States), and

North Africa (e.g., Morocco, Algeria, Chad, and Tunisia) have

bilingual populations. Many of these populations are fairly fluent

in a “foreign” language (typically English or French) as well as at

least one local or native language. Advertising to these

populations includes an additional layer of complexity, that is, the

choice of language for advertising. A number of options exist: the

ads could be in either one of the primary languages or could have

a bilingual format containing a mixture of the two languages

(e.g., Spanglish, Hinglish, or Singlish, which combine English with

Spanish, Hindi, and Malay/Cantonese, respectively). This issue is

becoming increasingly crucial for multinational corporations

(MNCs) that need to weigh the advantages of single language use

(e.g., English) across markets versus the complexities of

communicating their message in the local language or a mixed

language ad. One option may be to follow the lead of local

companies in making advertising language choices. Our research

sheds some light on the feasibility of this decision rule.

Even as MNCs make inroads into bilingual markets, there is a

paucity of research that specifically addresses the increasingly

consequential issue of advertising language. Although a significant

body of research in consumer behavior has examined the

cognitive structures, memory, and organization of information by

bilinguals (e.g., Tavassoli and Han 2001; Zhang and

Schmitt 2004), few researchers have focused on the role of

language in the persuasion process for consumers (see Koslow,

Shamdasani, and Touchstone [1994] and Luna and Peracchio

[2005a, 2005b] for exceptions). Importantly, the extant persuasion

research examining bilinguals has been conducted within contexts


161

(e.g., Hispanics, French, and Singaporeans) in which one language

(majority language or the language spoken by the group that holds

power and prestige, e.g., English or French) has positive

associations for the audience, while the other (minority language

or the language spoken by those low in power and prestige,

e.g., Spanish) has negative associations, such as inferiority

(e.g., Koslow et al. 1994; Luna and Peracchio 2005a, 2005b; Platt

and Weber 1984). Notably, in addition to favorability-related

associations, bilinguals are also likely to have other language-

specific perceptions (e.g., global, sophisticated, friendly, and sense

of belonging) in their language schemas (e.g., Myers-Scotton

1999, 2002). However, it is difficult to cleanly separate out the

effects of language favorability from language perceptions in the

context of majority-minority languages since favorability is often

confounded with language perceptions. Our research, therefore,

uses a bilingual context in which both languages are viewed

positively (urban India) and focuses on language perceptions

rather than on language favorability.

Prior research has also focused on mixed languages (e.g., Luna

and Peracchio 2001, 2005a). This is not surprising given the

increasing popularity of mixed languages like Spanglish in the

American marketplace. Our research investigates both mixed as

well as single language messages.

Using the existing literature in this area (e.g., Luna and Peracchio

2001, 2005a) as a starting point, we attempt to build a conceptual

framework for examining the broader issue of language choice in

persuasion of bilinguals. Two important moderators of the impact

of language choice on persuasion are identified and integrated in a

model of language effects: the country of origin of the company

and the product category of the brand. Specifically, given the

global context of this decision, our research attempts to

understand the extent to which MNCs can replicate the strategies

being used by local companies regarding language usage.

Additionally, we study language choice for MNCs versus local

firms as it pertains to different product categories (luxuries vs.

necessities).

…


162

PILOT STUDY: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONTEXT

The Indian Context

In middle and upper class urban India, children typically learn

Hindi (or their regional language, e.g., Tamil) first and learn

English later when they start going to school. In most schools,

either the language of primary instruction is English or English is

taught as a second language from the kindergarten year onward.

Both Hindi and English are spoken in informal social settings.

Bollywood movies (which are in Hindi) and Hindi language music

are popular throughout the country. Popular television serials are

in Hindi, but several from the United States (e.g., The Bold and the

Beautiful and Desperate Housewives) are also very popular. Among

the younger generation, Cartoon Network and MTV are as well

liked as Bollywood music, local music videos, and local television

channels (which are primarily in Hindi). Thus, people in India are

exposed to both English and Hindi all the time.

One thing to note is that in urban India, even when the ad

language is Hindi or mixed (Hindi and English), the written script

is typically roman for both languages, especially when the ad

appears in an English language magazine. Examples of Hindi and

mixed ads using the roman script are given in figure 1.

A review of the literature suggests some generalizable language-

related associations in bilingual cultures that use English as the

second language. Use of English in ads has come to suggest a

social stereotype – a symbol of modernity, progress,

sophistication, and a cosmopolitan identity (e.g., in Japan, Korea,

Germany, and India; Bhatia 2000; Piller 2003; Takashi 1990a,

1990b). However, the primary (or first) language is likely to have

high levels of belongingness associations, which connote a

stronger sense of closeness and in-group associations (e.g., Myers-

Scotton 1999, 2002). For instance, Koslow et al. (1994) found that

the use of Spanish was associated with respect for, sensitivity

toward, and association with the Hispanic community. In other

words, there may be a higher level of belongingness associated

with Hindi, while English may symbolize sophistication and

modernity in India.

Further, unlike the negative connotations of inferiority and lower

socioeconomic status associated with Spanish for Hispanics in the


163

United States (e.g., Luna and Peracchio 2005a), in India, the Hindi

language tends to have several positive associations, such as

solidarity, pride, nationalism, family, and belongingness, and is not

necessarily associated with lower social status (Bhatia 2000). We,

therefore, expect associations for both languages to be primarily

positive. …


164

FIGURE 1 EXAMPLES OF HINDI AND MIXED LANGUAGE MAGAZINE

ADVERTISEMENTS IN INDIA

[Summary of] Methodology

[Detailed descriptions of the methodology and findings as

presented in the original paper are omitted here. Instead, a

summary of the nature of the studies undertaken and an outline

of the conceptual framework used are given.

The authors undertook a pilot study in which bilingual

undergraduate students from Delhi University were given

questionnaires to investigate their attitudes towards using and

encountering English and Hindi in various contexts. As expected,

the findings showed that both languages were viewed favourably

but rather differently. English was associated with notions such as

‘globalness’, prestige and professionalism, while Hindi was linked

to a sense of family, closeness and belonging.

The findings from the pilot study were used as the basis for a

conceptual framework for looking at language use in advertising

to bilingual customers. This framework posits that when a

language is expected to be used in a particular context (i.e. it is

‘unmarked’), then the language is processed straightforwardly,

while if the language use is unexpected (i.e. ‘marked’), this triggers

the conscious common associations with that language.

Furthermore, the authors’ framework hypothesises that consumers

expect multinational companies (MNCs) to use English while, for

local companies, the local language or an informal mixture of that

language and English would be expected. The authors also point

to research which suggests that, when purchasing necessities,

consumers are drawn to product brands with which they feel

familiar and at home, while, with luxuries, they tend to value

sophistication and exclusivity over familiarity.

Two main studies were undertaken with a cohort of bilingual

undergraduates in which they were asked to evaluate the

effectiveness of ad slogans for detergent (a necessity) and

chocolate (a luxury). In Study 1, the slogans for each of the

products were either in English or in Hindi. In addition, the

students were given background information about the imagined

companies making the products which the students were told

were either multinational or locally based. In Study 2, the research

participants were exposed to slogans in English, in Hindi or in a

mixture of the two. Furthermore, they were asked to elaborate on

the different associations and thoughts which the slogans brought


165

to mind. The findings from the studies are included in the

discussion below.]

GENERAL DISCUSSION

…

It is important to note that although these data were collected in

India and are helpful in establishing the validity of the research

context, they reveal a set of associations that appear to be globally

generalizable. Past research conducted in several countries (Japan,

Korea, Germany, and Singapore) has revealed similar types of

associations with the local language (strong sense of closeness and

belongingness; e.g., Myers-Scotton 1999, 2002) versus English

(modern, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan; e.g., Piller 2003;

Takashi 1990a, 1990b), suggesting generalizability of the chosen

context and the underlying language perceptions.

Study 1 tests the role of company (local vs. MNC) in advertising

language choice, using single language ads. Consistent with our

conceptual framework, the findings reveal that language choice is

likely to matter to a significantly greater extent to MNCs than to

local companies. As such, across the two product categories tested

in our research (detergent for necessities and chocolate for

luxuries), language did not influence ad evaluations for the local

company. However, English emerged as a more effective choice

for luxury goods, and Hindi led to more favorable evaluations of

necessities, when the company was an MNC. Results of this

experiment suggest that MNCs need to be more cognizant about

language choices in global bilingual markets, and it would be ill

advised for them to simply follow the choices that appear to be

working for the local corporations. Thus, the choice of advertising

can be extremely important for MNCs, especially for positioning

the product.

Study 2, consequently, was designed to provide deeper insights

into the role of language for MNCs. It attempted to (a) zero in

on the processes underlying language effects on ad evaluations

and (b) extend the scope of research from single language slogans

to mixed language advertising. The results revealed that

consumers tend to use the perceptual associations of languages

that are most relevant for evaluating the product category

(sophistication for luxuries and belongingness for necessities … ).


166

Our research provides several novel and interesting insights about

language use for MNCs – relating to both single language as well

as mixed language ads. It identifies an important caveat relating to

the use of local language by an MNC. As study 2 reveals, the

unexpectedness of Hindi language choice by an MNC focuses a

lot of attention (more than even the mixed languages) on the

language of the ad (largest number of language-related cognitive

responses), heightening the perceiver’s skepticism, as reflected in

the increased counterargumentation, thereby, reducing the ad’s

persuasiveness. This outcome appears to be more likely as the

level of slogan elaboration increases (e.g., study 2 vs. study 1). As

such, the belongingness advantage that is implied by the use of

Hindi for necessities might be wiped out for consumers who

elaborate extensively on the slogan. These data appear to suggest

that MNCs should observe caution in the use of local language,

even in the domain of necessities (our findings suggest that use of

local language is clearly expected to backfire in the domain of

luxuries). In other words, localization of the ad language may be a

good strategy for necessities (for which belongingness is

important), but MNCs need to be cautious about going

completely local and might be better off using mixed language ads

for bilinguals.

In this regard, our findings highlight an important advantage of

mixed language messages for MNCs – they are able to capitalize

on the favorable associations of both languages without drawing

excessive attention to the language choice and, therefore, present

the “safe bet” option for advertising products that fall in the

category of necessities, in global bilingual markets. Mixed language

ads, in addition, might be the most feasible (and low risk) option,

if a product does not clearly fall in the luxury/necessity

distinction, since they are likely to elicit relevant and favorable

associations for both languages. They are also likely to be

relatively effective in the domain of luxuries, as study 2

demonstrates. It is important to note that the two mixed language

forms did not differ from each other in terms of their perceptual

associations (sophistication and belongingness) as well as overall

persuasiveness (slogan evaluation) for the two product categories

tested in this research.

An interesting finding from our studies is that local firms do not

necessarily have to use English to market luxuries in India. While


167

this seems to be the prevailing practice in India, our results show

that language choice, even for luxuries, has little impact for local

firms.

It is, however, important to note that the effects obtained in this

research (especially those related to the mixed language ads) may

only generalize to contexts in which the salient associations for

both languages are primarily positive. Thus, if the two languages

fall in the majority-minority category, one being perceived as

favorable and the other having predominantly unfavorable

associations, the language of the code-switched term is likely to

play a more important role (e.g., see Luna and Peracchio 2005a,

2005b). A useful avenue for future research may be to examine

the role of different language formats, when both favorability and

language-specific associations vary, by taking the joint influences

of both into account.

A possible limitation of our study is that the hypotheses were

tested in the context of a single product category of luxuries

(chocolates) and one category of necessities (detergent). Future

research could attempt to replicate our results using other product

categories of luxuries and necessities. However, selecting these

categories will require several critical considerations to rule out

potential confounds, such as the cost differential in the products,

country-of-origin effects in the category, whether it is a packaged

good or not, and the prevalence of branded items in the category.

We have examined belongingness and sophistication associations

of language. Future research could also look at these associations

for products by using a sophisticated product and a belongingness

product.

Another limitation of our research is that consumers in the

studies were well-educated individuals for whom both English and

Hindi may be regarded as favorable and for whom sophistication

might be a desirable brand attribute. Given our relatively

homogeneous sample, these findings should be generalized with

caution to other segments of the Indian population, for example,

rural India where education levels tend to be significantly lower.

Additional research should examine the generalizability of these

findings across different types of media. One interesting finding

of our pilot study was that the Indian participants were more

likely to read and write in English (vs. Hindi) but were more likely


168

to engage in conversations as well as seek entertainment

(e.g., movies) in Hindi (vs. English). Therefore, it is possible that

language-based effects may vary with the media of communication

(e.g., print v. broadcast).


Bhatia, Tej K. (2000), Advertising in Rural India: Language,

Marketing Communication, and Consumerism, Tokyo: Tokyo Press.

Koslow, Scott, Prem Shamdasani, and Ellen Touchstone (1994),

“Exploring Language Effects in Ethnic Advertising: A

Sociolinguistic Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Research, 20

(March), 575–85.

Luna, David and Laura A. Peracchio (2001), “Moderators of

Language Effects in Advertising to Bilinguals: A Psycholinguistic

Approach,” Journal of Consumer Research, 28 (September), 284–95.

——— (2005a), “Advertising to Bilingual Consumers: The Impact

of Code-Switching or Persuasion,” Journal of Consumer Research,

31 (4), 760–65.

——— (2005b), “Sociolinguistic Effects on Code-Switched Ads

Targeting Bilingual Consumers,” Journal of Advertising, 24 (2), 43–

56.

Myers-Scotton, Carol (1999), “Explaining the Role of Norms and

Rationality in Codeswitching,” Journal of Pragmatics, 32 (9), 1259–

71.

——— (2002), Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and

Grammatical Outcomes, New York: Oxford University Press.

Piller, Ingrid (2003), “Advertising as a Site of Language Contact,”

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 23, 170–83.

Platt, John and Heidi Weber (1984), “Speech Convergence

Miscarried: An Investigation into Inappropriate Accommodation

Strategies,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 46

(1), 131–46.

Takashi, K. (1990a) “English Elements in Japanese Advertising,”

English Today, 6, 45–46.

——— (1990b) “A Sociolinguistic Analysis of English Borrowings

in Japanese Advertising Texts,” World Englishes, 9, 327–41.


169

Tavassoli, Nader T. and Jin K. Han (2001), “Scripted Thought:

Processing Korean Hancha and Hangul in a Multimedia Context,”

Journal of Consumer Research, 28 (December), 482–92.

Zhang, Shi and Bernd H. Schmitt (2004), “Activating Sound and

Meaning: The Role of Language Proficiency in Bilingual

Consumer Environments,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31

(June), 220–28.


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Chapter 4 Language, creativity and the

politics of value

Deborah Cameron

4.1 Introduction

When English-speakers call someone or something ‘creative’, it is not

just a descriptive statement, it is typically also a judgement of value. In

this chapter you will consider some questions about the way in which

creativity in language is judged. What counts as using language

‘creatively’, and who has the authority to decide? Are all creative uses

of language valued equally, or are some considered ‘better’ than others?

How are judgements on linguistic creativity affected by social, cultural

and political considerations?

Activity 4.1


This activity invites you to reflect on the relationship between creativity

and value by considering how the word ‘creative’ is used in present-day

English. Start by consulting your own intuitions: what kinds of people or

activity would you be likely to describe as ‘creative’? Would you be

making a value judgement? If so, would it be positive or negative?

Now compare your intuitions with some evidence drawn from the usage

of a larger population. Below are some examples from the British

National Corpus (BNC). The BNC is a ‘reference corpus’ for British

English – a balanced, 100 million-word sample of authentic language

use stored in computer-readable form, which can be accessed online

(www.corpus.byu.edu/bnc/). The word ‘creative’ occurs around 2500

times. Do the following examples match your intuitions? What do they

tell us about creativity and value?

1 EXPERIENCED versatile creative musician, guitar,

fiddle, mandolin, seeks accomplished musician into

country roots for gigs, mainly duo, Gloucestershire.

2 From being among the dullest of Japan’s

manufacturers, Nissan has blossomed into one of its

most creative and capable.

Chapter 4 Language, creativity and the politics of value

171

3 Within a year he had moved to a more creative agency

and four years later was working at the then most

creative agency in London.

4 Possession of an academic qualification is evidence of

intellectual ability, of assiduous and successful study,

and of readiness to assume a creative and responsible

role in society.

5 Great ingenuity was expended in creative accounting

to get round overall spending limits or capital

allocations.

6 Geraldene Holt, whose books on cooking with herbs

have been well received, has written Creative Herb

Gardening.

7 Further, according to this more sophisticated

inductivism, creative acts, the most novel and

significant of which require genius and involving as they

do the psychology of individual scientists, defy logical

analysis.

8 We must programme our minds to be expansive and

creative and eliminate the words ‘I can’t’ from our

vocabulary.(Source: adapted from British National Corpus, 2016)

Discussion

We must be cautious about generalising from such limited evidence, but

the examples offer some support for the conclusion that ‘creative’ is

typically a positive value judgement. It frequently appears in close

proximity to other words denoting positive qualities (e.g. ‘versatile’,

‘capable’, ‘ingenuity’, ‘genius’), and in one example it is explicitly

contrasted with an adjective denoting a negative quality (Nissan is said

to have been one of Japan’s ‘dullest’ companies before it ‘blossomed’

into one of the ‘most creative’). Sometimes adding positive value (as

opposed to semantic content) seems to be its main function: this is true

for the book title in (6), for example, where it is hard to see what the

difference might be between creative herb gardening and plain old herb

gardening.

In these examples there are no unambiguous cases of ‘creative’ being

used to make a negative judgement. The example that comes closest is

(5), which refers to ‘creative accounting’, a stock phrase denoting

unorthodox financial practices which is sometimes used to imply


172

dishonesty or deception. Your intuitions may have told you that ‘creative’

can have that implication in non-financial contexts too: a teacher might

describe the excuse given by a student who is late handing in their work

as ‘creative’ and mean that the teacher thinks it is a lie. However, these

negative usages are euphemisms, meant to soften the judgement by

avoiding blunt terms like ‘fraud’ and ‘lying’. In that sense they trade on

English-speakers’ understanding that the ‘normal’ meaning of ‘creative’

is positive.

4.2 The politics of value

The title of this chapter refers to ‘the politics of value’ – but what

does politics have to do with judgements of creativity? Clearly, those

judgements are not ‘political’ in the most common sense of the word,

relating to institutions and processes of government. The meaning of

‘politics’ that is relevant here is a more abstract one, referring to power

structures and relationships of all kinds (a familiar example of this

usage is the phrase ‘office politics’, meaning power struggles within a

workplace). In the more abstract sense, all judgements of value can be

said to have a political dimension. Evaluating someone or something is

a way of exercising power, and power is one of the factors that

determines who may evaluate whom, in what ways and with what

consequences.

The relationship between power and evaluation is especially clear in

hierarchical institutions like schools and workplaces, where it is

typically higher-ranking individuals who have both the right and the

obligation to make judgements on those below them. Classroom

teachers assess their pupils, and are themselves assessed by head

teachers. Managers evaluate the employees they manage, and are

evaluated in turn by their own bosses. These judgements are local,

made by specific individuals in particular institutions, but they are also

shaped by the workings of power on a larger scale. When a teacher

assesses a student’s work, for example, they will often be using

standards imposed from outside, such as the specifications of a

national school curriculum or the criteria used to mark public

examinations. Even when the teacher’s assessments are not tied to any

particular set of external criteria, they will be informed by the values

the teacher internalised during their own education and professional

training. What gives the teacher’s judgements authority is not only the


173

teacher’s ‘local’ status in their own classroom, but also the more

‘global’ currency of the values their judgements are based on.

It has often been pointed out that values are not socially neutral. One

of the functions of education is to equip people with what the social

theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1986) called cultural capital, meaning

knowledge of the tastes and habits of behaviour which are valued by

the people with most power and influence in society. For those who

do not start out as members of this elite group, cultural capital

acquired through education (and certified through the award of

recognised educational qualifications) is potentially a route to upward

social mobility.

In most societies there is no absolute consensus on questions of value;

rather, there is argument and debate. But arguments about value are

also political in the broader sense of the term (see Chapter 1): often

they can be seen as symbolic enactments of deeper ideological and

social conflicts. Consider, for instance, debates about the value of

graffiti and rap music: should these be acknowledged as creative art

forms, or are they just (respectively) mindless vandalism and foul-

mouthed ranting? The arguments may be couched in ‘artistic’ terms,

but the judgements being made are also social, reflecting different

attitudes towards the groups most closely associated with a particular

form of expression. This is not a one-way street: a rap artist might

denounce classical music as boring and irrelevant, and that could also

be a social judgement on the culture it is part of. However, it is

typically the judgements of the powerful and privileged which are

accorded most legitimacy. The value of classical music is generally

acknowledged, even by people who dislike it, in a way the value of rap

is not.

The topic of this chapter is how the politics of value affect judgements

on creativity in language, but that will turn out to be a complicated

question. Not only are there competing definitions of linguistic

creativity, and differing opinions on its value, but there is also some

dispute about whether it is legitimate to make value judgements on

language at all.

4.3 Language and value

One of the first things a linguistics student learns is that value

judgements have no place in the ‘scientific’ study of language. The


174

linguist’s job is not to tell people how they ought to speak or write,

but to explain how language works and describe how it is actually

used. Linguists maintain that all languages and ways of using language

have equal linguistic value. The idea that some are ‘better’ than others

is dismissed as merely prejudiced, and of no scientific interest (see

Pinker, 1994, for a clear summary of this position).

Most students beginning their study of linguistics find it hard to adopt

this non-judgemental stance, which runs counter to ingrained habits of

thought and talk. Everyday metalanguage (language used about

language) is strongly evaluative, and the habit of making judgements is

one we become familiar with at an early stage of life. Children are

constantly judged for the way they speak: adults evaluate their

vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and style of speech, and are quick

to let them know when they have got something wrong, or said

something inappropriate or rude. As they grow up they also absorb the

judgements that are habitually made on different ways of using

language in the culture they belong to. British English-speakers learn,

for example, that some people are described approvingly as ‘well

spoken’ while others’ speech is disparaged as ‘common’; that some

foreign accents are comical, others sexy or sinister; that spelling errors

are ‘careless’, non-standard grammar is ‘illogical’, and jargon or slang

words are ‘gobbledegook’ and ‘gibberish’.

Activity 4.2


What kinds of judgement do you remember adults (e.g. parents, other

family members, teachers) making on your use of language when you

were growing up? Do you think they have had any lasting effect on how

you speak and write? Do they affect how you regard the language you

see and hear around you? (If you are a parent, for instance, do you

make the same judgements on your own children’s speech?)

Discussion

Evaluating language was certainly an everyday activity in my family and

most of the judgements made were negative. For instance, I remember

my parents criticising me for using ‘unladylike’ language (a category that

covered a multitude of sins from shouting to using ‘rude’ words to

speaking in a broad local accent). I also recall, in my first few weeks at

secondary school, an English teacher giving out a list of ‘banned’ words

(including ‘get/got’ and ‘nice’) which we were not allowed to use in


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essays because they were ‘ugly’ and ‘bad style’. I now think these

prohibitions were just arbitrary prejudices, but in practice some of them

have stayed with me. I still avoid the word ‘nice’, for instance, even

though I don’t believe there is any good reason to do so.

The evaluation of children’s language by adults is an aspect of what

linguistic anthropologists call language socialisation (Ochs and

Schieffelin, 2011), the process of becoming a culturally and

linguistically competent communicator. This requires, among other

things, an understanding of the values your community uses to judge

communication. Ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ language – a subcategory

of language ideologies (Woolard, 1998): the beliefs and theories

through which people make sense of linguistic phenomena – are

variable across cultures and over time: my experiences as a girl growing

up in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s will differ from the experiences

of people who grew up in a different place and time. However, there

are some kinds of judgement which are likely to be part of most

people’s experience, since they are based on beliefs about language and

value which are very widely held in modern literate societies.

Probably the most important of these is a belief in the value of

‘correctness’, meaning conformity to the rules of a standardised

language variety. ‘Incorrect’ usage routinely attracts negative comment,

and the terms in which it is talked about are often strikingly moralistic,

implying a judgement not only on the language, but also on the

character of its user. Deviations from what is taken to be correct

pronunciation are condemned as ‘lazy’ or ‘sloppy’, and non-standard

morphology and syntax (e.g. ‘I ain’t done nothing’) are labelled ‘bad

grammar’, while words used in a non-standard sense (e.g. ‘literally’ in

statements like ‘my head literally exploded’) are said to be ‘misused’.

Another criterion on which language use is often judged is its

appropriateness for a particular purpose, context and audience.

Language which is not necessarily ‘incorrect’ may nevertheless be

criticised as ‘inappropriate’ if it is impolite, obscene, blasphemous or

prejudiced (e.g. racist, sexist or homophobic); insufficiently formal for

the setting (e.g. slang or non-standard grammar in a job interview);

unsuited to the purpose for which it is being used (e.g. text-message

spelling in an essay); or unacceptable coming from a certain type of

language user (e.g. my parents’ insistence that ‘ladies’ don’t shout).


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Some judgements on language are based on aesthetic values, reflecting

cultural beliefs about what is more or less beautiful. The idea that

some forms of language are more aesthetically pleasing than others is

commonly invoked to criticise certain accents, slang words and even

‘ordinary’ words like ‘get’, which my teachers considered ‘bad style’ not

because it was ‘incorrect’, but because it was an ‘ugly word’. Such

aesthetic preferences are matters of taste, and consequently judgements

on good and bad style have a particular tendency to vary historically

and cross-culturally. Some societies and historical periods have

accorded most value to ‘eloquence’ (a ‘fancy’ style characterised by

unusual words, complex syntax and elaborate figures of speech), while

in others there has been a preference for plainness. In contemporary

English-writing handbooks and style guides it is plainness that tends to

be emphasised: these texts stress the importance of brevity and clarity,

while warning against long-windedness, obscure jargon and the kind of

ornate language that is disparagingly labelled ‘flowery’ or ‘purple prose’.

The preference for plainness has also been justified on moral grounds,

using the argument that ‘eloquent’ rhetoric allows unscrupulous people

(like advertisers and politicians) to confuse, manipulate or deceive their

audience. George Orwell (2013 [1946]) championed the virtues of plain

English for exactly these reasons in his classic essay ‘Politics and the

English language’.

Where does creativity fit into this picture? I said earlier that it was a

complicated case, and this discussion has identified one of the

complicating factors. Though the value attached to creativity is

generally positive, in the sphere of language it competes – and may

conflict – with other positive values such as correctness,

appropriateness and clarity. That conflict is the source of many

arguments about value. What one person praises as a creative use of

language – ingenious, novel and original – another may condemn as

obscure, pretentious and full of deviations from ‘correct English’. Later

we will consider the case of Gautam Malkani’s novel Londonstani

(2006), which divided opinion in exactly this way. One reviewer

described the book’s language, a mixture of standard English, non-

standard English, Panjabi, teenage street-slang and texting, as ‘Artful,

thought-provoking and strikingly inventive’, while another called it ‘an

almost impenetrable gibberish’ (Malkani, 2016). First, though, let us

examine some more general questions – beginning with the question of

what is meant by ‘creativity’ in the context of language use.


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4.4 Creativity in language: definitions and disputes

Most people probably think of linguistic creativity as a special kind of

inventiveness and skill with words, the exception rather than the rule.

But that is not how it is conceptualised in linguistics. For linguists in

the tradition of Noam Chomsky (1965), linguistic creativity is part of

the innate human capacity for language: it is simply the ability which

all language users have to produce novel utterances from pre-existing

linguistic resources. (The last sentence is an example: there is nothing

exceptional about it, but it is probably original in the sense that no one

may have ever put exactly those words in exactly that order before.)

Using this definition, everyone is being creative with language every

time they speak or write.

Sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists take a position somewhere

in between the everyday and the Chomskyan view. They point out that

in most cultures there are linguistic genres and practices which make a

special feature of creativity: they are not just creative in the way all

language use is creative, but are designed for the specific purpose of

displaying participants’ creative verbal skills. Some practices of this

kind are explicitly competitive: an example is the African-American

verbal duelling tradition known as ‘playing the dozens’ (a ritualised

exchange of insults whose rules are explained in Labov, 1972). More

recently, various forms of creative language play have been invented by

online communities: examples include ‘Leetspeak’, a way of writing

which replaces letters with other symbols (e.g. the word leet (‘elite’) can

be rendered ‘1337’ (Cameron and Panović, 2014, p. 54), and

‘LOLspeak’, the grammatically and orthographically ‘deviant’ language

of LOLcats, which say things like ‘I can has cheezburger’ (Gawne and

Vaughan, 2012, p. 99).

The study of these phenomena has its own ‘politics of value’. On the

one hand, the belief that ‘all language varieties are equal’ prompts

linguistic researchers to defend the value of practices which are often

dismissed as worthless by drawing attention to the creativity they

involve. On the other hand, the same principle of equality makes

linguists reluctant to suggest that some uses and users of language are

‘better’ than others. To avoid that implication, they tend to gloss over

the question of individual creativity, putting more emphasis on the

‘rule-governed creativity’ of the practice itself, which is presented as

one more application of the innate human ability to adapt language for

new purposes and contexts.


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Activity 4.3


Turn to Reading A, ‘Texting’ by David Crystal, at the end of this chapter.

Crystal analyses two examples of text poetry composed by Norman

Silver. Begin by reading the poems themselves: as you do so (and

before you turn to Crystal’s commentary), make notes on what (if

anything) you think is ‘creative’ about Silver’s use of language. Then

read Crystal’s comments, paying attention to the way he deals with the

question of creativity (and, in particular, the question of its value). How

do his observations about the poems compare with the observations you

made before you read his comments? Do you find his analysis

convincing?

Discussion

Crystal’s analysis is a good example of the approach to creativity which I

described earlier: for him, Textspeak is ‘the latest manifestation of the

human ability … to be linguistically creative’. He does not really consider,

however, whether the examples he discusses, text poems, might display

a different kind or degree of creativity from ‘ordinary’ text messages. He

does acknowledge that they come from ‘a literary genre, not a real text

situation’, but in most of his analysis they are treated simply as source

material for a general description of the language used in texting.

In your own reading of the poems you may have noticed, and perhaps

judged as ‘creative’, features which are not common in everyday texting,

but are more typical of literary or poetic language. For instance, the

poem ‘txt commndmnts’ is not only written in Textspeak, but is an

extended metalinguistic comment on Textspeak. It is also an extended

allusion to another text, the Bible (if you don’t recognise this intertextual

reference you won’t get the joke, or the point). Silver also makes use of

formal poetic devices such as line division, rhyme and syntactic

parallelism; his use of upper-case type in ‘u shall nt shout with capitls

XEPT IN DIRE EMERGNCY’ is a variation on the poetic practice of

using the sound of words to mimic their meaning. But although Crystal

comments on some of the features that make Silver’s usage distinctive,

he does not judge the poems as more creative, or more valuable, than

other uses of Textspeak.

Many commentators disagree with Crystal’s assessment of Textspeak as

a creative use of language. The literary critic John Sutherland, for

instance, described it as ‘thin and … unimaginative … mask[ing]


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dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness’ (Sutherland, 2002). One of

Crystal’s aims is to demonstrate that these judgements are misguided,

by showing, for instance, that text spelling is a rule-governed system

rather than a random collection of errors. But however painstakingly

he supports that argument with linguistic evidence, it is unlikely to

convince critics like Sutherland, because their objections to Textspeak

are not just linguistic: they are, as described earlier, symbolic

enactments of deeper social conflicts. Criticising Textspeak is a

symbolic way of expressing negative attitudes towards the social

phenomenon it is part of – the rise of new digital technology; and the

social group who are seen as its prototypical users – young people.

The linguistic creativity of young people is a perennial focus for two

(often interrelated) kinds of conflict: conflict between generations and

conflict about social change. These conflicts have both private and

public manifestations; sometimes, as in the case we will look at next,

they can become overtly political issues.

4.5 Conflicting values: creativity, authority and

tradition

In the UK, for several decades there has been a highly politicised

debate about how to teach the English language to schoolchildren. It

revolves around a supposed contrast between ‘traditional’ approaches,

which focus on ‘the basics’ of grammar, spelling and punctuation, and

‘progressive’ approaches, in which language skills are developed

through ‘creative’ activities like writing stories and poems. I call this a

‘supposed’ contrast because in reality it would be hard to find a school

that does not use some combination of the two approaches. But

rhetorically they are presented as opposite and incompatible:

traditionalists warn that by encouraging creativity the progressives are

condoning illiteracy, and progressives retort that by harping on about

‘the basics’, the traditionalists are stifling children’s natural creativity.

Concerns about standards of literacy among schoolchildren have a long

history, but the roots of this particular debate lie in the 1970s, when

‘progressive’ ideas developed during the previous decade began to

influence mainstream institutions, including schools. This provoked a

backlash from traditionalists who warned that it would lead to a

decline in standards. The terms of the debate were already well

established when, in 1982, The Observer newspaper published a column

written by John Rae, the conservative headmaster of a fee-paying


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school, under the title ‘The decline and fall of English grammar’. Rae

began by making the familiar claim that schools since the 1960s had

abandoned traditional grammar teaching and replaced it with creative

writing, to the detriment of linguistic standards. But then he took the

argument a step further:

The overthrow of grammar coincided with the acceptance of the

equivalent of creative writing in social behaviour. As nice points

of grammar were mockingly dismissed as pedantic and irrelevant,

so was punctiliousness in such matters as honesty, responsibility,

property, gratitude, apology and so on.

(Rae, 1982, quoted in Cameron, 2012, p. 94)

Here, Rae asserts that the ‘overthrow of grammar’ has caused a decline

not only in linguistic standards but also in behavioural and moral

standards. But the logic of that argument is obscure: how would an

appreciation for ‘nice points of grammar’ make people more honest

and more respectful of others’ property, and why would creative

writing have the opposite effect?

Rae’s argument only makes sense if we assume he is using the

opposition between ‘grammar’ and ‘creative writing’ to symbolise some

deeper conflict. To see what that conflict might be, it is useful to recall

the earlier discussion of conflicting linguistic values. Grammar teaching

and creative writing are practices based on different ideas about which

values are most important. In grammar teaching the emphasis falls on

correctness, conformity to the rules, whereas in creative writing what is

valued is individual self-expression, which may involve non-conformity

or rule breaking. The deeper conflict which is played out symbolically

in debates on grammar and creative writing is a conflict about the

importance of rules in the education of children. This symbolism

supplies the ‘missing link’ between linguistic and behavioural or moral

standards: Rae fears that if children are not taught to obey the rules of

language, they will have no respect for rules in any sphere of life, and

the end result will be anarchy. Interestingly, these connections are not

made only on one side of the argument. Opponents of traditional

grammar teaching in the 1980s also associated grammar with strict

discipline and obedience to rules. For them, however, those were

negative rather than positive associations. They agreed with Rae about

the meaning of grammar, but disagreed with him about its value (for a

detailed discussion of the debate, see Cameron, 2012).


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This argument did not end in the 1980s. A new controversy was

sparked in 2013 when the Conservative Education Secretary, Michael

Gove, announced plans to modify the primary school curriculum. One

of his proposals was that the teaching of English to children aged 5–11

years old should put more emphasis on grammar, spelling and

punctuation. Predictably, this attracted both enthusiastic support and

strong opposition. The following activity explores the arguments made

by some of its opponents.

Activity 4.4


The quotation below is a shortened version of an open letter criticising

Michael Gove’s proposals; it was signed by 100 academics and

published in two national newspapers (the Independent and The

Telegraph) on 20 March 2013. What are the writers’ objections to the

proposals? Based on what you can tell from the above account, has

anything about this debate changed since 1982?

We are writing to warn of the dangers posed by Michael

Gove’s new National Curriculum which could severely erode

educational standards. The proposed curriculum consists of

endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of

data will not develop children’s ability to think, including

problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity.

…

The new curriculum is extremely narrow. … Speaking and

listening, drama and modern media have almost disappeared

from English.

…

… Schools in high-achieving Finland, Massachusetts and

Alberta emphasise cognitive development, critical

understanding and creativity, not rote learning.

(Independent, 2013)

Discussion

There is evidence in this extract of both continuity and change. One

thing that has remained the same is the construction of rules and


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creativity as incompatible opposites: we see this in the first paragraph,

where ‘spellings, facts and rules’ are contrasted with ‘problem-solving,

critical understanding and creativity’. Another point of continuity with the

past is the complaint that the new English curriculum will marginalise

areas of the subject that emphasise self-expression, such as speaking

and drama.

But the writers’ argument also draws on ideas that were not part of the

debate in the 1980s. In the past in UK education policy debates,

creativity was most strongly associated with the ‘progressive’, liberal

values of self-expression and personal freedom; while it has not entirely

lost those associations, it has evidently acquired some new ones, which

might be called ‘neo-liberal’, because the value of creativity is

understood in economic terms. Along with critical thinking and problem

solving, creativity is one of the skills and dispositions needed for success

in a globalised, technology-driven and (in the West) post-industrial

economy. This conception of creativity as a valuable economic asset, for

nations as well as individuals, is what lies behind the reference to ‘high-

achieving Finland, Massachusetts and Alberta’ – all places that have

recently been found to rank above the UK in international comparisons

of educational attainment. The writers are suggesting that Mr Gove’s

‘back to basics’ approach will cause Britain to fall further behind its

competitors in a world that needs creative thinkers, innovators and

problem-solvers, not mechanical rote learners and rule-followers.

The writers of the open letter present traditionalist approaches to the

teaching of English as backward-looking and out of touch with new

economic realities. In arguments about language, however, looking back

to the past is often a good political strategy. Although the idea of a

past ‘golden age’ when everyone spoke and wrote correctly is a myth

(see Milroy and Milroy, 2012), it is one that appeals to large numbers

of people. The sociolinguist William Labov once remarked that in 40

years of interviewing people from all walks of life, he had never heard

anyone say: ‘It’s wonderful the way young people talk today. It’s so

much better than the way we talked when I was a kid’ (Labov, 2001,

p. 6). His older interviewees often spoke approvingly of the advances

they had seen during their lifetimes in medicine, science, technology

and living standards, but in the case of language they were firmly of

the opinion that things were better in the past.

This attachment to tradition and the past is another linguistic value

that is potentially in conflict with creativity, since using language

‘creatively’ will often mean using it in a way that is novel or unfamiliar.


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However, attitudes to linguistic innovation are complicated: though

people may express a generalised conservatism when talking to

researchers like Labov, their responses to specific innovations are more

variable. Novelty is not always seen as a bad thing, and even when it is,

that is not usually just because of a simple prejudice against anything

new.

4.6 Innovation and the judgement of value

The ways in which different kinds of linguistic innovation are valued

clearly varies and it is important to consider why.

Activity 4.5


Make a list of five things you have noticed as ‘new’ in language during

the past few years. They might be words, phrases, meanings, spellings,

grammatical features or vocal patterns (e.g. of intonation or voice

quality). Do this quickly, writing down the first five that come to mind

rather than pondering your choices at length. Now go through your list

and answer the questions below.

. Who do you think of as a typical user of this innovation?

. What would be a typical context for it to be used in?

. Do you use it yourself?

. Do you like it, dislike it or not have an opinion about it?

. If you have an opinion, what do you like or dislike about it?

Is there a pattern in your responses?

Discussion

Our opinions about innovations in language are often related to our

perceptions of the contexts and people we associate them with –

whether we feel any identification with those people, what social status

we accord them and whether we view them positively or negatively. (You

can accord someone high status and still view them negatively: not

everyone has positive attitudes to royalty, for instance.)

One of my favourite recent innovations is the use of the word ‘slash’ (like

the symbol /, but pronounced or written out) as a conjunction with

several possible functions (see Curzan, 2013): for instance, ‘I went to

class slash caught up on Game of Thrones’ means ‘I was supposed to

go to class but instead I watched Game of Thrones’. This innovation


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originated in digital communication and has spread to conversational

speech; its core users are young people. I spend a lot of time with young

people (my students) and I have generally positive attitudes to the

innovations they come up with (boosted in my case by the usual

linguist’s sympathy for ‘underdog’ groups whose language is constantly

criticised).

By contrast, I dislike the expression ‘I’m loving/liking X’ (where the

innovation is the use of the progressive -ing form). This may also have

originated in youth culture, but it was popularised when McDonald’s

adopted ‘i’m lovin it’ as an advertising slogan, and that’s really why I

dislike it. I see it as an example of the way corporations constantly try to

influence everyday speech and behaviour, and it annoys me that people

are susceptible to that. Outside the McDonald’s advertisements, I

associate the use of ‘loving X’ with people commenting on new trends or

the latest exploits of celebrities (‘we’re loving Beyoncé’s new hairstyle!’)

and I imagine those people as shallow and unintelligent. I may be a

linguist, but it is evident that my likes and dislikes are based on social

stereotypes and prejudices more than sound linguistic judgements.

You might be thinking: ‘couldn’t it be the case that people who dislike

a linguistic innovation are genuinely responding to qualities of the

language?’ It could be, but one reason for thinking that in many

instances it has more to do with social attitudes is that the same

linguistic features are evaluated differently in different contexts. Take,

for instance, the complaint that Textspeak-users don’t bother with

capital letters (XEPT 4 SHOUTNG). The same could be said of the

twentieth-century poet e.e. cummings, who didn’t even bother with

them in his own name. But in his case that was not attributed to

illiteracy or ‘mental laziness’. When cummings left out the capitals, it

was Art.

In modern societies, artists have a special license to innovate – at least

when they are operating in an artistic context (the official who issued

cummings’ passport may have been less tolerant). The capacity for

linguistic innovation is sometimes used as a measure of a literary

writer’s status: one commonly cited proof of Shakespeare’s genius is

the number of new words he contributed to the English language.

Conversely, a recurrent criticism of poor or mediocre writing is that it

is clichéd and derivative, or in other words not innovative enough. And

this too is an area where social stereotypes come into play.


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For much of the twentieth century, linguistic innovation was

represented as the province of men, while women’s language was

disparaged as conservative, conventional and unoriginal. The linguist

Otto Jespersen (1998 [1922]) argued that women’s role throughout

history had been to civilise language by setting standards of politeness

and decorum, while men were responsible for renovating language,

using their capacity for innovation to ensure it did not lose its vitality

and vigour. While Jespersen thought that women’s natural conservatism

was needed to keep men’s wilder impulses in check, he warned that

‘there is a danger of the language becoming languid and insipid if we

are always to content ourselves with women’s expressions’ (Jespersen,

1998 [1922], p. 234). Needless to say, he did not have a high opinion

of women’s literary output – though he did suggest that foreign

language-learners should seek out the work of female novelists as a

good source of simple and commonplace vocabulary.

More than 50 years later, observations not unlike Jespersen’s were

made by the feminist scholar Mary Hiatt in her book The Way Women

Write (1977). Hiatt analysed a hundred passages taken from published

fiction and non-fiction texts, comparing the male and female authors’

use of various linguistic features. Among the differences she reported

was a tendency for women’s style to be less individual and more

‘conformist’ than men’s. Whereas Jespersen had implied that women’s

conservatism was ‘natural’, Hiatt attributed it to insecurity and lack of

confidence caused by women’s subordinate status in society. But she

still believed that women were less capable than men of the kind of

creativity that makes writers like Shakespeare ‘great’.

Linguists today do not believe that women are linguistically

conservative, whether by nature or for social reasons. On the contrary,

research suggests that they are consistently at the forefront of linguistic

innovation (Labov, 2001). Young women, in particular, are trendsetters:

they are responsible for many of the innovations which eventually

become mainstream. The use of ‘like’ as a conversational filler is one

example; another is ‘uptalk’, the high rising terminal intonation pattern

that makes statements sound like questions (Liberman, 2008). These

innovations were (and still are) disparaged, precisely because they were

associated with teenage girls; nevertheless, they have now spread to

every social group (Liberman’s discussion includes a sound-clip of

George W. Bush using uptalk). If the folk-belief has persisted that it is

men who push the linguistic boundaries, that only goes to show how


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strongly our judgements of language are influenced by stereotypes and

prejudices about its users.

Activity 4.6

Allow about 1 hour

Now turn to Reading B, ‘The modern politics of “not real” words’ by Anne

Curzan, at the end of this chapter. A language historian, Curzan

discusses the critical reception of neologisms (new or unfamiliar words)

used by US political figures from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama.

How does her discussion relate to the idea that judgements on linguistic

innovations tend to mirror attitudes to the innovator(s)?

Discussion

The negative reception of neologisms used by presidents and other

high-ranking politicians might seem to challenge the principle that

innovations are judged according to the status of the innovator. Arguably,

however, what it really shows is that we need to distinguish between

different kinds of status. Political power is not the same thing as cultural

authority, and in matters of language it is the latter rather than the former

which educated people defer to. As Curzan points out, too, the

disrespectful judgements made on politicians’ neologisms do, in a way,

mirror attitudes to the politicians themselves. Furthermore, in

democracies politics is adversarial: drawing attention to politicians’

linguistic lapses is a way for their political adversaries to cast doubt on

their competence, intelligence and fitness for office.

Who has the cultural authority to make judgements on language?

Curzan mentions one source that is generally regarded as authoritative:

the dictionary. But while dictionaries can tell you whether something is

a ‘real word’ (i.e. is in common use), they make no judgement on

whether something is a ‘good word’ (if it is useful, beautiful,

memorable, elegant, witty, and so on). For that kind of judgement, we

are more likely to refer to the values and standards set by literary

authorities: writers, scholars and critics (see discussion in Chapter 1,

Section 1.2). As mentioned earlier, literary language is expected to be

creative and innovative; this is one sphere in which there is no dispute

about the value of creativity as such. But that does not mean there are

no arguments about it at all. Judgements of creativity in literary

language are also shaped by the politics of value.


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4.7 Mixing it up: ‘high’ culture, ‘low’ culture and

the politics of understanding

In 2012, the Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz was asked by an

interviewer if he thought some readers might be alienated by the

mixing of English and Spanish that is a characteristic feature of his

work. He expressed his irritation by tweeting:

[Mother****ers] will read a book that’s 1/3 elvish, but put two

sentences in Spanish and White people think we’re taking over.

(Díaz, 2012)

This comment is most obviously a criticism of the anti-Hispanic

prejudice Díaz detects in the interviewer’s question. But by contrasting

readers’ resistance to Spanish with their willingness to read ‘a book

that’s 1/3 elvish’, Díaz is also, it could be argued, making a more

obliquely negative comment on his critics’ literary tastes.

‘Elvish’ is the name of a group of invented languages featured in the

fantasy novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. Since Tolkien’s time (roughly the

mid-twentieth century) many more ‘conlangs’, as they are now known

to their aficionados (the term is short for ‘constructed languages’),


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Figure 4.1 Junot Díaz

have been created for use in works of fantasy and science fiction,

including films, television series and computer games as well as novels.

(Well-known recent conlangs include Klingon [Star Trek], Na’vi [Avatar]

and Dothraki [Game of Thrones] – see Okrent, 2009, for a cultural

history of language invention.) They can be very complex systems, with

sizeable vocabularies, full sets of phonological and grammatical rules,

and in some cases their own written scripts. Yet the creativity that is

displayed in their construction receives little critical applause outside

the conlangers’ own subculture. Most conlangs appear in texts that are

defined as ‘genre fiction’ rather than ‘literature’, and the genres they

belong to are often perceived as the province of obsessive geeks.

Díaz exploits that perception: as well as presenting those who dislike

his language mixing as racists (‘put two sentences in Spanish and White

people think we’re taking over’), his reference to Elvish casts them as

undiscerning readers, people who prefer stories about elves to more

challenging fare, and whose opinions on literature can therefore be

disregarded. What Díaz is doing is shifting the emphasis from one

hierarchy of value, based on ethnic/social status, to another, based on

literary prestige. In the first hierarchy his membership of a minority

ethnic group positions him as inferior to his critics, but in the second

they are inferior to him.

The mixing of English with foreign or invented languages is not found

only in the work of minority ethnic writers and producers of popular

genre fiction, but also in the writing of ‘mainstream’ literary authors. In

their work, however, it gets a different response. For instance, some

critically acclaimed works of twentieth-century fiction make use of an

invented variety of English that diverges markedly from the forms

readers are familiar with, so that an active effort is required to

understand it. Examples include Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork

Orange (1962), written in a fictional Anglo-Russian teenage slang called

‘Nadsat’, and Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker (1980), written in a

language representing what Hoban imagines present-day English might

become if its history were interrupted by a nuclear catastrophe. An

extreme case is James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (2012 [1939]), which is

written in a form of English so idiosyncratic that many readers have

admitted to finding it largely incomprehensible. Yet these literary

writers are not disparaged as geeks, or accused of alienating readers;

rather they are applauded for the originality of their inventions.

T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land (Eliot, 2009), widely regarded

as one of the most important literary works of the early twentieth


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century, uses foreign languages quite extensively: there are passages in

French, German, Italian and Sanskrit, as well as an epigraph in Latin

and ancient Greek. Eliot was not a native speaker of any of these

languages (in the case of the classical ones, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit,

he obviously could not have been), and perhaps that is one reason why

his use of them is judged differently from Junot Díaz’s language

mixing. Whereas Díaz’s bilingualism was naturally acquired, Eliot’s

multilingualism was the result of academic study, and as such an

impressive display of cultural capital. Whereas Díaz is perceived as

excluding non-Hispanic readers by using the mother tongue of an

ethnic group to which he belongs, but they do not, Eliot’s assumption

that his educated audience would share his knowledge of foreign

languages can be seen as an inclusive gesture, one more likely to flatter

than alienate the reader.

Another difference between Eliot and Díaz is that Eliot’s foreign

language interpolations were drawn from ‘high’ literary sources, such as

the poetry of Baudelaire and Dante, whereas Díaz’s source material is

the vernacular Spanish and ‘Spanglish’ (a mixture of Spanish and

English) spoken on the streets of New York City. In fact, street

vernacular – though in English rather than a foreign language – is used

in The Waste Land too: the mixing of ‘low’ and ‘high’ cultural

references is a feature of the kind of literary modernism whose


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Figure 4.2 T. S. Eliot

exponents included both Eliot and Joyce. More generally, it has always

been permissible for elite authors to represent the voices of the

‘common people’ in literature. Vernacular or non-standard writing has

been more controversial when produced by working-class or minority

ethnic authors like Díaz. Not only are they accused of excluding

readers who do not share their identity, but their use of a language

variety which is part of their own or their community’s repertoire may

also be seen as less creative, because it is assumed that what they are

doing is just a form of transcription (taking the spoken vernacular that

surrounds them and transferring it directly on to the page).

This is a naive assumption: writing in a non-standard vernacular always

involves creativity, if only because writers have to make their own

decisions about spelling (whereas in a standardised variety the rules are

fixed). But vernacular writing can also be creative in other ways. The

activity below focuses on the choices made by the writer Gautam

Malkani, whose novel Londonstani (2006), written in a mixture of

standard English, London English, Panjabi, slang and Textspeak,

explores contemporary issues of ethnic, generational, gender and class

identity through the exploits (some of them violent and/or criminal) of

a group of young, mainly British Asian men living in the west London

suburb of Hounslow.

Activity 4.7

Allow about 1 hour

Turn to Reading C, ‘Londonstani: Why the lingo?’ by Gautam Malkani, at

the end of this chapter. The text comes from a part of Malkani’s website

where he answers readers’ questions about the language of

Londonstani. As you read this material, consider how far Malkani’s

decisions were motivated by the desire to produce a faithful

representation of vernacular speech, and what other motivations seem to

have been important to him.

Discussion

Malkani makes clear that the language of Londonstani is a self-

conscious literary construct rather than an attempt to represent reality

faithfully: he dismisses what I referred to earlier as ‘transcription’, writing

down exactly what you hear, as ‘dumbass-ingly pointless’. He notes that

many of his choices do not exactly mimic the speech of real young

British Asians in west London: for instance, he avoids the most obscure

or ephemeral slang terms, he uses SMS conventions in what is


191

presented as spoken narrative/dialogue, and he uses small linguistic

variations in the representation of different characters’ speech

(e.g. whether they use ‘ain’t’ or ‘in’t’) as a code for different degrees of

‘hardness’ or resistance to authority. On the other hand, he clearly cares

about making the language ‘recognisable’, pointing out, for instance, that

in reality slang has rules and if these are completely ignored the result

will lack credibility. His creativity is demonstrated through the balance he

strikes between approximating the ‘real’ rules and inventing his own.

It was mentioned earlier that Londonstani’s language attracted some

negative judgements, with one reviewer calling it ‘almost impenetrable

gibberish’. This, however, was a minority view. In recent decades, the

creativity of authors who write in their own vernacular, or one to

which they have a direct cultural connection, has gained increasing

critical recognition. The Saint Lucian writer Derek Walcott received the

1992 Nobel Prize in Literature; Junot Díaz is one of a number of

bilingual Latino/a writers in the USA whose work has won awards;

other highly regarded works of American literature have been written

wholly or partly in African-American English (e.g. the highly popular

1982 novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple). In the UK there is a

flourishing literature in vernacular Scots, one example of which –

James Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late (1994) – won the

prestigious Booker prize. It is noticeable, though, that the most

critically respected vernacular writers are often those who display their

‘high culture’ credentials in other ways. Walcott’s Omeros (1990), for

instance, is a reworking of the Homeric poems The Iliad and The

Odyssey, long considered foundational in the Western literary tradition.

Kelman’s novels make use of literary techniques, such as the kind of

interior monologue known as ‘stream of consciousness’, which are

associated with modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

It is not their use of an unfamiliar language variety alone that makes

Walcott’s or Kelman’s texts ‘difficult’; and their difficulty seems to be

one of the criteria on which they are judged to be valuable works of

art.

4.8 Creativity, elitism and the language of

literature

The literary modernists mentioned in the last section – Eliot, Joyce and

Woolf – had a particular predilection for novel, unconventional and


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‘difficult’ language, which reflected their commitment to modernist

ideas about what art should be and do. One of the modernist

movement’s slogans was ‘make it new’: in literature the quest for

newness prompted radical experiments with both literary and linguistic

form. This approach to literary language raises questions which have

been debated since the early twentieth century. Does the value of a

work of literature depend on the author’s willingness to experiment

with language, or can writers be linguistically creative while remaining

within the bounds of what is ‘normal’ and intelligible?

A related question is more explicitly political: is the modernist

celebration of novelty and difficulty a form of elitism, which effectively

defines the ‘best’ literary works as those which only a small minority of

readers can appreciate? The critic John Carey (1992) has argued that

modernist writers like Eliot, Woolf and Ezra Pound were unashamedly

elitist: despising the lower classes and the mass culture that catered to

popular tastes, they did not want their work to be accessible to all, but

only to a select group who shared their ideas and values. Carey’s view

of the modernists is disputed among scholars, but some of the writers

who followed them had a similarly negative attitude, especially to their

language.

In the 1950s, a loose grouping of English poets and novelists emerged

whose members explicitly sought to break away from the legacy of


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Figure 4.3 Derek Walcott

modernism. Usually referred to as ‘The Movement’, these writers –

Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright, Thom

Gunn, Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin and John Wain – came from

lower-middle-class or working-class families; education had equipped

them with the cultural capital needed to move up the social ladder, but

their class origins made them critical of what they saw as the

modernists’ elitism. They were particularly critical of experimentalism:

the way writers like Joyce and Pound played with the conventions of

language and poetic form in an effort to ‘make it new’. Philip Larkin

described Pound’s poetry, along with Picasso’s painting and the jazz

music of Charlie Parker, as embodying ‘the two principal themes of

modernism, mystification and outrage’ (Larkin, 1970, p. 23).

The Movement writers rejected what Larkin called ‘mystification’.

Kingsley Amis summarised his aims as ‘trying to tell interesting,

believable stories about understandable characters in a reasonably

straightforward style: no tricks, no experimental foolery’ (quoted in

Vinson, 1972, p. 46). He also said, of The Movement writers as a

group: ‘all we really have in common is a desire to write sensibly … to

write poems that are intelligible in the sense that they can be

paraphrased’ (quoted in Leader, 2000, p. 525). Amis wrote frequently

on the subject of language, and from these writings (see Cameron,

2009, for more detail) it is clear that the linguistic values he considered


194

Figure 4.4 Virginia Woolf

most important were correctness and clarity of meaning, which for him

meant not only intelligibility but also the avoidance of pretentiousness

and affectation.

Opinions differ on whether The Movement produced work of high

literary value. Some critics have dismissed them as minor writers, partly

on the grounds that their deliberately un-experimental language is flat

and banal. They have also been criticised as provincial ‘little

Englanders’, lacking the cosmopolitan outlook that led modernists like

Eliot to mix languages and cultural references. Other critics defend

them, but often by arguing that their language is less straightforward

than it looks, and that it actually exhibits some of the modernist

qualities they claimed to despise (for more discussion of critical views

about the Movement, see Leader, 2009).

Although they have not gone unchallenged, the modernist criteria of

innovation, experimentation and difficulty still shape ideas about

creativity and value in literary language. Those criteria are invoked

frequently in arguments about what counts as ‘literature’ and what

differentiates ‘good’ from ‘bad’ writing in imaginative fiction more

generally.

Activity 4.8


The passage below is an extract from a review of E. L. James’s

bestselling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), which tells the story

of a sadomasochistic relationship between the dominant and worldly

Christian Grey and his inexperienced submissive partner Anastasia

Steele. This is not the assessment of a professional critic, but comes

from one of the many amateur book blogs where anyone can post a

review. Amateur reviewers can sometimes challenge the cultural

consensus represented by more mainstream sources, but in this case

the reviewer echoes mainstream critics’ judgements on Fifty Shades,

most of which were negative.

As you read through the passage, consider how the criticisms made in it

relate to the ideas you have examined in this section about language,

creativity and value.

Last but not least, let’s talk about the writing.

Guess what? It’s bad. Shocking, I know. Insultingly simple in

both style and form, and filled to the brim with details being


195

told instead of shown. James also apparently thinks that

throwing in the occasional dictionary-necessitating word is

enough to give her “tale” a classy and sophisticated air. Well,

it isn’t, and the attempt comes across as silly and contrived

because of this. The end result is a work that seems more like

an unusually well-written fanfiction than a genuine piece of

literature. …

James also likes to reuse the same phrases and scenarios

every chance she can get. Let’s take a look at some of her

favorites:

…

4. Anastasia compares her orgasms to the feeling of

shattering into pieces. (Sounds painful.)

5. Anastasia describes Christian’s jeans as hanging on his

hips “in that way.” (Wonderfully descriptive, James. Good job.)

…

7. Anastasia says “oh my” or some more colorful variation of

the phrase during sex.

The last object on this list is undoubtedly the most annoying.

It’s used every other page, and it drove me absolutely insane.

(Beimers, 2013)

Discussion

The author of this review is evidently familiar with ‘elite’ discourses on

literary language and value. The book is criticised for lacking the formal

and stylistic complexity we would expect in a ‘genuine piece of

literature’; the reviewer suggests that James has tried and failed to make

her style more literary by ‘throwing in the occasional dictionary-

necessitating word’. He then castigates her for not being creative

enough to vary her phraseology: the offence of using the same formulas

repeatedly is compounded by the banal or inappropriate nature of the

formulas themselves.

The attention given by reviewers of Fifty Shades to ‘bad writing’ is

interesting in itself, since erotic fiction is not usually read for its


196

stylistic qualities. Perhaps focusing on James’s style allows critics to

judge the book negatively without having to take a position on issues

such as its explicit depiction of sadomasochistic sex and its

stereotypical treatment of gender. Whereas objecting to those things

might make the reviewer appear prudish or ‘politically correct’,

complaints about the clichéd and wooden prose display cultural capital

in a way that is less controversial.

4.9 Conclusion

In this chapter you have looked at the value accorded to creativity in

language, and at the ways in which judgements of it may be thought of

as ‘political’. It has been noted that both the nature and the value of

linguistic creativity are matters of dispute. Linguists’ definitions and

judgements conflict with those of ordinary language users; among the

latter there are conflicting views on the importance of creativity. For

many people, using language ‘creatively’ is less important than using it

‘correctly’, ‘appropriately’ or ‘intelligibly’. In addition, judgements on

specific examples of linguistic creativity are affected by the context and

the status of the creator. Neologisms produced by literary writers are

evaluated differently from those produced by politicians; language

mixing is more acceptable in ‘high art’ than in street vernacular;


197

Figure 4.5 E. L. James

deviations from the normal conventions of spelling and punctuation

may be viewed as creative in experimental poetry, but when they

appear in text messages they are more likely to be interpreted as

evidence of ‘illiteracy’.

Linguists argue that all human language use involves creativity, and

their work has illuminated the diversity of the practices in which

creativity is displayed. But in the real world, all forms of creative

language use are not considered to be equal. Judgements on creativity

are not based primarily on linguistic criteria, but on values which are

ultimately social, cultural and political.

References

Beimers, P. (2013) ‘Review: Fifty Shades Of Grey by E.L. James’,Cuddlebuggery Book Blog [Online]. Available at http://cuddlebuggery.com/blog/2013/05/02/review-fifty-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james/ (Accessed 7January 2016).

British National Corpus (2016) British National Corpus [Online]. Available atwww.corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (Accessed 5 January 2016).

Bourdieu, P. (1986) ‘The forms of capital’, in Richardson, J. (ed.) Handbook ofTheory and Research for the Sociology of Education, New York, Greenwood,pp. 241–58.

Burgess, A. (1962) A Clockwork Orange, London, Heinemann.

Cameron, D. (2009) ‘“The virtues of good prose”: verbal hygiene and theMovement’, in Leader, Z. (ed.) The Movement Reconsidered, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, pp. 39–54.

Cameron, D. (2012) Verbal Hygiene, Abingdon, Routledge.

Cameron, D. and Panović, I. (2014) Working with Written Discourse, London,Sage.

Carey, J. (1992) The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among theLiterary Intelligentsia 1880–1939, London, Faber.

Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA, MITPress.

Curzan, A. (2013) ‘Slash: not just a punctuation mark any more’, Chronicle ofHigher Education, 24 April [Online]. Available at http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/04/24/slash-not-just-a-punctuation-mark-anymore/(Accessed 12 September 2014).

Díaz, J. (2012) Motherfuckers will read a book that’s 1/3 elvish, but put twosentences in Spanish and White people think we’re taking over, 14 November


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[Twitter]. Available at https://twitter.com/JunotDiazDaily/status/268774844273934336 (Accessed 6 January 2016).

Eliot, T. S. (2009) ‘The Waste Land’, in Selected Poems, London, Faber &Faber.

Gawne, L. and Vaughan, J. (2012) ‘I can haz language play: the constructionof language and identity in LOLspeak’, Proceedings of the 42nd AustralianLinguistic Society Conference – 2011 [Online]. Available at https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/9398/5/Gawne_ICanHaz2012.pdf (Accessed 2 January 2014).

Hiatt, M. (1977) The Way Women Write, New York, Teachers Press.

Hoban, R. (1980) Riddley Walker, London, Jonathan Cape.

Independent (2013) ‘Letters: Gove will bury pupils in facts and rules’,Independent [Online]. Available at www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-gove-will-bury-pupils-in-facts-and-rules-8540741.html (Accessed 28July 2016).

James, E. L. (2011) Fifty Shades of Grey, London, Arrow.

Jespersen, O. (1998 [1922]) ‘The Woman’, in Cameron, D. (ed.) The FeministCritique of Language: A Reader, 2nd edn, London, Routledge, pp. 225–41.

Joyce, J. (2012 [1939]) Finnegan’s Wake, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford,Oxford University Press.

Kelman, J. (1994) How Late It Was, How Late, London, Secker & Warburg.

Labov, W. (1972) ‘Rules for ritual insults’, in Language in the Inner City:Studies in the Black English Vernacular, Philadelphia, PA, University ofPennsylvania Press, pp. 297–353.

Labov, W. (2001) Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors, Malden,MA, Blackwell.

Larkin, P. (1970) All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–1971, London, Faber& Faber.

Leader, Z. (ed.) (2000) The Letters of Kingsley Amis, London, HarperCollins.

Leader, Z. (ed.) (2009) The Movement Reconsidered, Oxford, Oxford UniversityPress.

Liberman, M. (2008) ‘Uptalk anxiety’, Language Log, 7 September [Online].Available at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=568 (Accessed 30August 2014).

Malkani, G. (2006) Londonstani, London, Fourth Estate.

Malkani, G. (2016) ‘Press’, Gautam Malkani [Online]. Available at www.gautammalkani.com/press.htm (Accessed 6 January 2016).

Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (2012) Authority in Language: Investigating StandardEnglish, 4th edn, Oxford, Routledge.


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Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B. (2011) ‘The theory of language socialization’, inDuranti, A., Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B. (eds) The Handbook of LanguageSocialization, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–22.

Okrent, A. (2009) In the Land of Invented Languages, New York, Spiegel &Grau.

Orwell, G. (2013 [1946]) Politics and the English Language, London, PenguinClassics.

Pinker, S (1994) The Language Instinct, New York, Harper Perennial.

Sutherland, J. (2002) ‘Cn u txt?’, The Guardian, 11 November [Online].Available at www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/nov/11/mobilephones2(Accessed 29 April 2016).

Vinson, J. (ed.) (1972) Contemporary Novelists, London, St James Press.

Walcott, D. (1990) Omeros, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Walker, A. (1982) The Color Purple, San Diego, CA, Harvard BraceJovanovich.

Woolard, K. (1998) ‘Language ideology as a field of inquiry’, in Schieffelin, B.,Woolard, K. and Kroskrity, S. (eds) Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory,New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 3–49.


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Reading A: Texting

David Crystal

Source: Edited version from Crystal, D. (2008) ‘Texting’, ELT Journal,vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 77–83.

[Two text poems by Norman Silver]

txt commndmnts

1 u shall luv ur mobil fone with all ur hart

2 u & ur fone shall neva b apart

3 u shall nt lust aftr ur neibrs fone nor thiev

4 u shall b prepard @ all times 2 tXt & 2 recv

5 u shall use LOL & othr acronyms in conversatns

6 u shall be zappy with ur ast*r*sks & exc!matns!!

7 u shall abbrevi8 & rite words like theyr sed

8 u shall nt speak 2 sum1 face2face if u cn msg em insted

9 u shall nt shout with capitls XEPT IN DIRE EMERGNCY+

10 u shall nt consult a ninglish dictnry

Norman Silver: Laugh Out Loud :-D txt café. 2006.

langwij

langwijis hi-ly infectious

childrenthe world ovacatch itfrom parenceby word of mouth

the yungr specially vulnerableso careshud b taken how langwijis spread


201

symptoms include acutegoo-goo& the equally serious ga-ga

if NE childis infected with langwijgive em3 Tspoons of txtb4 bedtime& ½ a tablet of verseafter every meal

Norman Silver: Age, Sex, Location txt café. 2006.

[…]

Commentary

A new medium for language doesn’t turn up very often, which is

why the linguistic effects of electronic communications

technology have attracted so much attention. And with mobile

phones, where the small-screen technology is so constraining, the

effects have generated one of the most idiosyncratic varieties in

the history of language. I call it Textspeak.

Textspeak is characterized by its distinctive graphology. Its chief

feature is rebus abbreviation. Words are formed in which letters

represent syllables, as seen in ‘b’, ‘b4’, ‘NE’, ‘r’, ‘Tspoons’, ‘u’,

‘ur’, ‘xcept’. Use is made of logograms, such as numerals and

symbols, as seen in ‘&’, ‘@’, ‘2’, ‘abbrevi8’, ‘b4’, ‘face2face’, and

‘sum1’. Punctuation marks and letters are adapted to express

attitudes (the so-called smileys, or emoticons), as seen in the ‘:-D’

after the title Laugh Out Loud – you have to read the symbols

sideways to see the point.

Such forms are by no means restricted to Textspeak; they turn up

in other electronic domains, such as emails, chatgroups, and blogs.

Indeed, rebuses have a much longer linguistic history. The

Victorians played games with them, and children’s Christmas

annuals have long contained puzzles using them. The only type of

traditional rebus that does not appear in Textspeak is the use of

pictures – such as a bee representing the word ‘be’. But in

Textspeak something more radical has taken place.


202

The nature of telephony, plus the on-screen limitation to 160

characters, has motivated a much more wide-ranging and

innovative set of conventions. Textspeak has its own range of

direct-address items, such as ‘F2T’ (‘free to talk?’), ‘PCM’ (‘please

call me’), ‘MMYT’ (‘Mail me your thoughts’), and ‘RUOK’ (‘are

you OK?’). Multi-word sentences and response sequences can be

used, reduced to a sequence of initial letters. ‘LOL’ is used in the

poem, and is explained in the title of the book in which it

appears; other examples are ‘SWDYT’ (‘So what do you think?’),

‘BTDT’ (‘Been there, done that’), and ‘YYSSWW’ (‘Yeah, yeah,

sure, sure, whatever’). Even more ingenious coded abbreviations

have been devised, especially among those for whom argot is a

desirable safeguard against unwelcome surveillance.

Texters seem to be aware of the high information value of

consonants as opposed to vowels. It is fairly unusual to lose

consonants, unless the words are likely to be easily recognized, as

in the case of ‘hi-ly’ and ‘rite’. But there are lots of instances

where one vowel is dropped (‘aftr’, ‘capitls’, ‘cn’, ‘emergncy’,

‘hart’, ‘insted’, ‘mobil’, ‘nt’, ‘othr’, ‘prepard’, ‘theyr’, ‘thiev’, ‘txt’,

‘yung’), or two (‘conversatns’), or three (‘dictnry’), or four (‘recv’).

‘Neibrs’ is an interesting example, losing two consonants and two

vowels (only one in American English, of course). ‘Msg’ loses

three vowels and one consonant. ‘Equllay’ seems to be doing

something different – making a word look strange for its own

sake (the standard spelling contains the same letters, ‘equally’). ‘A

ninglish’ is also different: by moving the position of the word-

break, the spelling suggests a non-standard pronunciation –

though in fact running the ‘n’ into the ‘e’ of English is a perfectly

standard practice.

Texters also seem to be well aware of the low information value

of punctuation marks. There is no sentence punctuation at all in

the poems, with the exception of the double exclamation-mark in

the sixth commandment, and apostrophes are dropped in ‘neibrs’

and ‘theyr’. On the other hand, certain punctuation marks are

given new functions, being used ludically in ‘ast*r*sks’ and ‘exc!

matns’, and there is a contrastive use of space (in the second

commandment), type-size (in the fifth and seventh), and colour

(‘hart’ in the first and ‘XEPT IN DIRE EMERGNCY +’ in the

ninth are printed in red [use of colour in original]). Hyphens are

sometimes respected (three uses in the ‘langwij’ poem). Capital


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letters are conspicuous by their absence at the beginning of

sentences, but are often used for effect – in the ninth

commandment, for example, and also in some of the acronyms

(such as ‘LOL’).

Why abbreviate? There is ergonomic value in abbreviation, given

that the number of key-strokes saved bears a direct relationship to

time and energy – and formerly (depending on your service-

provider) even the eventual size of your telephone bill. In a

creation such as ‘ru2cnmel8r’ (‘Are you two seeing me later?’), the

full form uses over twice as many key-strokes.

In 2004 I published A Glossary of Textspeak and Netspeak, and –

ignoring the difference between upper-case and lower-case usage

– collected about 500 Textspeak abbreviations. However, only a

small number of these actually turn out to be in regular use. The

vast majority are there just to be ‘clever’, illustrating the

possibilities of language play. ‘ROTFL’ (‘rolling on the floor

laughing’) may have had some use at the outset, but its later

developments (such as ‘ROTFLMAO’ and

‘ROTFLMAOWTIME’—‘rolling on the floor laughing my ass off

… with tears in my eyes’) illustrate idiosyncratic communicative

one-upmanship rather than genuine community usage. And I

doubt whether many texters actually use such creations as

‘LSHMBB’ (‘laughing so hard my belly is bouncing’).

The method isn’t without its difficulties. Leaving out letters always

runs the risk of ambiguity. From the receiver’s point of view, a

single sequence can have more than one meaning: ‘BN’ – ‘been’

or ‘being’, ‘CID’ – ‘consider it done’ or ‘crying in disgrace’, ‘CYA’

– ‘see you’ or ‘cover your ass’, ‘N’ – ‘and’ or ‘no’, ‘Y’ – ‘why’ or

‘yes’. If a message of transmitted love gets the reply ‘LOL’, it is

up to you to decide whether it means ‘laughing out loud’ or ‘lots

of love’. It could make a big difference to an emerging

relationship. And you have to know your recipient before you

decode ‘GBH’, which can be either a ‘great big hug’ or ‘grievous

bodily harm’. There are similar ambiguities in the Textspeak of

other languages.

From the sender’s point of view, there are also choices to be

made. ‘Good to see you’ can be ‘GTCY’, ‘GTSY’, ‘G2CY’, or

‘G2SY’; ‘I love you’ can be ‘ILU’, ‘ILUVY’, or ‘ILY’; ‘thanks’ can

be ‘THNX’, ‘THX’, ‘TX’, or ‘TNX’. I found a remarkable eight


204

variants for ‘talk to you later’: ‘TTUL’, ‘TTUL8R’, ‘TTYL’,

‘TTYL8R’, ‘T2UL’, ‘T2UL8R’, ‘T2YL’, and ‘T2YL8R’, and there

are probably others. Even more exist for ‘what’s up?’ – depending

on how many U’s you bother to send: ‘WASSUP’, ‘SUP?’, ‘WU?’,

‘WSU?’, ‘WSUU?’, ‘WSUUU?’, etc. Doubtless text-messaging

dialects are already evolving.

No texter is entirely consistent, and no two texters use identical

conventions. While a few abbreviations are widely (possibly

universally) used, such as ‘txt’and ‘msg’, others are not. I have

seen texters write ‘shl’ or ‘shll’ for shall’, but Silver doesn’t. Some

would write ‘consult’ as ‘cnsult’ or ‘cnslt’. The seventh

commandment is only partly respected, in these poems: ‘em’,

‘fone’, ‘langwij’, ‘luv’, ‘parence’, ‘sed’, and ‘shud’ are indeed quasi-

phonetic representations of the way these words are pronounced,

presumably in Silver’s accent. (That the spelling reflects a

particular accent is clear from such words as ‘neva’ and ‘ova’,

where there is no ‘r’. A West-Country speaker would presumably

not want to leave the ‘r’ out – nor, for that matter, would most

Americans.) But other words are not given a phonetic form. The

full standard English spelling given to ‘infectious’, ‘children’,

‘vulnerable’, ‘symptoms’, ‘serious’, and so on indicates that we are

dealing here with a literary genre, not a real text situation at all.

To my mind, this is one of the most interesting things about the

way texting has evolved. It is a new genre. It began to be used in

poetry very early on, in The Guardian’s text-messaging poetry

competitions. It was only a matter of time before a texting poet

arrived on the scene, and a website (www.txtcafe.com) where

doubtless the genre will be fully exploited and explored as time

goes by. Text-message stories – even novels – are also already

being circulated.

The Silver poems illustrate the strengths of texting, and also its

limitations. The more unusual the word, the more it needs to be

spelt out in full. There must be a serious limit to the amount of

information which can be conveyed using abbreviation, and a real

risk of ambiguity as soon as people try to go beyond a stock set

of social phrases. The set of possible messages is really very small,

and only a few abbreviations – such as ‘C’ (‘see’), ‘B’ (‘be’), ‘2’

(‘to, too, two’), ‘4’ (‘for, four, -fore’), and ‘U’ (‘you’) – can be used

in lots of sentences.


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Will Textspeak have an effect on the language as a whole? This is

unlikely. The whole point of the style is to suit a particular

technology where space is at a premium; and when that constraint

is dropped, abbreviated language no longer has any purpose. Its

‘cool’ associations amongst young (or at least, young-minded)

people will allow some of its idiosyncrasy to achieve a use

elsewhere, and there are occasional reports of Textspeak creeping

into other forms of writing, such as school essays. But these are

minor trends, part of the novelty of the medium. They can be

controlled as part of the task of developing in children a sense of

linguistic appropriateness – in the UK, one of the basic principles

behind the National Curriculum in English. The genre could gain

strength from its literary applications, but it is too soon to say

whether these have a long-term future.

Some people object to Textspeak. Some are bemused by it. I am

fascinated by it, for it is the latest manifestation of the human

ability – and young human ability, at that – to be linguistically

creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse

settings. In Textspeak, we are seeing, in a small way, language in

evolution.


Crystal, D. 2004. A Glossary of Textspeak and Netspeak.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Silver, N. 2006. Laugh Out Loud :-D. Age, Sex, Location, both

published by txt café, 57 Priory Street, Colchester, CO1 2QE.


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Reading B: The modern politics of ‘not real’ words

Anne Curzan

Source: Edited version from Curzan, A. (2014) Fixing English: Prescriptivismand Language History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 106–13.

The word misunderestimate, which George W. Bush famously used

in November 2000 after the presidential election (“they

misunderestimated me”), made headlines as “a Bushism” – a word

already in the OED in reference to an idiom or peculiarity of

speech associated with George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush.

The word, along with others seen to be of its ilk, was used as

fodder for critiquing Bush’s intelligence and competence – on

both sides of the Atlantic. Take, for example, this line from the

Leicester Mercury (“Read Dubya’s Unwise Words,”

December 16, 2000): “For a hair-raising peek into the cob-webby

mind of the most powerful man on earth take a look at The

Complete Bushisms [the online magazine Slate’s running list of

Bushisms]. It’s full of garbled utterings from the man who told

America that his detractors had ‘misunderestimated me.’”

In a significant number of the mocking discussions of this blend

of misunderstand and underestimate, commentators harkened back

to earlier presidential neologisms, perhaps the most famous of

which is normalcy. Some twenty-first century commentators

mistakenly credit Woodrow Wilson with normalcy, but in fact, it

was President Harding, before he became president. And the

controversy over normalcy showcases some of what is at stake in

the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for presidents who

neologize (whether intentionally or not). Neologisms can prove

slogan-worthy as well as demeaning to their author, as the word’s

legitimacy stands in for the speaker’s legitimacy; and in both cases

the neologisms can be distracting to the press and the public,

stealing part of the spotlight from the issues to which they refer.

On May 14, 1920, Warren G. Harding supposedly misread the

word normality in a draft of a campaign speech, saying normalcy

instead. So what he said is as follows:

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not

nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not


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agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the

dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but

equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but

sustainment in triumphant nationality.

The word normalcy quickly attracted attention, and Harding

harnessed that publicity and incorporated the word into a

campaign slogan: “Return to Normalcy.” This kept the word

normalcy in the limelight, and over the next year, the New York

Times addressed the legitimacy of the word normalcy multiple

times, including in letters to the editor from concerned readers

(on both sides of the issue). In other words, not only the word

but also the conversation about the word were considered

newsworthy. […]

[…]

Just [under a year] later on April 29, 1921, the New York Times

brought in the British to join in the critique of Harding’s language

(“Says Harding’s Style Jolts King’s English: London Newspaper

Thinks World Might Have Done Very Well Without Some of His

Phrases”). While the piece starts with other linguistic outrages

(according to the Brits), it returns to the word normalcy:

London, April 28. – The Daily Chronicle, in criticism of the

English used by President Harding in his first message to

Congress as disclosed on the full text which has reached

here in American newspapers says:

“The message contains several passages that could cause a

shudder in academic circles. He describes America as ‘illy

prepared for war’s aftermath.’ He says she is ‘ready to co-

operate with other nations to approximate dis-armament.’ He

refers to the overlapping of functions ‘which fritters

energies’ and talks of ‘protesting outlay’ when what he

means is protesting against outlay.

“Mr. Harding is accustomed to take desperate ventures in

the coinage of new words. In his election addresses he

invented the hideous ‘normalcy.’ This message gives us

‘hospitalization’ which the English speaking world might

surely have done very well without.”


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As often happens, some of the linguistic “atrocities” blamed on

Harding have much longer histories: illy is cited in the OED back

as far as 1546 (although the Microsoft spellchecker underlines the

word in red); and hospitalization was already in Webster’s New

International Dictionary of the English Language by 1909. But in

the end, the language is an excuse for a critique of the President,

as some readers pointed out.

[…]

George W. Bush’s word creations, as mentioned above, were

similarly scrutinized publicly by the press, taken as in some way

indicative of his intelligence and qualifications for leadership. On

his heels came Sarah Palin, the Vice Presidential candidate in

2008, whose language – especially her choice of idioms and some

of her grammatical constructions – was regularly ridiculed by the

press during the presidential campaign. Then she created a word.

Or at least many thought she did. On January 27, 2010, Sarah

Palin responded to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union

address on Fox News and said the following:

Ever since about August…Americans have paid more

attention to what is in this health care bill, and more and

more Americans are becoming more concerned about what

we see in there, so it hasn’t been a matter of he not being

able to explain his policy, with government takeover and

mandation of health care.

The Twittersphere and blogosphere went atwitter about this “new

word”: mandation. And it wasn’t celebratory buzz. Much of it was

along the lines of “Is mandation even a word?” […]

[…]

Now, of course, almost all viewers of Palin’s interview understood

exactly what Palin meant by “mandation of health care”:

mandation is a straightforward derivation of the verb mandate,

using the nominal suffix -ion (e.g., legislate > legislation). The sport

was to see if it was a “real word” – not a meaningful word

derived from rule-governed processes in the language but rather a

word recognized by dictionary editors in standard dictionaries. It

was not (it is in the OED but as obsolete with the meaning ‘the

act of committing a speech to memory’), which gave


209

commentators fodder for critique. Never mind that Palin was far

from the first person to use the word, and others had even used

it in print (e.g., some commentators quickly located a 1989 article

in the Compensation and Benefits Review titled “Healthcare for the

Uninsured: Is Mandation the Answer?”).

A few months later, Palin made headlines again, this time for her

innovative blend refudiate. As with mandation, this word formation

was not entirely innovative – the blend of refute and repudiate had

popped up before, but Palin made it famous. She used it first on

July 14, 2010, in an interview on Fox News, again with Sean

Hannity, and commentators in the blogosphere poked fun at the

word. Then on July 18, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque

supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours

throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” The

tweet was quickly removed, after almost instant ridicule, and later

in the day, Palin posted a tweet that cited refudiate,

misunderestimate, and wee wee’d up (an expression President Obama

used in 2009) as evidence of English as a living language. She

then added: “Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to

celebrate it!” The comparison to Shakespeare once again lit up the

Twittersphere. The word refudiate got so much buzz over the next

few months that the New Oxford American Dictionary named it

their word of the year for 2010, although the announcement on

the Oxford University Press blog added the caveat that the Press

and its lexicographers had “no definite plans to include ‘refudiate’

in the NOAD, the OED, or any of our other dictionaries.” Several

critics of this decision argued that refudiate was a speech error,

not a coinage (and not new to Palin).

Zimmer (2013) raises the question of why presidents no longer

lead in creating or popularizing new words. Thomas Jefferson is

credited in the OED for neologize (1813), as well as belittle (1785)

and Anglophobia (1793). Of course, Jefferson was carrying out his

neologizing before Webster’s dictionary had been published in the

US. Zimmer concludes:

Presidential language, while still closely watched, no longer

exerts the impact it once did. In part, that is because modern

presidents are exceedingly careful about what they say, which

puts a damper on linguistic innovation. But we are also

swamped with so many forms of creative public discourse,


210

online and in the mass media, that “words from the White

House” don’t stand out as much.

It is certainly true that we are swamped with creative public

discourse, and it’s important that part of that discourse focuses on

presidential neologizing, usually as illegitimate. Consider the

ridicule that George W. Bush endured for his use of the word

embetterment, formed through regular morphological processes

from the verb embetter, which the OED lists as obsolete, but

would still be transparent for English speakers through analogy

with a verb such as embitter. Embetterment as a neologism is

arguably no more radical than Jefferson’s creation of belittle. Yet

while belittle appears in the OED with Jefferson as the first

citation, embetterment appears in Urban Dictionary with this

definition: “A non-existent word that George W. Bush frequently

uses in speeches and at press conferences.”

Jefferson wrote: “Necessity obliges us to neologize.” What counts

as “necessity” is open to debate. And Jefferson was not living in

the age of blogs and tweets and 24/7 news cycles, which raise the

political stakes of neologizing. It is no wonder that modern

presidents are exceedingly careful about what they say – not only

in terms of the content but also in terms of the perceived

legitimacy of the words. As Ben Jonson wrote centuries ago in

Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1640): “A man coins not a

new word without some peril and less fruit; for if it happen to be

received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the scorn is

assured.”

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the new words

created by famous people are regularly debated publicly online

and in the press. For politicians, the question of a word’s

legitimacy can be a way to debate the person’s legitimacy.


Jonson, Ben. 1640 [1892]. Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter.

Edited, with introduction and notes, by Felix E.Schelling. Boston:

Ginn & Company.


211

Zimmer, Ben. 2013. All the president’s words: whatever happened

to our neologizers-in-chief ? Boston Globe (January 20). http://

bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/01/20/all-president-words/

hmyLFIS4TfHx7ctH67bMEI/story.html?camp


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Reading C: Londonstani: Why the lingo?

Gautam Malkani

Source: Edited version from Malkani, G. (2014) ‘About Londonstani’, GautamMalkani [Online]. Available at www.gautammalkani.com/about_londonstani.htm (Accessed 6 January 2016).

[…] I wanted to write [the book, Londonstani] in a way that

people who know this scene would find engaging and so I

basically had to write it in the language people use and

understand. Whenever I tried switching to “proper English”

(whatever that’s supposed to mean), it sounded stupid and just

didn’t work.

But I’m not going to waste cyberspace here defending the

language against accusations that it’s too crude or base, because to

even dignify that with debate means ignoring how the English

language has always evolved through corruption.

Having said all of that, the language of Londonstani is clearly

important in its own right. Firstly, the young men in the book are

supposed to be wannabe bad-boys rather than the real thing and

are therefore pretty much all talk. It seemed like the best way to

spell this out was to just have them talk.

Secondly, speech patterns are the characters’ main measure of

manliness and virility. Mobile phones and tongues become the

book’s two phallic symbols […] But that’s not to say these things

are simply substitute sports cars. Speech and phones are the tools

the characters use to get away from their mothers, yet they’re also

the same things their mothers try to regulate them with. So

they’re a bit like weapons.

Also, “proper English” is a symbol of the dominant culture and

system that the main characters are trying to disrespect. So while

the young men express their disrespect for mainstream society by

carefully pulping the English language, the Panjabi dialogue in the

book (spelt the local way rather than the British “Punjabi”) had to

observe strict grammatical rules and silent letters, etc. Alongside

“proper English”, the book’s other symbols for dominant,

mainstream society include the education system; public transport;

public institutions and the taxation system that funds them; and

the BBC – although the four young men soon learn to love the


213

latter because the broadcaster embraces and celebrates their own

version of Britishness. In fact, by the end of the book Jas even

learns to love public transport, while ripping off the taxman stops

looking like such a good idea when he’s confronted with the

mother of all tax evasions… but all this is a digression from the

question about language…

Because “proper English” represents the culture and system the

young men are trying to disregard, I couldn’t resist using the

mobile phone generation’s disregard for grammar and spelling.

But mobile phone SMS/text speak is only used heavily by two

characters – Hardjit and Davinder – because they’re the most

aggressive. The bulk of the book’s language is basically a mash-up

of London street slang; popular Americanisms (such as “feds” or

“bucks”); Panjabi slang and hip-hop slang.

What I didn’t want to do was capture an exact picture of the way

people talk by writing it just as I was hearing it. That would’ve

been dumbass-ingly pointless because slang changes all the time

and words and phrases would’ve been out of date by the time the

book was published (if indeed it ever got published). So instead, I

tried to create a timeless version of the slang so that more people

could recognise and relate to it regardless of what year they

finished school.

Creating a kind of futureproof, timeless slang – instead of taking

a snapshot at any particular moment in time – basically meant

taking popular words from different years that have already stood

the test of time and then stitching them together. So I took words

from when I was at school in Hounslow in the late 1980s and

early 1990s that people still use today. Then I took words that

have stood the test of time from the interviews I did for my

university dissertation in the mid-late 1990s (which luckily I’d

captured on dictaphone cassette as well as notebooks). And then I

combined all of that with words being used today that I think will

probably survive. So from each stage of the research I was trying

to bin words that might not survive (even if they were more

interesting and trendy at the time) and replace them either with

other, more enduring slang words or just plain English. The

result, I hoped, would be a version of the slang that everyone

would recognise but that nobody ever really used (at least in its

entirety anyway).


214

Words that I rejected included things like murk, ends, sick, bare,

blazing and arms. For example, instead of “arms” (meaning

hostility) I used the word the older slang word “beef ” because

people still recognise and use it – it’s more likely to stand the test

of time, even if it’s not as popular today as “arms”. Of course,

not all these calls might turn out to be correct, but the idea was

to be recognisable, not definitive.

One potential downside of writing in slang (apart from short-

circuiting my word processor’s spellchecker) is that it restricted

what I could do with Jas’s narration. He can’t get too

sophisticated, not just because he’s always trying to suppress his

intelligence, but also because the language doesn’t really allow for

it. But that’s kind of the point: as Mr Ashwood says in the book,

you can’t really understand stuff properly if you can’t articulate it

properly. So the slang eventually helps Jas in his mission to be

less intelligent.

I adapted the slang for different characters depending on how

hardcore they were. So Jas has his own linguistic rules, Amit and

Ravi share another set of rules while Hardjit and Davinder have

their own version (the rest of the characters speak “proper

English”). For example, Jas always says “in’t” instead of “ain’t” –

which hopefully shows how Jas tries too hard to be a bad-boy

while Hardjit is comfortable and secure using the British

mainstream slang “ain’t”.

This all caused a nightmare for my publisher because I insisted on

going through the manuscript again and again to make sure all the

correct linguistic rules were being followed by the correct

characters – and I’m not even sure I totally managed it. All this

rule-making and future-proofing might seem ridiculous given the

fluid nature of slang, but slang often does have rules and I

wanted to use rules and subtle distinctions to highlight

fundamental differences between characters who, on a superficial

level, are always trying to look and sound like each other. The

point is, the slang isn’t random. There are rules and codes with all

slang – otherwise slang wouldn’t create boundaries and barriers to

entry. And in the case of this particular slang, it creates both a

racial boundary and a generational boundary. So, just like every

other aspect of the characters’ identities, their seemingly random

slang is actually carefully constructed and contrived.


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Chapter 5 Talking and rapping in the

globalised world: creativity curbed or

unleashed?

Anna Kristina Hultgren

5.1 Introduction

This chapter explores creativity and language in the context of

globalisation through two examples: hip hop and call centres. While

these examples may immediately strike us as having little in common,

both hip hop and call centres have been hailed as epitomising

globalisation. Hip hop has been defined as ‘a youth arts mass cultural

movement that evolved in New York City during the 1970s’ (Keyes,

2008, p. 87). It is a conglomerate term for four types of popular

culture, including rap music, DJ’ing, street dance and graffiti

(Schloss, 2009). Hip hoppers practising one or more of these four

types of art form share a purpose of creating ‘spaces of resistance to

oppression, racism, and poverty’ (Morrison, 2003, p. 188). Hip hop has

been said to be exemplary of globalisation because its constitutive

practices are being exported across the world through global media

such as MTV, YouTube and magazines. The global interconnectedness

is evident in that hip hoppers in countries as diverse as China, Canada,

Senegal, Cuba, France, Japan, Sweden, Brazil and the UK may see

themselves as belonging to the same community. Indeed, the term

‘Global Hip Hop Nation’ (Alim, 2009, p. 105) has been coined to

capture its transnational and translingual dynamics.

Likewise, call centres are also seen as a phenomenon of globalisation.

The number of call centres globally has shot up exponentially as a

result of political and economically motivated decisions in the 1980s to

remove barriers to international trade and outsourcing. They are now a

widely favoured and cost-effective way for organisations to manage

their contact with customers. Improved infrastructure worldwide means

that it is possible to outsource call centres to parts of the world where

labour costs are much cheaper, thereby in turn reinforcing globalisation

and global interconnectedness.

While both hip hop and call centres are viewed as global phenomena,

when it comes to creativity, scholars have taken very different views.

Chapter 5 Talking and rapping in the globalised world: creativity curbed or unleashed?

217

Academics studying hip hop have been keen to highlight what they

regard as its inherently creative and innovative aspects. Hip hoppers,

whether graffiti artists, dancers, DJs or rappers, often get recognition,

at least among some cultural commentators and academics, for

breaking with established norms. As such, hip-hop practices seem to

satisfy at least one of the three criteria of creativity proposed by

Kaufman and Sternberg (2010, p. xiii): that is, they are ‘different, new,

or innovative’.

In academic studies of call centres, in contrast, creativity is not a

concept to which attention is readily drawn. On the contrary, call-

centre work is often described as highly routinised, partly or wholly

pre-scripted and sometimes as downright tedious. As one call-centre

manager puts it:

once an Adviser sits down and logs on her computer, puts on her

headset, the calls are force fed to her, she is script driven. Once

that call is finished another one pops into her head. There is no

let-up, no break, unless they have an official break.

(Cited in Mulholland, 2004, p. 714)

Because hip hop and call centres seem to be at the opposite points on

a spectrum of creativity, they seem potentially illuminating in terms of

exploring and articulating what creativity is and what it is not.


218

Figure 5.1 Connecting the world: call centres and hip hop

A key concept of this chapter, in addition to that of creativity, is that

of agency, a ‘[t]erm used by sociologists to refer to the human

capacity to act (see Giddens, 1979); used to contrast the individual with

wider social and political structures’ (Swann et al., 2004, p. 7). Many

sociologists argue that people are not free to act just in any way they

may want to because they are constrained by social structures (such as

social class), which shape their upbringing, their lived experiences and

their values. Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of ‘habitus’ captures this idea by

recognising that individuals are habituated, through upbringing and

value schemes, to act in certain ways relating to social class, gender and

ethnicity. For researchers of language, the question of agency in

language (Duranti, 2005) concerns the extent to which speakers are

able or free to use language in any way they like, or the extent to

which their choices are constrained.

This chapter will raise questions about the relationship between agency

and creativity. For, just as with creativity, hip hop and call centres are

practices which have been explicitly or implicitly assumed to represent

opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to agency. Representations

of hip hop as creative and artful appear to foreground linguistic

agency: that is, the idea that hip-hop artists are free to use language in

any way they like with little regard for – or indeed as a deliberate

challenge to – established social and artistic conventions. Indeed, hip

hop, like many other art forms, is often construed as an outlet to

express one’s discontent with social and political issues, such as urban

hardship and racism, as well as being an important means to express

one’s identity (Morrison, 2003; Keyes, 2008). Conversely, in call centres,


219

Figure 5.2 Creativity unleashed? Graffiti artistry: one of four components of

hip hop

if linguistic agency is an issue, it has been approached from the

perspective of questioning the degree to which it exists: for example,

whether call-centre workers have any sort of freedom to act in a

regime of intense management control in which every task of the

working day, from time on the phone to taking a break, is

electronically registered and scrutinised (see Figure 5.3). It is not

without reason that call centres have often been labelled ‘new

sweatshops’ or ‘electronic panopticon[s]’ (cited in Bain and Taylor,

2000, p. 2) and ‘communication factories’ (Cameron, 2000, p. 93).

Therefore, a key question in this chapter is the extent to which

creativity is contingent on agency. Certainly, it does seem to be

assumed, in many accounts of creativity, that someone needs to be able

to act – or do something – in order for the resulting output to be called

creative. But how far do one’s acts need to go and – a key theme

across many discussions of creativity – to what extent do they need to

break with conventions and established structures to constitute

‘creative’ or ‘innovative’ behaviour? Put differently, how far is creativity

possible when one’s agency is curbed?

5.2 Globalisation, localisation and glocalisation

In this section you will look at three concepts which are of key

importance to understanding globalisation. For the purposes of this

chapter, they will be referred to as globalisation, localisation and


220

01/07/15 9:05:50 1:31:37 15:17 00:00 02:44 1:02:52 10:42 00:02 00:00 00:00 00:0002/07/15 9:02:57 3:33:39 19:18 00:00 18:54 1:00:07 28.34 13:32 00:00 15:53 57:2105/07/15 7:30:08 45:07 07:03 00:00 00:00 28:09 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 09:5506/07/15 9:05:22 2:02:26 20:58 00:00 00:00 1:00:54 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 40:3407/07/15 9:04:42 1:43:58 09:44 00:00 10:23 59:27 15:36 08:48 00:00 00:00 00:0008/07/15 9:01:51 2:07:21 24:11 00:00 00:00 58:24 00:00 11:05 00:00 00:00 33:4112/07/15 7:17:20 41:40 11:49 00:00 00:00 29:49 00:00 00:02 00:00 00:00 00:0015/07/15 7:05:16 35:18 24:51 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 10:27 00:00 00:00 00:0021/07/15 9:08:55 1:29:04 21:09 00:00 00:00 58:48 00:00 09:07 00:00 00:00 00:0022/07/15 9:06:46 1:35:48 29:28 00:00 00:00 56:44 00:00 09:36 00:00 00:00 00:0026/07/15 7:36:22 1:18:36 18:58 00:00 00:00 28:30 00:00 00:00 00:00 00:00 31:0827/07/15 9:06:40 1:30:06 19:07 00:00 00:00 1:00:14 00:00 10:45 00:00 00:00 00:0028/07/15 9:07:57 1:26:44 15:41 00:00 00:00 59:34 00:00 11:29 00:00 00:00 00:0029/07/15 0:06:06 1:26:54 17:55 00:00 00:00 59:34 00:00 09:25 00:00 00:00 00:0030/07/15 9:04:48 1:33:35 23:22 00:00 00:00 59:27 00:00 10:46 00:00 00:00 00:00

Date StaffedTime

CustomerService

Idle PerformanceAssessment

Admin Lunch Meeting Break Training Emergency SystemProblems

Monitor SheetAgent: Simpson Joy Printed: 02/08/15

Figure 5.3 Creativity curbed? Monitor sheet from a call centre (adapted from author’s data, see

Hultgren, 2008)

glocalisation (see ‘Globalisation – key concepts’ box). In later sections

you will look at these concepts in relation to hip hop and call centres,

but here they will be illustrated using an emblematic example of

globalisation, McDonald’s fast food chain. Like hip hop and call

centres, McDonald’s, with outlets in more than 100 countries, is often

held out as an iconic example of globalisation. Indeed, it ‘has often

been taken to represent the apogée (or nadir) of globalized

commercialism’ (Kelly-Holmes, 2010, p. 478). It should serve well,

then, to illustrate some key dimensions of globalisation and how they

relate to creativity and agency.

Globalisation – key concepts

Globalisation: refers to ‘a phenomenon which emphasises

interconnectedness across the globe and which encompasses a

number of significant economic, technological and cultural aspects’

(Swann et al., 2004, p. 125).

Localisation: refers to ‘the maintenance and development of local

practices and identity’ (Swann et al., 2004, p. 126) within the

context of globalisation.

Glocalisation: refers to ‘the simultaneity – the co-presence – of

both universalizing and particularizing tendencies’ (Robertson,

1997, p. 4).

The principles and processes on which McDonald’s is based are the

same all over the world: there are specific and globally applicable

guidelines for how to wrap the burgers and how many minutes to fry

the fries and keep the poured-out milkshakes on the shelf before they

are binned. As a customer, you are also conditioned to behave in

standardised ways in outlets across the world: you choose from the

same structure of menu consisting of sandwich/burger, fries and soft

drink, you order and pay for your food at the counter and you clear

your own table. This exemplifies globalisation and particularly that

aspect of it that highlights increased global similarity, or

homogenisation, in contrast to global variety and difference, or

heterogeneity.


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Activity 5.1


Look at the cartoon below and consider how it generates its humour.

Discussion

This cartoon alludes to a prevailing view of globalisation: that it causes

cultural homogenisation. More specifically, it exploits the common

complaint by tourists travelling in today’s globalised world that individual

countries are losing their unique character. Indeed, if you travel, you

yourself may bemoan how hard it has become to go anywhere in the

world without being met by the recognisable logos of McDonald’s, Coca-

Cola and Starbucks. Such increased similarity across the world has

often been hailed as a key marker of globalisation, and particularly the

type of globalisation that is associated with the politically and

economically powerful influencing and encroaching on the less powerful.

Globalisation is often held up against the other two concepts

introduced in the box above: localisation and glocalisation, but these

can also be regarded as dimensions of globalisation. Taking McDonald’s

as an example, localisation is manifested in the adaptation of its

products to the likes and dislikes and cultural and religious mores of

specific countries and regions. McDonald’s in India, for example, has

introduced a mutton-based Maharaja Mac to cater for both Hindus

who do not eat beef and Muslims who do not eat pork. In the Middle


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Figure 5.4 Don’t give up hope, Lenny

East and Pakistan, the McArabia, a chicken grilled sandwich served on

a pitta bread, accommodates a widespread regional preference for that

type of bread. German outlets serve beer. This local adaptation, or

localisation, can be understood in terms of a global product that is

adapted to local particularities.

Glocalisation (Robertson, 1995) is supposed to capture phenomena

which cannot easily be understood in terms of either globalisation or

localisation. This process is often said to involve creativity as well as

agency in that the individual strategically picks, chooses and combines

elements from a pool of existing resources, possibly without much

regard for pre-existing constraints or conventions. The direction of

influence in the case of glocalisation is thus assumed to be much more

dynamic and unpredictable in that it does not necessarily involve a less

powerful actor adopting or adapting the resources of the more

powerful. Instead, the flow of influence is one of multidirectionality

whereby semiotic resources from a potentially infinite range of

different cultures and languages are mixed into novel and hybrid forms.

The next activity is designed to help you explore your understanding

of these concepts and relationships, staying for the moment within the

example of McDonald’s.

Activity 5.2


The three photographs shown in Figures 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 come from a

blog on the internet called ‘McDonald’s Around the World’ (www.

travellingmcds.com). Here bloggers can post pictures and review

McDonald’s food items that they have eaten in various locations across

the world. Look at the three photographs and their captions, which

reveal where they were taken, and reflect on whether they represent

globalisation, localisation or glocalisation.

Discussion

If you have looked at the pictures in combination with their captions, one

possible interpretation is that these meal items represent aspects of

glocalisation: for example, they contain a mix of cultural resources. The

double wasabi burger was bought in Hong Kong, though you may well

have been surprised by the use of wasabi, Japanese horseradish, which

at least to Westerners is more readily associated with Japan and grows

naturally there. Similarly, while Aloo Tikki is a North-Indian snack made

from boiled potatoes and various spices, the McAloo Tikki burger,


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purchased in Singapore, is presumably marketed to suit the taste buds

of the large Indian population residing there. Finally, the Texan burger,

purchased by a blogger travelling to South Africa, was only on the menu

for a month as part of the restaurant’s Tastes of the World promotion,

which in fact can be seen as a strategic instance of glocalisation. This

mixing of resources from different food cultures might be seen as

creative and innovative, at least if creativity is understood as combining

existing resources into something new.

Figure 5.5 A Double Wasabi of Flavor purchased by a blogger in Hong

Kong

Figure 5.6 A McAloo Tikki Burger bought in Singapore


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Figure 5.7 The Texan Burger, bought in Johannesburg, South Africa

While the above interpretation emphasises glocalisation, innovation,

creativity and agency, it is, however, also possible to make a case for

these images representing instances of globalisation and localisation,

depending on where the emphasis is placed. The mere fact that

McDonald’s reproduces its key practices across the world may seem to

point to some degree of homogenisation. Further evidence of

homogenisation may be seen in the McDonald’s logo and brand-

compliant typography, which is either imprinted on the packaging or clear

from the product name in the ‘Mc’ prefix. If you make a case for

localisation, you might argue that these products have been adapted to

suit the local market; you would be unlikely to find the first two examples

in a US outlet. In both globalisation and localisation, we might expect

agency and creativity to be less foregrounded, as the outcome involves

making do with the resources that are already there, through adoption or

adaptation.

A key question for you to consider in this chapter is the extent to

which globalisation always entails powerful actors influencing those

that are less powerful. Certainly, a widespread understanding of

globalisation seems to be that politically and economically powerful

actors in the world (whether these are nation-states, global media

enterprises or multinational corporations) come to dominate and

influence the less powerful, essentially leading to different parts of the

world becoming increasingly similar. This process may be understood

as a one-directional flow of influence from the powerful to the less

powerful. Alternative interpretations might be that less powerful actors

choose to adopt the resources and practices associated with the


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powerful (as opposed to having them thrust upon them) or that the

influence is of a more multidirectional nature, where there is a flurry of

exchanges involving cultural and linguistic resources. And what do the

different patterns of flow – one-directional or multidirectional – mean

for opportunities in creativity and innovation?

5.3 Hip hop: creativity unleashed?

This section explores the extent to which creativity and agency feature

in the language of hip hop. As mentioned in the introduction, hip hop

is an example of globalisation which has often been celebrated for

innovatively – and, arguably, creatively – mixing semiotic resources

from different languages and cultures. As the sociolinguist Alastair

Pennycook (2010, p. 600) writes in regard to the hip hoppers he

focuses on, they ‘artfully integrat[e] the flows of English and Korean

rap styles in a bilingual performance’.

Academics studying hip-hop practices have certainly highlighted its

many creative and innovative aspects, focusing, for instance, on the

way in which hip hoppers mix linguistic and other semiotic resources

normally associated with different ethnicities. Scholars have often

described such hybrid practices in celebratory terms, sometimes

explicitly denoting them as ‘creative’ and/or ‘innovative’ (e.g. Mitchell,

2001; Pennycook, 2010).

Hip-hop scholars have been quick to take on board glocalisation as a

useful concept to understand that, contrary to what may perhaps be

the prevailing, common-sense understanding, globalisation need not

always entail a one-directional linear trajectory from the powerful to

the less powerful, but can take place in more circular flows. This

means that instead of a widespread perception of globalisation leading

to the world becoming increasingly homogeneous, it is actually

becoming much more of a potpourri or melting pot of different

cultural and linguistic resources.


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Activity 5.3

Allow about 2 hours

Turn to Reading A, ‘Circles of flow’ by Alastair Pennycook, at the end of

this chapter. Read the extract to explore the extent to which a melting

pot of cultural resources is manifested in the lyrics and language choice

of hip hop.

As you read, reflect on the following:

. What evidence does Pennycook cite to support his point that

globalisation does not always entail a flow of influence from the

powerful to the less powerful?

. To what extent do agency and creativity feature in Pennycook’s

argument that hip hop practices are glocalising?

Discussion

Pennycook cites examples from many places across the global hip-hop

community (Australia, Hawaii, French Polynesia) which influence one

another rather than, or in addition to, simply adopting elements from the

US hip-hop scene. For instance, the Maori hip-hop group Upper Hutt

Posse combine ‘the use of Maori traditional instruments, militant patere

and karanga (raps and calls to ancestors) and invocations of the spirits

of the forest (Tane Mohuta) and the guardian of the sea (Tangaroa), and

the rhetoric borrowed from the Nation of Islam (Mitchell, 2003a, p. 13)’.

These influences from different cultural contexts come in a variety of

forms, languages, themes, traditions, instruments, melodies and

rhythms. Pennycook, drawing on the work of Akindes (2001) on

Hawaiian hip hop, emphasises the counter-hegemonic nature of hip hop

and points to the explicitly political messages in the lyrics.

While Pennycook does not actually use the term ‘creative’ to describe

the glocalising practices of hip hoppers, their norm-deviating and

surprising nature could be said to fit Kaufman and Sternberg’s (2010)

definitions of creativity as being ‘innovative’. There is also a sense in

which producers’ agency is assumed, whether or not this is explicitly

recognised. Thus, Pennycook’s argument could be said to hinge on the

idea that hip hoppers strategically and deliberately adopt semiotic

resources from different cultures to create novel, challenging, surprising

(and creative?) effects which break with established ways of using

language and cultural norms. The idea of glocalisation, then, does

appear to foreground agency to a higher degree than either globalisation

or localisation.


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To sum up, hip-hop scholars tend to use examples of language mixing

and other engagements with cultural hybridity to draw attention to

circular flows of influence in the globalised world. Elements from

different languages and cultures are strategically picked up and remixed

to form what may, by some, be described as creative outcomes.

Assumed or explicitly foregrounded in such practices is agency, as hip

hoppers are understood to strategically combine elements from

different languages and cultures to form new linguistic forms which

depart from conventionalised ways of using language.

Activity 5.4


Staying with hip hop for a little longer, to consider what it tells us about

the nature of ‘transcultural flows’, read the following lyrics performed by

the Tanzanian hip-hop artist or rapper King Crazy GK, featuring the

seven-person hip-hop group East Coast Team. As you read, consider the

particular social meanings that the lyrics index (see Chapter 2).

Figure 5.8 King Crazy GK, a rapper from Tanzania

The original lyrics, which are in Swahili, are on the left and the English

translation is on the right.


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Table 5.1 ‘Ama Zao ama Zangu’ (‘Theirs or mine’)

Amiri Jeshi Mkuu sasa naitangaza vita As an Army commander now,

I order a war,

sio ile kuu ya tatu

bali hii ni ya kivietnam yanni mtaa

not the third world war

rather, this is like Vietnam,

meaning, street

kwa mtaa

mmoja mmoja nawakamateni afu

by street

one by one, I capture (fans)

and then

nazaa nanyi

utaponiona ita polisi 911

breed more

when you see me, call the

police at 9-1-1,

la sivyo otherwise

jua umekwisha realize that it’s over

watoto wa mama siku hizi children of today,

mnachonga sana you all think too much of

yourselves

yaani nyimbo moja in other words, if you get one

song

hewani on the air,

mkisifiwa mnajiona wakina P-Diddy you are praised as if you were

P-Diddy

(Source: Alim et al., 2009)

Figure 5.9 East Coast Team


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Discussion

The decision to perform in Swahili, the official language of Tanzania

alongside English, suggests a wish for the group to claim affiliation with

their local Tanzanian hip-hop community. This choice may not be

insignificant since a long-standing debate in Tanzania has revolved

around whether to adopt Swahili or English as the national language.

Swahili is seen as indexing (or as being associated with) traditional

Tanzanian, pan-African, often socialist values, whereas English primarily

indexes economic prosperity and growth. By choosing to perform in

Swahili, the artists can therefore be said both to perform a local,

Tanzanian identity and to draw on the political potential of hip hop by

taking sides in a language-related debate. So the local identity is

claimed primarily through the choice of performing in Swahili.

Conversely, the claim to membership of the global hip-hop community is

evidenced in the lyrics by a number of references to that community. As

the original researcher, Christina Higgins (2009), observes, the name

‘King Crazy GK’ signals an alliance with the African-American rap artist,

Krazy, who is well known on the global hip-hop scene; the reference to

P-Diddy likewise signals an alliance with the global hip-hop community.

However, an alternative analysis might want to question the celebratory

view of hip hop as being a melting pot of multiple cultural resources.

There is reference to the Vietnam war, a salient concept in US culture,

as well as to calling 911. As Higgins (2009) points out, dialling 911 in

Tanzania will not put you through to the police, but it will do so in the

USA. Possibly, too, 911 could be an even further-reaching US cultural

reference to the 1990 political song ‘911 is a joke’ (performed by the

American rap group Public Enemy about the lack of response by the

police in Black neighbourhoods in the USA). Additionally, P-Diddy (later

known as just ‘Diddy’), while being a prominent figure in the global hip-

hop community, is actually an American rapper. Similarly, on a more

subtle level, Higgins suggests that the name of the featured group, East

Coast Team, so named because Tanzania is on the east coast of Africa,

creates a ‘globalized indexical tie’ (Higgins, 2009, p. 108) to the US hip-

hop community and the tensions that exist between the East and West

Coast hip-hop scene there. In choosing to call themselves ‘East Coast

Team’, then, the group may be said to affiliate themselves with the East

Coast hip-hop scene in the USA, which is considered by some to be

more authentic than hip hop emanating from the West Coast of the USA.

All in all, then, this might be taken as evidence that the flow of influence

does seem to go mainly from the powerful (here the USA) to the less

powerful.


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It seems, then, that although some of the resources which are drawn

on to claim membership of the global hip-hop community may be seen

as global, in many cases, it is possible to pinpoint their possible origins

to a specific, locally recognised culture. This brings into question the

extent to which the flow of influence is indeed multidirectional or

whether it is skewed in favour of the less powerful more often

adopting the resources of the more powerful.

Pennycook is certainly keen to point out that ‘Although certain hubs of

cultural production remain highly influential – the metropolitan centers

of France and the USA, for example – the flows of popular culture are

not simply from center to periphery’ (Pennycook, 2010, p. 593). He

argues that there is a mixing and remixing of languages, ideas, concepts

and lyrics going on that ‘brings about new relations among languages

and cultures’ (Pennycook, 2010, p. 593). Pennay (2001, p. 128), on the

other hand, laments that ‘[r]egrettably, the flow of new ideas and

stylistic innovations in popular music is nearly always from the

English-speaking market, and not to it’.

As an argument against Pennycook’s over-celebratory view, Allington

observes that the emerging new relations are massively asymmetric,

with creative industries based in the USA and the UK enjoying

virtually unchallenged global dominance and, within those countries,

audiences for cultural goods produced outside largely remaining

‘limited to members of linguistic minorities’ (Allington, 2012, p. 243).

This situation appears not to be undermined by new technologies such

as the SoundCloud website, which enables creators based anywhere in

the world to publish and disseminate music (especially hip hop and

dance music) on a global level. In their large-scale analysis of

relationships on this site, Allington et al. (2015) propose that

SoundCloud users in London, New York and Los Angeles can readily

find large numbers of followers both among each other and

throughout the rest of the world, while users elsewhere struggle to

reach a more than local audience. This suggests that, even in an

apparently anarchic online environment, the flows of popular culture

overwhelmingly are from centre to periphery.

Figure 5.10 shows the following relationships between SoundCloud

users in 134 different cities (those with very low numbers of users

were left out). The ten cities where SoundCloud users had the most

followers from elsewhere have been labelled, and so have the ten with

the least. The ten with the most followers are in western Europe or

North America and are mainly English-speaking countries. The ten


231

with the least followers are in eastern Europe, Latin America, and

south and south-east Asia. Some of the latter ten cities are very

important: for example, Tbilisi and Dhaka are national capitals, while

the Hyderabad Metropolitan Area has around 10 million inhabitants.

But the study found that SoundCloud users based in the small British

city of Brighton were followed more than twice as often as people

based in all ten of those places put together.

In this section you have considered the example of hip hop and how

analysts have used it to show the way in which globalisation is not

simply about the less powerful copying or being forced to adopt the

practices of the more powerful. Rather, it has been suggested that

there are bi- or multidirectional circles of influence which involve a

strategic mixing of semiotic resources from the local and the global,


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Figure 5.10 Who’s following whom? (Adapted from Allington et al., 2015,

p. 218)

which can be described as creative. In this mixing and remixing, the

agency of artists is recognised and emphasised by some scholars;

however, the extent to which such agency disrupts globalised patterns

of production is problematised by other scholars (e.g. Allington

et al., 2015) who argue that flows of popular culture are

overwhelmingly from the centre to the periphery.

5.4 Call centres: creativity curbed?

In this section you will consider an example of globalisation that would

seem to illustrate the antithesis of discursive and cultural creativity: the

modern-day call centre. If you are a citizen in contemporary Western

society, you are likely to have fairly frequent contact with call centres.

Whether your car breaks down, your credit card gets stolen or you are

feeling poorly, you will be put through to a call centre when you dial,

respectively, your rescue service, your bank and, in the UK at least,

your health care provider out of hours.

Call centres serve as a useful contrast to what might seem at times to

be an overemphasis on linguistic creativity and agency in the age of

globalisation. Their raison d’être of increasing speed of service and

reducing costs inevitably leads to standardisation, routinisation and

control; all concepts, it would seem, that are potentially antithetical to

linguistic agency and creativity. A key feature of call-centre practice and


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Figure 5.11 Inside a typical call centre

a key example of routinisation is the call-centre scorecard. A scorecard

is a document used by managers to assess the extent to which a call-

centre worker has complied with a set of management-imposed

interactional moves and phrases in a randomly selected sample of calls

they have taken or made. In most call centres, calls are routinely

recorded (which customers will often be informed about prior to

interaction) to serve as the basis for regular performance reviews. In

some call centres, such reviews may be consequential for salary

bonuses and career progression, so incentives to comply are often

high. They serve two overall purposes, which are fundamentally

contradictory: on the one hand, to make sure that the operator takes

control of the call in order not to waste time on irrelevancies and, on

the other, to create rapport with the customer as a way of

compensating for what might otherwise feel to the customer to be an

impersonal and routinised service.

Activity 5.5


Now look at a transcript of a highly routinised interaction (in the form of

a directory enquiry) and a call-centre scorecard. (They have been taken

from different call centres and are not related to one another.) What

evidence is there that the call handler has little scope for agency?

Agent: XYZ Directories, which name please?

Caller: Jones

Agent: Jones, thank you.

Which town please?

Caller: Cardiff

Agent: Cardiff, thank you.

Which address please?

Caller: Number 28, Acacia Avenue

Agent: Number 28, Acacia Avenue, thank you.

Just searching for you. (pause)

Sorry to keep you waiting.

Thank you. Your number is 0123 456789

Caller: Thank you.

Agent: You’re welcome.


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Caller: Goodbye.

Agent: Goodbye.

(Cameron, 2001, p. 104)

Discussion

It could be argued that both the scorecard and the directory enquiry

exchange provide evidence that the talk that goes on in call centres is at

least to a certain extent out of the control of the call-centre worker. The

scorecard steers the call-centre worker towards certain interactional

moves, named as ‘Greeting the Customer’, ‘Managing the Request’ and

‘Response to Customer’. Each of these, in turn, is subdivided into more

fine-grained instructions or suggestions for the way to behave, such as

‘Waits to speak until the call is presented and greets promptly using

standard greeting’, ‘Listens with full attention, focuses on the issue

presented’ and ‘Asks for (and uses) customer’s name’.


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Figure 5.12 Example of scorecard used in a call centre

The directory enquiry exchange, in turn, is similarly unlikely to deviate

from a standard format. While this format may or may not be explicitly

prescribed by a scorecard, it is dictated by a combination of routine and

technology which require certain pieces of information to be input in a

specific order. In other words, the questions ‘Which name please?’,

‘Which town please?’, ‘Which address please?’ are best asked in that

order to enable the operator to process the call efficiently. Also worth

noting are the attempts made by the operator to create rapport with the

customer: for example, by reassuring the caller that they are ‘Just

searching for you’ and by apologising with ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

Such instances of creating rapport and compensating for the routinised

and/or scripted nature of the interaction are also detectable in the

scorecard, which encourages operators to use their own name and the

caller’s name and to adopt a ‘pleasant demeanour’ through their tone

and word choices. Even though such rapport-building moves may

immediately seem to contrast with the routinised and scripted nature of

the interaction, they have been referred to as ‘synthetic

personalisation’: that is, ‘a compensatory tendency to give the

impression of treating each of the people “handled” en masse as an

individual’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 62). In sum, then, both scorecards and

actual call-centre interactions (at least the very routinised type examined

here) have led academics to argue that agency in call centres is

significantly reduced.

Activity 5.5 serves to make the point that call-centre workers’ linguistic

agency has often been claimed to be diminished. However, it needs to

be borne in mind that there is considerable variation between call

centres in terms of how script-reliant and routinised the interaction is.

Short and very predictable interactions, such as directory enquiry

exchanges, are likely to be among the most routinised ones.

Notwithstanding this, the linguistic prescriptions and practices in call

centres constitute a stark contrast to the example of hip hop in which

scholars appear to have assumed a much greater degree of agency,

often with creative outcomes, whether or not explicitly labelled as

such. To what extent is it possible to deduce from this that agency is a

prerequisite for being creative? Put differently, is it possible to be

creative when one’s agency is reduced?


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Activity 5.6

Allow about 2 hours and 15 minutes

Turn to Reading B, ‘“Subterranean worksick blues”: humour as

subversion in two call centres’, by Phil Taylor and Peter Bain, at the end

of this chapter. Taylor and Bain are sociologists who have contributed

extensively to the literature on call centres. As you read, consider the

following questions:

. What evidence do the authors provide for what they call ‘creative and

subversive humour’?

. What purposes does humour in the call centres seem to serve?

. To what extent do the observed subversive practices imply agency

and what does this suggest about the relationship between creativity

and agency?

Discussion

The authors of this paper position themselves in an ongoing academic

debate about the extent to which workers in call centres are able to

actively resist or challenge the regime of control to which they are

subjected, or whether they are passive victims of it. In this reading,

Taylor and Bain argue for the former, emphasising the subversive

character of humour in the workplace.

The authors draw on their ethnographic research involving observations,

interviews and transcripts of meetings to point to a range of examples of

humorous activity – these include verbal satire, jokes about customer

interaction and the call-centre scripts governing interaction, and leaflets

of different kinds which seek to ridicule or undermine the authority of

individual supervisors, management in general or valued practices, such

as ‘the office meeting’. The purposes of such humour vary from the

warding-off of boredom to challenging the organisational regimes and

values of the call centres. With regard to humour having an explicitly

political purpose, Taylor and Bain foreground the significance of humour

being an individualist subversion technique existing alongside more

traditional and collective forms of resistance, such as trade union

membership. They argue that the individual and collectives are

interlinked, so that humour is used as a way to enlist co-workers in

union membership. This type of behaviour was especially clear in one of

the two call centres they studied (Excell). Of course, it is worth pointing

out that humour and trade union membership are not the only two forms

of subversive behaviour that call-centre workers have been found to

engage in. Other types of behaviour include absenteeism, logging that a

sale has been made when actually having got hold of an answering


237

machine, and simply quitting one’s job (Mulholland, 2004). The latter, of

course, is not necessarily an effective form of rebellion as employees

can be easily replaced.

The authors explicitly refer to the humorous practices as ‘creative’,

although they do not elucidate further: one explanation for this may be

their disciplinary affiliation with industrial sociology, within which

creativity may not be a particularly salient concept. But by signalling the

creative nature of the humorous practices in the workplace, their

approach reflects the idea that creativity, rather than being assumed to

be the preserve of the few, is an everyday phenomenon (Carter, 2004;

Maybin and Swann, 2006). Perhaps more significantly, they are clearly

signalling the agency of call-centre workers to challenge routinised

practices and to resist the control imposed on them and act in various

ways – including using humour – to subvert it. These practices appear to

provide relief from routine and boredom and are, in a sense, then, not

incompatible with the rigidly controlled environment, but a direct

consequence of it. It could be argued that control and routinisation might

not only curtail but in fact breed agency and, depending on one’s

viewpoint, creativity.

So far, you have examined both anti-creative (routinised) and creative

practices in call centres, as well as the role of agency within them. But

what about globalisation? Are the linguistic practices in call centres

best described in terms of globalisation, localisation or glocalisation?

Some would probably argue that call centres are an example of the

world becoming increasingly homogeneous and that there is a one-

directional flow of influence from the powerful to the less powerful.

The first call centre was reportedly set up in the 1960s in the USA

(Bagnara and Marti, 2001) and, as an operational prototype, the call

centre has since spread rapidly to numerous countries around the

world. It is well known that in many offshore call centres (where

operators communicate with customers in another country, often in a

language which is not their first) there is pressure to conform with

anglophone norms of politeness and pronunciation. For instance,

Indian and Philippine call-centre workers receive ‘culture’ training by

being shown British or US soaps (depending on where their customers

are based), by being given English-sounding pseudonyms, by

deliberately not revealing their location and by receiving training to

neutralise their accents.


238

However, it is also possible to argue that call centres, and specifically

the management-prescribed speech style that workers are expected to

use, are better described as an instance of localisation: that is, an

adaptation of global resources to local conditions. To consider this

alternative viewpoint, you will now be asked to read a popularised

version of an academic article based on work I have done in call

centres in four countries: the Philippines, Hong Kong, Denmark and

Scotland.

Activity 5.7


Turn to Reading C, ‘Is there a global “call centre” speech style?’ by Sue

Fox, at the end of this chapter. This is a brief article based on my

research into call centres (Hultgren, 2011). As you read, consider the


. What does the article say about language varieties and speech styles

used in call centres in four distinct national contexts?

. Which do you think best captures what goes on: globalisation,

localisation or glocalisation?

Discussion

Fox refers to my argument that, in these four locations, the speech style

that operators were asked to use with their customers was very similar

(although there was some evidence of ‘localized adaptations’) – this

suggests that a process of globalisation is at work. However, despite the

use of a similar style, the language in which the service interaction was

conducted was different (English in the Scottish and Philippine call

centres, Danish in the Danish one, and Cantonese, Mandarin and

English in the Hong Kong call centre). This observation is used to argue

that, in relation to language varieties used, what goes on is a case of

localisation – with the exception of the Philippine call centre, the call

handlers in each national context continued to speak in their local

language(s). In other words, then, they localised the global.

It seems to me, however, that it would be hard to interpret the use of

local languages as a case of glocalisation, as operators do not appear to

strategically mix semiotic resources from different cultures and

languages, as in the case of hip hop. Instead, they operate within the

constraints imposed on them – while they are, for the most part, able to

speak in their own national language, they comply with certain (globally

valid) linguistic prescriptions.


239

Probably what is becoming clear is that the relationship between

creativity, agency and globalisation is far from straightforward.

Activity 5.8


Now is a good time to reflect on whether and how your understanding of

creativity, globalisation and agency has changed by reading this chapter.

Can you think of other examples of creative or anti-creative practices

resulting from globalisation?

Discussion

Many examples of creativity in the context of globalisation are made

possible – and circulated – by the internet. An obvious example is the

‘meme’ where existing content of some kind – image, words, sound – is

modified in some way and recirculated in the modified format (see

Chapter 2). At the same time, some might consider the production of

memes as an example of an anti-creative practice if they are produced

entirely from existing ‘stock’ material from ‘meme generators’.

The concepts of globalisation, localisation and glocalisation are useful, I

think, in helping us to: (1) recognise that there are globalising tendencies

in communication; and (2) consider and identify the different ways in

which global communicative patterns and styles interact. A key

challenge, however, is how to decide whether a specific communicative

activity is an instance of localisation (which is often used to imply a local

adjustment to a global practice) or glocalisation (which, in contrast, is

used to signal a deliberate, agentive mixing of semiotic resources) as

any such definition in part must depend on the perspective of those

engaging in the activity. Further work is needed to explore such

perspectives.

5.5 Conclusion

Through analysing linguistic practices in hip hop and call centres, it has

become clear that some globalised practices are recognised as creative

(even if the term is not used), and others are not. The emphasis in

describing hip hop is often on making visible the range of semiotic

resources used and the mixing, borrowing and shifting that is involved.

In contrast, the emphasis in analysis of call-centre discursive practice

has, to date, been on scripts, prescription, repetition and routinisation.


240

Yet, as the discussion of humour in call centres shows, creativity

cannot be completely curbed even in highly prescripted domains of

workplace practice. People find ways to step outside of routinised or

homogenising practices, as a way of humanising the work domain and

sometimes as a way of challenging existing practices.

This is where the relationship between creativity and agency seems to

be underlined, with both the examples in this chapter seeming to

suggest that creativity to some extent hinges on agency, the freedom to

choose to act in particular ways. But individuals cannot endlessly act

creatively. In fact, evidence from the call centre suggests that creativity

may in fact be bred by rules and indeed only be observable when

positioned against rules that are broken. In the same way, hip hop may

be seen as having been born out of subverting existing social, linguistic

and artistic conventions.

As far as globalisation is concerned, creativity is linked, albeit often

implicitly, to glocalisation, where globally available phenomena are

remade in the context of local practices, needs and interests. In

contrast, localisation signals the enactment of global practices in local

spaces and, while variety is evident, the outcome is homogeneity with a

lack of opportunity for creative or innovative practice.

All in all, each of the concepts of creativity, agency and globalisation

explored in this chapter are highly contested notions. You will no

doubt continue to revise your understanding of some or all of them as

you read on in this book.

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Reading A: Circles of flow

Alastair Pennycook

Source: Edited version from Pennycook, A. (2007) ‘Language flows, languagemixes’, in Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, Abingdon, Routledge,pp. 116–39.

While it may be true that the effect of global rap on the US is

limited, the issue is also not one of unidirectional flow. There are

many flows in many directions, and thus we can start to think of

alternative frames of analysis by analogy with the black Atlantic,

from the hip-hop Pacific to the black Mediterranean or ‘Chopstick

hip-hop’. As Tony Mitchell (2001) suggests, if Sydney rappers of

Fijian and Tongan background, such as Trey and Posse Koolism,

combine with King Kapisi’s ‘Samoan hip-hop to the world’, and if

Hawaiian band Sudden Rush’s Ku’e (Resist) has been influenced

by Aotearoa-New Zealand Upper Hutt Posse’s E tu (Be Strong),

then what we are witnessing is a ‘Pacific Island hip-hop diaspora’

and a ‘pan-Pacific hip-hop network that has bypassed the borders

and restrictions of the popular music distribution industry’ (p. 31).

These circles of hip-hop flow are at times overlapping: Hawaii,

for example, links the Pacific to the US, while French-influenced

parts of the Pacific, such as French Polynesia (Tahiti) and New

Caledonia link the Pacific to the French circuit. […]

[F]urthermore, the Pacific has always been a place of multiple

criss-crossing movements, and the ways different transcultural

forms link across the region produces an intricacy of interactive

influences.

In her discussion of Na Mele Paleoleo (Hawaiian rap) developed

by Sudden Rush, Fay Akindes (2001) argues that by bridging

elements of political self-determination with popular culture, this

Hawaiian hip-hop has become ‘a liberatory discourse for

Hawaiians seeking economic self-determination in the form of

sovereignty. Sudden Rush … have borrowed hip hop as a

counter-hegemonic transcript that challenges tourism and Western

imperialism’ (p. 95). Sudden Rush draw on a mixture of

indigenous traditions, including kaona – a particular Hawaiian

style of using metaphor in order to express hidden meanings (a

development in part in reaction to Calvinist missionary

proscription of sexual reference, and thus seen as an anti-colonial


244

subversion) – as well as direct political messages. As Akindes

describes the title track of Ku’e (which means to oppose or

resist), ‘the main message is a call to reclaim Hawaiian lands and,

therefore, economic self-sufficiency and self-determination. The

rap is fresh and unfamiliar: it is ne mele paleoleo, Hawaiian hip

hop, a cut ’n’ mix of African and Jamaican reggae rhythms,

Hawaiian chanting, and subversive rapping in the English and

Hawaiian languages’ (p. 91).

The use of languages such as Hawaiian – with its links to other

Polynesian languages such as Tahitian, Samoan and Maori – is in

itself an important political statement. […] [T]he politics of rap

lyrics need to be understood not only in terms of the

interpretable meaning of the lyrics but also in the varieties of

language used. Although its use in Hawaii is limited, as Szego

(2003) notes in her discussion of Hawaiian schoolchildren learning

chanted poetry (mele), ‘young Native Hawaiians singing and

listening to music in their associated language demonstrate how

text performed and apprehended outside the domain of language

fluency can yield to sonic, semantic, and symbolic interpretation’

(p. 320). These students, with a limited capacity in Hawaiian

language, ‘experienced musically realized text as a gestalt … when

language was fused with musical sound, the interpretive

possibilities expanded’ (p. 322). This observation brings us […] to

the discussion of the somatic turn and transmodality: when

language is combined with music and bodily movement, it can

take on a very different set of meanings beyond those more

narrowly understood in discussions of language use in education.

According to Akindes, Sudden Rush ‘deliver messages of

Hawaiian nationalism in a musical format that speaks to Hawaiian

youth’ (2001, p. 93) while simultaneously disrupting ‘the false and

idealistic notion of purity or authenticity in music by contesting

the ideas of origins and by exemplifying how music is continually

evolving through a constant cut ’n’ mixing of melodies, rhythms,

styles, and themes’ (p. 95). As I suggested above, and as we shall

see in greater depth below, this contesting of origins and mixing

of styles is a significant way in which identity is refashioned

through hip-hop. For Sudden Rush, as for many contemporary

musicians, these mixes and reclamations are in no way

contradictory: reclaiming a sense of Hawaiian national identity

may involve many mixes of language, music and politics. Thus,


245

while it may appear at first sight that Hawaiian rappers are but

reflexes of an American music industry, their work is in fact

directly in opposition to the American presence in Hawaii,

employs a mix of musical, cultural and linguistic influences, and

looks outward to the other Pacific Islands rather than over its

shoulder towards the colonial power.

‘Following the adoption of breakdancing by Maori and Pacific

Islander youth’, Mitchell (1998a) points out in the context of

Aotearoa-New Zealand, ‘rap music and hip hop culture became

an inevitable medium for musical expressions of Maori militancy’

(p. 41). As a result, he suggests (1998b), the already hybrid forms

of rap have become further hybridized, producing ‘strong musical,

political and cultural resonances in Aotearoa’ (p. 168). Maori and

other Pacific Islander rappers in Aotearoa-New Zealand ‘have

substituted Maori and Polynesian cultural expressions for the

African-American rhetoric of hip hop’. Upper Hutt Posse in

particular combine ‘the use of Maori traditional instruments,

militant patere and karanga (raps and calls to ancestors) and

invocations of the spirits of the forest (Tane Mohuta) and the

guardian of the sea (Tangaroa), and rhetoric borrowed from the

Nation of Islam’ (Mitchell, 2003a, p. 13). Auckland has thus

become a major centre for Pacific Island music, with many cross-

influences from the Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and other islander

people there. Samoan King Kapisi urges islanders to engage with

their own cultures and histories and to acknowledge the

interrelated Pacific: ‘I represent for all Pacific peoples from

Hawaii 2 Aotearoa’ (Fix Amnesia, Savage Thoughts). Kapisi urges

the ‘Newtown born coconut’ (Newtown is a suburb of Auckland

with a large Pacific islander population; coconut meaning ‘brown

on the outside, white on the inside’) to forget religion and to

‘check your history/Or you might lose yourself and your own

identity’ (Fix Amnesia). King Kapisi’s ‘Samoan Hip-hop

worldwide’ project reconnects the Samoan diaspora, urging them

to reconnect with their cultural heritage (Pearson, 2004).

And in the small New Caledonia scene, we see two parts of

interlinked flow, the black Pacific and the French Atlantic,

Francophone hip-hop and islander identity. Amid the anti-colonial

politics of the 1980s in New Caledonia kaneka music fused

Western music, and particularly reggae, with indigenous musical

forms. As Goldsworthy (1998) points out, kaneka is a distinctively


246

New Caledonian style of music that results from ‘a conscious,

deliberate attempt to achieve Kanak cultural identity through a

popular music medium’ (p. 45). Kanak musicians, he goes on,

‘have also strongly identified with this larger picture of black

solidarity and anti-hegemonic activity in their pursuit of their own

specific goals’ (p. 51). Like Sudden Rush in Hawaii, drawing on a

mixture of musical styles and articulating an anti-colonial politics,

Kaeka music has fused local languages and musical rhythms with

Western styles as part of an oppositional politics to French

colonial rule. Section Otoktone sing in their CD On Vient de la rue

(We’re From the Streets) – a name and title that immediately

locates these rappers as indigenous (autochtone) and yet part of

the hip-hop ideology of the street – of the problems faced by ‘la

nouvelle génération calédonienne’ (the new (New) Caledonian

generation), contrasting the colours of New Caledonia seen by the

tourists (white sand, blue sea, bronze bodies) with the greys of

the buildings and the nickel mines (a constant point of contention

in terms of ownership, exploitation and pollution).

The French-language hip-hop scene has been one of the most

significant for twenty years, a complex interlocked circle of flow

that links the vibrant music scenes in Paris and Marseille in

France; Dakar, Abidjan and Libreville in West Africa, and

Montreal in Quebec. Hip-hop in France developed in the banlieues

– the suburban housing projects where many poor, and first and

second generation immigrant populations live. Here, in

multiethnic mixes of people of Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia,

Morocco), French African (Mali, Senegal, Gabon), French Antilles

(La Martinique, Guadeloupe) and other European (Portugal,

Romania, Italy) backgrounds, hip-hop emerged as a potent force

of new French expression (Cannon, 1997; Faure and Garcia, 2005;

Huq, 2001a, b; Prévos, 1998, 2001, 2002). Rap in France ‘uses a

street-speak version of French that includes African, Arab, gypsy

and American roots and is viewed with disapproval by

traditionalists for its disregard for traditional rules of grammar

and liberal use of neologisms’ (Huq, 2001a, p. 74). While Paris

became a centre for many movements and crossings of French-

language musicians, dancers and artists, the southern port city of

Marseille looked more resolutely southwards. Typical of the

movement was popular Marseille group IAM, whose members

have [Madagascan], Senegalese, Algerian, Spanish, Italian and

French backgrounds, and whose album Ombre est Lumière


247

Mitchell (2003b) describes as ‘one of the all-time masterpieces of

world hip-hop’ (p. 108). Along with their sharp language use –

their album Métèque et mat evokes échec et mat (checkmate), Métèque

meaning more or less ‘wog’ and mat from the Arabic ‘to die’ (see

Swedenburg, 2001), while Ombre est Lumière (darkness is light) is a

play on the French son et lumière (sound and light) shows – they

developed an ideology which Prévos (2001) calls ‘pharaoism’ (p.

48) thus both linking to the Arabic background of many French

immigrants, and as Swedenburg (2001) argues giving ‘Egyptianist

Afrocentricity a Mediterranean inflection, asserting a kind of

“black Mediterranean”’ (p. 69).

[…]

Mixing and making other Englishes

One thing that […] clearly emerges from these accounts of circles

of flow is the constant mixing, borrowing, shifting and sampling

of music, languages, lyrics and ideas. Let us [consider] Rip Slyme

for a moment. […] [T]his Tokyo band […] may use snatches of

borrowed English – ‘Yo Bringing that, Yo Bring your Style’ – as

well as more locally produced English – ‘Five Guy’s Name is Rip

Slyme 5’ – but in the following example from the track ‘Tokyo

Classic’, we see a more complex mixture.

Lyrics Transliteration Translation

錦糸町出 Freaky

ダブルの

Japanese

Kinshichoo de

freaky

daburu no

Japanese

Freaky mixed

Japanese

from Kinshichoo

‘Tokyo Classic’

By naming Kinshichoo (a suburb of Tokyo) and by doing so in

kanji (Japanese characters of Chinese origin), Rip Slyme locate

their Japaneseness explicitly, yet at the same time they use the

English word for Japanese, seeming in the same instant to

refashion their identity from the outside. This Japanese identity is

then both ‘freaky’ and ‘double’, the latter a recently coined term

to describe people of mixed origin. English and Japanese flow

across the boundaries of identity, becoming both fixed (Rip Slyme


248

5, from Kinshichoo) and fluid (Yo, double, Japanese), producing

new possibilities of what it means to be Japanese, to use English,

to participate globally, to be local.

Other artists present different ways of embedding English in

Japanese (or Japanese in English). In the following lyrics, for

example, DJ Tonk (Move On) uses the English word ‘listen’,

written in katakana (rissun), followed by 2 (meaning ‘to’); and ‘our

blues moonlight’ (in katakana: buruusu muunraito) is juxtaposed

with the traditional-sounding Japanese (in kanji) ‘under the

moonlight’ (tsukiakari no shita). Here, then, we have the old and

the new, English and Japanese, contrasted, mixed and combined

in a way that makes them hard to disentangle.


リッスン

２俺達の

ブル–ス

ム–ンラ

イト月明

かりの下

rissun two oretachino

buruusu muunraito

tsukiakari no shita

Listen to our blues

moonlight under the

moonlight

In the example below from Zeebra’s The Rhyme Animal, Zeebra

plays with the different rhymes in katakna (dynamic, titanic),

producing a final mixed rhyme with the Japanese dai (big) and

panic (daipanikku – big panic – to rhyme with dainamikku –

dynamic). Perhaps what emerges here above all is the sense that

English and Japanese become so intertwined, and meaning is so

dependent on the mixture of the codes, that the very separability

of English and Japanese becomes an impossibility; the very notion

of whether English is invading Japanese culture or being used to

represent Japanese culture can simply no longer be asked.


のっけからダ

イナミック

まるでタイタ

ニック

想像を超える

大パニック

nokkekara

dainamikku marude

taitanikku souzouwo

koeru dai panikku

From the very

beginning, it was

dynamic, just like

Titanic, and an

unimaginable big

panic


249

As with the circles of flow described above, many of these

performers are interlinked not only on a personal level (they

collaborate, work together, turn up on each other’s CDs) but on a

more general level of origins, movement and histories. Korean

MC JK of popular rap group Drunken Tiger grew up in LA,

trying to establish rap in Korean amid the cultural politics of Los

Angeles. Likewise, his friend MC Tasha, who, like Ilmari of Rip

Slyme, has a mixed cultural and linguistic familial background,

describes herself on the track ‘Wonder Woman’ as 난반먹통

Korean 혈통 (nahn bahn meok tong Korean heyol tong: half part

inkpot and Korean blood, or an ABK – (African) American Born

Korean). While her lyrics vary from love songs to a critique of

male Korean chauvinism, hypocrisy, domestic violence and

relationships between wealthy older men and young girls (Man,

Man, Man), it is the ways in which her lyrics create relations

between English and Korean that interest me here. From the

opening of ‘Memories … (Smiling Tears)’ from Tasha Hip-Hop

Album, for example, she builds a mixture of English and Korean

around the Chinese idiom (commonly used in Korea): 七顚八起

(chil jeon pahl gi) meaning: If I’m knocked seven times, I come

back on my eighth (or something like ‘no pain, no gain’).


Yo if I fall two times

I come back on my

third

절대로포기않지

and that’s my word

Jeol dae roh poh

gi ahnchi

I never give up

If I fall five times I

come harder on my

sixth

조금만더가면돼포

기않지난아직

Joh geum mahn

deo gah myeon

dwae poh gihi ahn

chi nahn ah jik

I’m not far from the

goal, I haven’t

given up yet

If I’m knocked 7

times I come back

on my eighth

칠전팔기내인생끝

까지가볼래

Chil jeon pahl gi

nae in saeng

gyeut ggah gi bohl

lae

Even if I fail seven

times, I will try

again; I will keep

trying until the end

of my life


250

Now knowledge of self thru

the pain in this world

난절대로포기않지

and that’s my word

Nahn jeol dae roh

poh gi ahn chi

I never

give up

In this example, then, Tasha uses a well-known Korean idiom and

embellishes it in the two languages, each phrase working with the

other to develop the meaning. Elsewhere, from the track

Meditation, Tasha combines English and Korean differently.

Unlike the lyrics above, where English and Korean complement

each other – the lyrics in English and Korean reinforce the

meaning – here she moves from English to Korean across both

meaning and sound: ‘Rainy day’ is echoed immediately in

Naerinae, also meaning rain, with the same rhyme – day, Naerinae,

igosae, smyeodeunae, goeenae – repeated through the rest. The

common rap feature of repeated rhymes within a sentence is here

reproduced across languages.


Rainy day

내리네

이곳에스며

드네

내작은방바

닥에고이네

Naerinae igosae

smyeodeunae nae

jahggeun bahng bah

dahg aeh goeenae

Rainy day, raining,

soaking and gathering

on the floor of my

small room

This use of rhymes across both languages is a feature of a

number of tracks. In ‘The Concrete Jungle’, she rhymes 돌려

(dohllyeo – turning) and 돌려 (dohllyeo – taking breath) with

‘mirror’. The mixture of English and Korean, held together

through repeated rhymes, creates a new level of meaning.


고개를 돌려 now

check the back

mirror 빨간 불에

멈춘 우린 잠시

숨을 돌려

Goh gae reul

dohllyeo … bbahl

gahn boorae

meom choon

woorin jahmsi

soomeul dohllyeo

Turning her head

and checking the

back mirror,

stopping by a red

light and taking

breath for a while


251

What Tasha achieves here is a mixture of Korean and English

that combines the different ‘flows’, sounds and meanings of

English and Korean. There are therefore two senses to the flows

I have been discussing here. On the one hand, the interlocking

circles of flow that produce a constant movement of linguistic,

musical and cultural influences around the world. On the other

hand, the flows of rap lyrics, which are a crucial part of the

aesthetics of MC-ing (having a good flow is widely recognized as

central to the art of rap). As Krims points out, the ‘rhythmic

styles of MC-ing, or “flows”, are among the central aspects of rap

production and reception, and any discussion of rap genres that

takes musical poetics seriously demands a vocabulary of flow’

(Krims, 2000, p. 48). It is one thing, however, to master the flow

of one language (and there has been much debate over whether

some languages are better oriented towards rap flows than

others), but it is quite another skill to ‘flow-switch’ as Tasha does.

The skill here is not just to move between languages, creating a

set of new meanings by doing so, but also to move in and out of

different flows. By artfully integrating the flow of English and

Korean rap styles in a bilingual performance, she presents English

and Korean in new relationships.


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Reading B: ‘Subterranean worksick blues’: humour

as subversion in two call centres

Phil Taylor and Peter Bain

Source: Edited version from Taylor, P. and Bain, P. (2003) ‘“Subterraneanworksick blues”: humour as subversion in two call centres’, OrganizationStudies, vol. 24, no. 9, pp. 1487–509.

Introduction

[…]

We continue to reject the simplistic and mistaken application of

the ‘electronic panopticon’ metaphor to the call centre, in which

supervisory power has been ‘rendered perfect’ and worker

resistance is nullified (Bain and Taylor 2000; Fernie and

Metcalf 1998). […] [O]ur research has uncovered manifold and

vigorous forms of individual, quasi-collective and collective

resistance (Bain and Taylor 1999, 2000; Taylor and Bain 1999,

2001, 2003) rooted in part in the experience of work in this

‘unique working environment’ (HSE 2001). Discontent with the

experience of task performance, employment conditions and the

‘managerial regime’ certainly underlay the manifestations of

workers’ humour from the two call centres on which this article is

based. The rich evidence of creative and subversive humour

presented here contributes further to the case against those who

believe that all workers can do is consent to totalizing systems of

surveillance and control which preclude divergences from

managerially defined norms of behaviour (for example, Sewell and

Wilkinson 1992).

[…]

Methodologies

[…]

‘T’ is one of four call centres studied in a project conducted

under the Economic and Social Research Council’s ‘Future of

Work’ programme. The data utilized here comes from the period

October 1999–May 2000, when researchers engaged in intensive

observation of work processes; listening to calls while sitting

alongside agents, and discussing the task performance, formed the


255

main component of this fieldwork. Field notes recorded

observations and included accounts of informal interviews with

agents, supervisors and managers. Researchers had full access to

‘shop floor’ activities and, through sustained contact, gained the

confidence of key informants. Consequently, the study of humour

here draws mainly on ethnographic methods.

Research at Excell commenced in 1998. […] Research could not

involve direct observation, but relied upon the contemporaneous

testimony and recollection of workers interviewed off-site. This

generated three qualitative data sets. The first consists of

transcriptions of frequent meetings of a group of between four

and twelve employees. In effect, these are the proceedings of an

informal, loosely structured committee, striving to build a union

in circumstances of employer hostility, and whose debates and

decisions were recorded against a background of conflict. The

authors documented 27 such meetings between October 1998 and

May 1999. Second, 15 concurrent interviews were conducted with

agents, ex-employees and supervisors, exploring in detail

perceptions of the labour process and employee relations. Third,

from late 1999 into 2000, 10 interviews, each lasting two hours,

were conducted with workers who were encouraged to reflect on

the earlier period when they first organized themselves in the

Communication Workers Union (CWU). These lengthy accounts

by key informants generated thoughtful reflection on the purpose

and effects of workplace humour. Although based on data from

separate studies, the common organizational setting of the call

centre enables pertinent comparisons to be made and contrasts

drawn.

[…]

Humour at ‘T’: Undirected Subversion

Humour as Relief from Boredom and Routine

As some workers did make themselves the butt of their own

jokes, clowning did take place. For example, following the

company’s Christmas party, Andy, who had ‘got off ’ with the

daughter of a senior manager, acted out a ritual of self-ridicule.

Andy, nicknamed ‘Mr Cheese’, because of his unctuous telephone

manner, clearly could remember his actions on the night in

question, but feigned amnesia through excessive alcohol


256

consumption (Observation, 13 December 1999). Fellow workers

peppered him with questions on both mundane and intimate

details, to which Andy responded by acting the dumb fool. This

charade was played out in front of fresh audiences as, throughout

the day, other workers dropped by to interrogate the ‘victim’.

[…]

Several agents commented that having a laugh was the only thing

that ‘kept them going’. In a sales section with particularly rigorous

targets, Pat described the effects of incessant call handling, and

how the regime was forcing her to ‘exit’ after 11 months:

‘People are unhappy – lots of things but mainly the calls. It

seems to go in cycles. A new lot come in bright and fresh,

get disillusioned and some leave, then it’s new lambs to the

slaughter. I probably won’t be here next week because my

job interview yesterday went very well…. This place does

your head in, if it wasn’t for the jokers here it wouldn’t be

tolerable.’ (Interview, 27 February 2000)

A ‘community of comedians’, to use Collinson’s term, made work

‘tolerable’. In this community, a hierarchy, based on an ability to

make workmates laugh, was discernible, with Mark, Shona and

‘Norrie the Hun’ best at banter and ‘the wind-up’. The

community engaged in common practices motivated by the desire

to relieve boredom and the frustration of task performance.

Agents dealing with irritating, long-winded or slow customers

would typically hit their ‘mute’ button and, when inaudible to

customers, make sarcastic comments to close colleagues.

Whenever Hughie hit the mute, he would say ‘What’s that all

about?’ and burst out laughing, expressing amazement at

customers’ foibles (Observation, 10 December 1999). Typical

comments included ‘Wait till you hear this one,’ ‘That’s a new

one,’ ‘See these customers, outrageous man!’ and ‘Thick as [f**k]!’

Frequently, while conversing, agents’ eye contact, facial

movements and body language would convey similar expressions

of frustration and astonishment. Such comments and mannerisms

were part of a ritual, creating a sense of expectation among fellow

workers, eager to hear a full account of these interactions. If the

volume of incoming calls was sufficiently low as to create longish

breaks between calls (and no supervisor was close), an audience


257

would gather and proceed collectively to ‘rip the piss’ out of

customers, competing to recount examples of their folly. Since ‘T’

received calls from across the UK, opportunities arose to mimic

regional accents, a source of considerable amusement. Catch-

phrases from a popular Scottish television comedy ‘Chewing the

Fat’ were liberally borrowed, providing a shared medium of comic

expression.

Undoubtedly, these are examples of humour as coping or survival

strategies (Noon and Blyton 1997). The primary purpose is to

make the day more interesting, providing relief from the routine

of call handling. But this behaviour also ‘reflected and reinforced

a shared sense of self and a group identity and differentiation’

(Collinson 1988: 185), indicating the presence of a distinct

organizational subculture in sharp conflict with managerial values

and priorities. Verbal abuse of customers, even at a safe distance,

certainly ran counter to the principles of company culture. A

delightful irony was that while agents ‘slagged off ’ customers,

suspended from the ceiling above their heads were notices bearing

mission statements such as ‘Committed to putting the customer’s

needs first.’ In challenging management values, and undermining

the customer service ethos, these rituals should be seen as

subversive in their effects.

Humour and the Erosion of Team Leader Authority

Ackroyd and Thompson argue that workplace struggle is also

‘concerned with the matter of identity’ (1999: 101). Management,

at least rhetorically, has an interest in obtaining greater levels of

commitment from its workforce, an objective which may allow

employees to express opinions. Of course, such encouragement to

openness has sharply defined boundaries, and is permitted in so

far as it benefits the organization. Since the promise, suggested by

cultures of openness, may clash with the unchanged reality of

routine task performance, workers exploit these limited spaces,

inserting expressions of their interests which conflict with

management aims. Under these conditions, joking, which is

excused from the normal conventions of serious discourse,

becomes a means of conducting a satirical attack on management:

‘Joking is… perfectly appropriate when a group with power

is espousing a willingness to be intimate, but is still incapable


258

of admitting equality. It is in this sort of situation that joking

becomes a useful tool.’ (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999: 102)

The joking practices of agents at ‘T’ confirm these insights, most

pointedly in the way that humour was directed at undermining

team leaders’ authority. Formally, team leaders were responsible

for ensuring that the quantity and quality of an agent’s call

handling were satisfactory. Unacceptable performance levels

ostensibly were to be improved through coaching, although

exhortation or chastisement were equally common responses.

Most team leaders, recently promoted from the ranks, were

encouraged by senior management to maintain informal social

contact with erstwhile colleagues. It is the contradiction between

team leaders’ conventional and directive roles, and the compulsion

to act as if they were still ‘one of the gang’, which gives a distinct

edge to the banter directed toward them. [Two] examples follow.

‘Taking the Piss’

When call volumes were low, gossip quickly filled the gaps. On

this occasion, the stimulus was the previous Friday’s company

‘do’. The main topic, inevitably, was employees’ ill-behaviour: how

drunk so-and-so had been, who had felt which part of whose

anatomy, and who had got off with whom. Although risque, the

language was never sexist or offensive, with both sexes

participating as protagonists and ‘victims’. Sanction was given by

Monica, the team leader, who having excelled in the consumption

of alcohol, was herself the butt of much verbal sparring. For

example, ‘That dress must have been cheap, you’d only have to

pay for half of it, it had no back.’ Although two agents, Linda and

Mark, came in for ‘a proper slagging’, the sharpest barbs were

directed at Monica. The greatest hilarity occurred when an on-call

team member re-entered the conversation and, in trying to catch

up, would ask deliberately naive questions, pretending not to

know who was being discussed. This kept the joke going and

enabled agents to replay their attacks on Monica.

The Limits to Tolerance

A humorous ‘questionnaire’ was designed and distributed by

Hughie, following management permission on the grounds that it

was a pre-Christmas ‘bit of fun’. Everyone was polled on

questions like ‘Who is the sexiest? The grumpiest? The scariest?’


259

As questionnaires circulated, jokes proliferated as workers

considered nominations for various categories. Once again, the

principal targets were team leaders, with the unpopular nominated

for unwelcome categories; ‘Nurse Ratched’ won the ‘grumpiest’

award. Evidently, the questionnaire almost crossed the line of

unacceptability as defined by management, as this snatch of

conversation reveals.

Hughie: ‘We had a question in the first version “Who is

going to get the sack before Christmas?” but we had to take

it out because they were cracking up.’

Al: ‘Who was cracking up?’

Hughie: ‘They [management] were cracking up because of

what’s happening to them (nodding over to campaigns

team).’

Clare: ‘That’s because they’re getting [f**ked]. All temps in

campaigns are to be laid off by December 19th.’

Team leaders were ambivalent. Although approving the

questionnaire, to the extent that some joined in discussing

nominations, a line was drawn when it strayed from what was

defined as harmless fun and touched on sensitive issues. Team

leaders even attempted to stifle spontaneity by insisting that

completed questionnaires were returned to Monica so that she

could compile the results. Such an approach tacitly acknowledges

that creative joking in a workplace regime of this kind can never

be purely harmless. Completed questionnaires revealed how

workers enthusiastically seized the opportunity to deride both

team leaders and those agents regarded as ‘yes men’.

[…]

Cynicism about Management in General

There is nothing novel in the circulation of cartoons, slogans,

poems, stories and gobbets of home-spun philosophizing,

delivering pithy, humorous or ironic messages, frequently of the

‘you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’ kind. The

proportion containing satirical attacks on management may have

increased at the expense of the more anodyne, although it is

difficult to be certain about this. Some are authored within the


260

workplace and contain references unique to the organization,

while others are generic, passed by hand or, now, frequently

forwarded as e-mail attachments or downloaded from the internet.

While such cyber-humour can be experienced by employees as

oppressive (Collinson 2002: 277), the two examples given here of

e-mail satire (Figures 1 and 2), which caused great amusement as

they circulated through networks of trusted colleagues at ‘T’,

should be seen as subversive. The first mocks the image of the

high-powered managerial meeting, implicitly contrasting its


261

Figure 1. ‘Meetings’: The Practical Alternative to Work

pretensions with the (unstated) efforts of ordinary workers. The

second can be seen in the context of tight time controls prevalent

in call centres, which often include measurement of toilet breaks.

Both contributed to the sense of distance between employees and

employers.

[…]

Humour at Excell: Conscious and Directed Subversion

The ‘Bad Boys’

At Excell, managers and supervisors themselves were largely

responsible for becoming the objects of relentless and unforgiving

joking. The incessant pressure to meet targets and their

intimidation of certain workers made some managers extremely

unpopular. Further, management unwittingly contributed to the

formation of an oppositional group by dubbing individuals seen

as troublesome as the ‘bad boys’. The more managers took petty

disciplinary action against these malcontents, the more they

cohered as a group and developed common forms of expression

and identity through a set of shared beliefs. Humour facilitated

the formation of this ‘out group’, uniting disparate individuals

into a collective organization.


262

Figure 2. New Office Space

‘I think it [humour] was the glue that initially made collective

action possible. Without that, people had no obvious reason

to feel warmth, or commitment, or comradeship for anyone

else. We had to develop a sort of kinship and emotional

feelings and support for each other because we were up

against it… it didn’t happen organically, it happened quite

deliberately.’ (Interview, Gary, 12 December 2000)

The fact that this group of dissidents was funny made them, and

the union with which they were identified, more attractive.

‘Once people saw they could sit and have a laugh with

everybody who was involved, that was really important. And

the common ground that people shared was their ability to

laugh at these fools who were nominally controlling them.’

(Interview, Gary, 12 December 2000)

Humour as Part of a Conscious Strategy of Undermining

Management

‘Oh aye, it was always about a means to an end. It was never

a case of misbehaving for the sake of it – well I liked

misbehaving and having a laugh anyway – but it was done

for a reason.’ (Interview, Jimbo, 22 June 2000)

Management was ridiculed as part of a deliberate strategy of

undermining authority. The activists’ main objective was to

demonstrate to fellow workers that nobody need be frightened of

management. Belittling superiors, particularly those most

deserving of retribution, without incurring subsequent reprisals,

could successfully erode deference to authority. The jokes,

mocking and lampoonery enabled serious messages to be

communicated. The following examples demonstrate both the

inventive ways in which authority was undermined and a

sophisticated understanding of the role of the audience.

‘We would turn the whole scenario of control on its head, so

that fools could be kings for the day. If you say in front of a

manager, “I can’t believe this man earns £20,000 a year, have

you seen his shoes?” the allure can be shattered just by


263

saying something as foolish as this.’ (Interview, Gary, 12

December 2000)

‘People like Sammy were really effective. He would develop a

routine, which he would use at every opportunity to berate

managers, but in a way that they couldn’t discipline him

because the questions he was asking were part of normal

conversation. He would ask managers questions that made

absolutely no sense, like “What’s your favourite colour Roy?”

and the conversation would go like this “I don’t know, I

don’t have a favourite colour.” “You must have a favourite

colour, everybody’s got one.” And when you ask managers

questions like that they immediately become wary, because

they don’t know where it’s leading. So Roy would walk away.

Ten minutes later Sammy would be standing right next to

him saying, “Have you got that answer for me? What’s the

colour Roy?” “I don’t know.” “Come on, I’m asking you

what your favourite colour is.” On and on like that. We

would create a situation where people working beside us

could see what it was like to make managers, who would

normally humiliate them, seem inadequate. And it was really

important because this was happening in a public space with

an audience. It didn’t have any meaning unless people could

see it happening.’ (Interview, Colin, 15 June 2000)

[…]

Humour and Trade Union Organization

At Excell, the boundary between subversive humour and

conscious trade union activity was frequently blurred as, for

example, when internal communication forums were subverted.

‘We would write our demands on flip charts, but not on the

first page. They would [later] be giving a briefing, using the

flip chart, and when they turned a page they would find

“Parity for Glasgow and Birmingham.” They knew my

writing and accused me but I denied it. They would insist,

“It was your writing.” I would say, “Did you see me writing

it?” The manager would go “No” and I would say, “Shut up

then.” And that would be that, because I would be backed


264

up, and they couldn’t prove it. We would always back each

other.’ (Interview, Jimbo, 22 June 2000)

Hundreds of union leaflets were photocopied during night shifts,

slipped under keyboards or placed in mail bins, and in the

morning managers would ‘go ballistic’. The leaflets had a serious

purpose, calling on management to solve ‘999’ service problems,

or raising demands over pay and conditions. They might contain

confidential data on company profitability or turnover,

information appropriated from managers’ desks (an example of

pilfering for collective purposes). However, the distribution of

serious leaflets was interspersed with scathing satire in the form

of poems or, in this case, ‘a recipe’ (see Figure 3).

By general agreement, managers’ furious reaction to the ‘recipe’

made this Jimbo’s most effective satirical act. The content is not

only funny, but succinctly gets to the heart of corporate priorities

and the realities of work. Two days later, union membership cards

were placed under the same keyboards and in the same mail bins,

as the activists consciously linked their satirical attack on Excell

with an open appeal to join the union.

[…]


265

TAKEONE BUCKET OF TAX DODGING GRANTSTWENTY HORSES ARSES TO RUN THE PLACEONE PRIZE C***SUCKER (AMERICAN IS BEST)CHOP TWO GRAND OFF THE AVERAGE CALL CENTRE WAGEDICE WITH DEATH AND A FAULTY DATABASETENDERIZE THE SAPS THAT BELIEVE YOUSPRINKLE LIBERALLY WITH LIES AND DECEITPLACE THE LOT IN A F**KED UP ECONOMY AND HEAT FOR FOUR YEARSUNTIL IT REACHES BOILING POINT. THEN SIT ON YOUR FAT F***INGARSES AND DO SWEET FANNY ADAMS DRIVING AROUND IN YOURF***ING FREE MERCEDES WHILE WE ALL GET REPETITIVE STRAINSYNDROME IN OUR EARS FROM LISTENING TO THE SAME S***E YEARAFTER B***ARD YEAR, THAT YOU DON’T EVEN RECOGNIZE.THEN GO AND F**K YOURSELVES.

– A RECIPE FOR DISASTER –

Figure 3 ‘A Recipe for Disaster’ [Language which may be found offensive

has been censored.]

Conclusion

The evidence from both case studies suggests that ‘pure’ clowning

was relatively rare, and shaded into teasing and satire.

Overwhelmingly, satire, sometimes vicious in character and

directed at individual supervisors or management in general, was

the most common form of humour. Long-acknowledged motives

behind joking were also apparent, particularly relief from boredom

and routine. On occasions, the attempt to escape alienation took

call centre specific forms, as with the denigration of customers at

‘T’. Similarly, Collinson’s (1988) observation that humour reflected

and reinforced a shared sense of group identity is confirmed.

Humour and joking contributed to the development of attitudes

standing in sharp contrast to managerial values and priorities. […]

[…]

There is no evidence from these cases that the subversive effects

of humour were undermined by divisions created by sexism or

narrow preoccupations with masculine identity, as Collinson

found. From the perspective of gender analysis, the locations raise

interesting comparisons and contrasts. In both, the gender

composition was about 50/50, with little sexual division of labour

among agents, but, common to many call centres, women were

strongly represented in frontline supervision. At ‘T’, women

participated in joking rituals equally with men, and some were

leading comedians. To the extent that sexist humour was present,

the banter tended to be even-handed, with women equally dishing

it out, but, for the most part, humour was risque rather than

sexist. At Excell, there was a ‘laddish’ element to the humour,

which the union activists came to acknowledge and sought to

combat, particularly when more women joined the CWU and

some become leading members. However, as several participants

recalled, more significant was the camp quality of much of the

humour, stimulated by Jimbo’s presence, which makes it difficult

to squeeze the joking into a neat category of masculinity.

[…] Although subversive at both locations, humour was more

biting, even nasty, at Excell, with activists seeking an audience of

fellow workers to inflict the maximum humiliation on managers.

Undoubtedly, there was more to rail against at Excell, but the

most important factor was collective organization, the presence of

incipient workplace trade unionism. The activists were


266

instrumental in their use of humour, clear in the knowledge that

it helped make them and the union popular and served to weaken

managerial authority and legitimacy. Subversive satire was allied to

a wider collective purpose, while at ‘T’, despite the ‘sending up’

and creative satire, the widespread use of humour against

management and its values did not lead to trade union

organization. At Excell, union recognition and negotiated

improvements in pay and conditions were long-term objectives.

[…]

It is impossible to disentangle the precise contribution that

humour played in the ultimately successful unionization campaign

from that which derived from formal organizing activities. The

evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the informal

category of resistance and misbehaviour and the formal category

of organization should not be analytically polarized where

workgroups are prepared to use an array of both creative and

serious means to challenge managerial legitimacy. It was the

creative relationship between the two which gave a distinctively

effective edge to organizing activities at Excell.

Lastly, the efflorescence of humorous activities at a subterranean

level, that is, beneath the organizational surface, delivers a further

blow to those who liken the call centre to an electronic prison.

Resistance, disobedience and collective organization have emerged

in familiar and novel ways in these most contemporary of

workplaces.


Ackroyd, Stephen, and Paul Thompson 1998 ‘No laughing matter?

On the practicality of practical jokes: Teasing, clowning and satire

in the workplace’. Paper presented to the Work, Employment and

Society Conference, University of Cambridge.

Ackroyd, Stephen, and Paul Thompson 1999 Organizational

misbehaviour. London: Sage.

Bain, Peter, and Phil Taylor 1999 ‘Employee relations, worker

attitudes and trade union representation in call centres’. Paper

presented to the 17th International Labour Process Conference,

University of London.


267

Bain, Peter, and Phil Taylor 2000 ‘Entrapped by the “electronic

panopticon”? Worker resistance in the call centre’. New

Technology, Work and Employment 15/1: 2–18.

Collinson, David 1988 ‘Engineering humour: Masculinity, joking

and conflict in shop floor relations’. Organization Studies 9/2:

181–199.

Collinson, David 2002 ‘Managing humour’. Journal of Management

Studies 39/3: 269–288.

Fernie, Sue, and David Metcalf 1998 (Not) hanging on the

telephone: Payment systems in the new sweatshops. London: London

School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance.

HSE 2001 Advice regarding call centre working practices. London:

Health and Safety Executive, Local Authority Unit.

Noon, Mike, and Paul Blyton 1997 The realities of work.

Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Sewell, Graham, and Barry Wilkinson 1992 ‘Human resource

management in “surveillance” companies’ in Human resource

management and technical change. J. Clark (ed.), 137–155. London:

Sage.

Taylor, Phil, and Peter Bain 1999 ‘“An assembly line in the head”:

Work and employee relations in the call centre’. Industrial

Relations Journal 30/2: 101–117.

Taylor, Phil, and Peter Bain 2001 ‘Trade unions, workers’ rights

and the frontier of control in UK call centres’. Economic and

Industrial Democracy 22/1: 39–66.

Taylor, Phil, and Peter Bain 2003 ‘Call centre organising in

adversity: From Excell to Vertex’ in Union organising. G. Gall

(ed.). London: Routledge.


268

Reading C: Is there a global ‘call centre’ speech

style?

Sue Fox

Source: Fox, S. (2011) ‘Is there a global “call centre” speech style?’, LinguisticsResearch Digest [Online]. Available at http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/is-there-global-call-centre-speech.html (Accessed 13January 2016).

Most research which has investigated the globalization effects on

language has focused on the spread of English and the way that it

supplants local languages, particularly in domains such as business,

higher education and politics. But can globalization also entail the

exportation of a particular speech style? Can people continue to

speak in the language associated with their national or ethnic

identity while using a speech style which is not necessarily

associated with that same nationality or ethnicity?

Researcher Anna Kristina Hultgren has been investigating the

speech style of call centre operators. Operators are generally given

very explicit instructions on how they must speak in interactions

with customers and these rules are often incorporated in

documents, taught in communication training programmes and

regularly assessed. Hultgren identifies a ‘rapport-building’ speech

style prescribed to call centre workers in four countries –

Denmark (DK), Britain (UK), Hong Kong (HK) and the

Philippines (PH). Although the call centre agents communicate in

different language varieties, the prescribed speech style is very

similar in all four countries.

Across all four call centres agents are advised to make customers

feel as though they are being listened to and in some cases are

even given devices, such as ‘urgh huh’, ‘ok’ and ‘I know’, which

they can deploy to show that they are engaged in ‘active listening’.

Related to this, agents must also acknowledge the customer needs

and make them feel understood. The agents are told that this

understanding can be signalled by such things as ‘summarising’

(UK), ‘confirming’ (DK), ‘checking/paraphrasing’ (HK) and

‘restating’ the problem, all very similar strategies. Equally

important is the fact that the agents must make themselves

understood. They are told to avoid jargon, technical terms and


269

company-internal lingo, again a feature listed in the materials of

all four call centres. Other ways that the agents are told to ensure

that they are making themselves clear are by using ‘signposting’,

‘summarising’ or ‘headline techniques’; in other words, not just

doing what the caller has asked them to do but also actively

communicating to the customer what action they are taking.

Finally, the importance of ‘empathy’ is highlighted across all four

sets of materials. The agents are often told to engage callers in

small-talk which is usually unrelated to the transaction in hand.

Some of the materials even suggest topics for small talk. These

can be such things as asking how the caller is at the beginning of

the [call], asking about the weather or making general

conversation. Is all this sounding rather familiar?

In the second part of the investigation, Hultgren looks at the

compliance to these prescriptive rules in British and Danish

contexts. She considers eight different variables and finds no

significant differences for four of those variables; ‘ending the

transaction on a personal note’, ‘thanking the customer for the

call’, ‘providing a summary of the interaction’ and ‘engaging in

active listening’. However, for the other four variables –

‘greeting’, ‘acknowledgment’, ‘hold notification’ and ‘check

understanding’ – there was a significant difference between the

two countries. These differences are attributed to the Danish

agents being more unwilling to engage interpersonally with the

customer than their British counterparts.

Despite these localized adaptations of the prescribed rules,

Hultgren concludes by arguing that there is a global ‘call centre’

style, derived originally from ‘North-American cultural preferences

for informality and rapport’ which is being exported

independently of language. It is not about making everyone speak

the same language but about letting them speak their own

language but in a style that does not necessarily align with their

ethno-cultural identity.


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Chapter 6 Ownership, regulation and

production

Colleen McKenna

6.1 Introduction

What happens when creative work is regulated by the state,

corporations, interest groups or the artist? To what extent has the

internet enabled new models of authorship and distribution to emerge?

These questions will frame this chapter’s consideration of the

regulation, production and distribution of creative work in the

twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since the invention of the printing

press, the complex dynamics of authorship, ownership and production

have determined our access to creative texts. The publication and

distribution of creative work is regulated and restricted by a range of

economic, political, technical and legal forces – often in operation in

ways of which we are unaware. The themes of regulation, ownership

and production are explored in this chapter through four authentic

case studies: that is, accounts of debates and struggles around specific

instances of production:

. Harry Potter and fan fiction

. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the charges of

obscenity

. J. M. Coetzee’s literary works and his reflections on the impact of

state censorship

. the phenomenon of Wikipedia and changing models of authorship,

licensing and publishing.

The chapter opens with a consideration of the law and creativity,

followed by the first case study on fan fiction. It then turns to a

discussion of the regulation of content and distribution, illustrated

through the second case study, of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This is

followed by an exploration of the impact that political and sectarian

pressure brings to bear on the act of writing itself, focusing on the

work of several literary writers (including Seamus Heaney and Salman

Rushdie) and using, in particular, the works of J. M. Coetzee as the

third case study. The chapter concludes by focusing on Wikipedia as

Chapter 6 Ownership, regulation and production

271

the fourth case study and considers alternative methods of publishing,

curating, licensing and distributing creative work by looking at

UbuWeb, Creative Commons licensing and a ‘spreadable media’ model

(Jenkins et al., 2013).

A prominent theme explored in this chapter is ‘literariness’ and the

extent to which the cultural valuing of literary works has influenced

production, particularly in relation to the law and creativity. For

example, in the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, texts deemed ‘literary’

were spared prosecution. Additionally, being ‘literary’ has been seen as

a value worth defending in other contexts, reflected in the outcry at

the persecution of Salman Rushdie.

While focusing primarily on the verbal medium, this chapter also looks

at other creative forms, such as audio and video in the avant-garde

archive UbuWeb; the changing nature of music distribution; and non-

fiction work that is shared through Creative Commons licensing.

6.2 Regulating creativity

Legal frameworks have governed artistic production and distribution in

various ways, including inspection for offensive, sensitive or seditious

material, as determined by the state, and enforcement of copyright and

intellectual property rights (see ‘Selected legal Acts that govern creative

work’ box). Copyright grants the author of a work the exclusive ‘right’

to its use and dissemination, usually within a fixed period of time: for

example, 70 years from the date of publication. Although individual

countries have their own copyright laws, most align with international

agreements, such as the Berne Convention for the Protection of

Literary and Artistic Works.

Transgressions of these laws has resulted in censorship of texts,

restrictions on publication and distribution, destruction of books,

prosecution of publishers and, more recently, the closure of websites

that enable ‘illegal sharing’ of copyrighted work (e.g. fiction, music, art).

As digital media have extended options for publishing and distributing

creative work, new legal frameworks, such as the Digital Millennium

Copyright Act, have been devised to resolve disputes surrounding

ownership and authorship and new forms of dissemination. The

change in technological and social practices in relation to creative work

is rapid – just think about how the formats for the distribution


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(selling/sharing) of music have changed over the last four decades. At

times it seems that the law struggles to keep up.

Of course, regulation does not always take a legal form: the

distribution of creative work can also be disrupted and effectively

banned through ideological and social pressure – even violence – that

is situated outside legal frameworks and international agreements.

Selected legal Acts that govern creative work

The Obscene Publications Act series (England, Wales) – 1857,

1959, 1964

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

(international) –1886

Publications and Entertainment Act (South Africa) – 1963

World Intellectual Property Organisation (a United Nations agency,

international) – 1967

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (USA) – 1998

Creative Commons license (USA, international) – 2002

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – proposed 2011; postponed 2012

Fiction and online communities: authorship, copyright and

genre

Fans of books and films frequently form communities based on their

shared enthusiasm, and these often revolve around participants’

writing; in the past, for example, groups co-wrote fanzines. With the

affordances of the internet for sharing and commenting on texts, a

new literary pursuit, fan fiction, has become a global, multilingual

phenomenon involving millions of fan writers.

Fan fiction involves taking established characters and creating new

contexts, plot lines and relationships for them. Among the most

popular fanfic communities (or fandoms) are Harry Potter groups,

which have hundreds of thousands of entries on the fanfic site

fanfiction.net and tens of thousands on Archive of Our Own (https://

archiveofourown.org).


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Given the symbiotic relationship that fan fiction has with copyrighted

and branded material, it is not surprising that legal tensions arise in

relation to its publication. Issues that tend to emerge are:

. copyright and intellectual property rights disputes

. claims of tarnishing a brand’s image

. concerns that an author’s intended future plans may be

compromised or ‘taken’ by a fanfic writer.

Most fan fiction is published without the permission of the author of

the source texts or other ‘rights holders’ (such as those with interests

in associated brands and/or films) (Schwabach, 2011). Authors have an

ambivalent relationship with fanfic communities. On the one hand,

many (including J. K. Rowling) have acknowledged that fandoms

increase publicity and revenue for their books, films and related

merchandise. On the other hand, some authors object to the use of

their characters and settings in ways of which they disapprove or feel is

infringing their creative rights. For example, Anne Rice has had a

hostile relationship with writers of fan fiction and has legally pursued

those who publish texts using her characters (Schwabach, 2011).

E. Annie Proulx has also objected to fans’ ‘pornish rewrites’

(Schwabach, 2011, p. 7) of her work, notably the short story

‘Brokeback Mountain’ (Proulx, 1997).

Case Study 1: Harry Potter and the rise of fan fiction –

who owns the text?

The Harry Potter series emerged in 1997 with the publication of

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and culminated in 2007

with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. A hugely successful

literary series, sales of the books had totalled between 400 and

450 million as of July 2013 (Time, 2013).

The literature has stimulated a broad and varied ‘industry’,

including an eight-part Warner Bros. film series which, along with

associated merchandise and theme parks, has earned over

$15 billion for the Harry Potter brand (Thompson, 2008).

The rise of a fan base for the books and films coincided with the

growth of the internet and this combination has resulted in a wealth

of digital tribute sites and texts. The Harry Potter fanfic network is

among the largest of its kind, with over 680,000 Harry Potter

entries in the fanfiction.net ‘book’ section in 2014.


274

J. K. Rowling has actively acknowledged and encouraged Harry

Potter fanfic writers. However, as the Potter brand has grown, and

particularly with the involvement of Warner Bros. who own the film

rights, tensions have emerged between fan writers and the Potter

enterprise. One such clash, referred to by fans as ‘the Potter wars’

(Jenkins, 2006, p. 169), occurred when a number of young fans,

who had created fan-based, non-commercial online sites to share

information and fictional Potter-inspired texts, began to receive

threatening letters from Warner Bros. representatives, requesting

that the sites be taken down (Jenkins, 2006).

Claire Field, a 15-year-old who had created the online ‘Harry Potter

guide’ (www.harrypotterguide.co.uk) took her story to The Daily

Mirror, following the receipt of a cease-and-desist letter, thus

making public the heavy-handed approach that Warner Bros. were

taking to what were essentially children’s fan websites celebrating

Harry Potter (Jenkins, 2006). Following the publicising of Claire

Field’s experience, other teens who had experienced similar

responses from Warner Bros. representatives shared their stories

and stimulated an organised movement headed by Heather Lawver

– a teenager who had begun her own online ‘school newspaper’

‘The Daily Prophet’, which offered schoolchildren a space to share

their original Potter texts (Dargis and Scott, 2011).

Lawver ended up debating with a representative of Warner Bros. on

US television, and in an interview with Jenkins said, ‘We weren’t

disorganized little kids anymore. We had a public following and we

had a petition with 1500 signatures in a matter of two weeks. They

[Warner Bros.] finally had to negotiate with us’ (Jenkins, 2006,

p. 187). Ultimately, Warner Bros. capitulated and allowed sites such

as Claire Field’s and Heather Lawver’s to continue, provided that

they remained not-for-profit.

Activity 6.1


Turn to Reading A, ‘Fan fiction and copyright’ by Aaron Schwabach, at

the end of this chapter. In this extract Schwabach is analysing the ‘Harry

Potter Lexicon’. As you read, consider the following questions:

. What is being suggested about the role of corporate interests and

creativity in this case?


275

. What broader observations would you make about fanfic texts and

their relationship to their source texts after reading Schwabach’s

account?

Discussion

The Harry Potter case illustrates the tensions that emerge between

authors and enthusiasts, particularly fanfic writers who are publishing

their own creative texts. As a brand like Harry Potter expands, this

relationship is further complicated by the introduction of commercial

rights holders, so even when an author is minded to see their readers as

a community, a corporation may be more driven to protect copyright and

economic interests. From a legal perspective, the legitimacy of the new

texts often hinges on whether the work is ‘derivative’ and/or

‘transformational’ and whether it contravenes ‘fair use’. However, the

judgment of the legality of these texts is subjective and nuanced, as the

account of the Vander Ark trial illustrates. For example, while it would

seem that fanfic is ‘derivative’ because it is based on a pre-existing

work, in fact the judgment in the Lexicon case suggests that being

‘based upon’ another work, does not necessarily make a work

‘derivative’, particularly if it can be shown to have transformed the

‘expression, meaning, or message’ of the original. Furthermore,

copyright holders appear to pick their battles and, while non-commercial

fan fiction is not necessarily ‘fair use’ (as is often assumed), it is often

overlooked by copyright holders as long as it is not profit making.

Jenkins (2006, p. 169) describes the ‘Potter wars’ as ‘the interplay – and

tension – between the top-down force of corporate convergence and

the bottom-up force of grassroots convergence’. The Potter war

exchanges took place early in the twenty-first century. Ten years on, at

the time of writing, some corporations take a different view of fan

engagement with copyrightable material if it ‘spreads’ interest in the

work. However, as fans are brought together in online networks – a

phenomenon in its infancy when the early Harry Potter novels were

released – they are potentially empowered, because as with the Potter

wars, brands cannot afford to alienate loyal, organised fans.

Activity 6.2


Look at Figure 6.1. What observations can you make about fan fiction

based on this screenshot? What does it tell you about the nature of


276

readers and writers in this digital space? Consider how mode, layout,

style and vocabulary are used.

Discussion

Figure 6.1 is from an online environment with the potential for

multimodality (image, audio, video, etc.), and this screenshot shows that

written language is the dominant mode of communication on this web

page. Additionally, the vocabulary used on the site to define categories

is more commonly associated with books: ‘Words’ (as in word counts),

‘author’, ‘Reviews’, ‘Chapters’, ‘Romance’, ‘Adventure’ (some of this

book-oriented vocabulary is evident in this figure). This readerly

discourse first provides a structural framework for the site and, second,

perhaps, signals its literariness to readers.

Although hypertextual, that is linked to other content through user

clicks, the screen design is predicated on print-based literacy practices,

requiring us to read across and down the screen. Given the trend of

online sites – even those which largely trade on written communication


277

The Darkness and the Light by MissDemigodWizardThe Marauders and Lily and her friends are starting their seventh year at Hogwarts. But, Voldemort is slowly rising power and the waris just around the corner. To top it all off, Lily is starting to realise something, something she had denied from her first day at Hogwarts.PLEASE DONT SKIP BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF WORDS. :)Rated: K+ - English - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,074 - Published: 46m ago - Lily Evans P., Marauders30 Days, A Marriage > by Lady Memory reviewsAn angry Severus and a horrified Hermione are put together in the same house because of a danger impending on her. Will thisforced cohabitation transform itself in real love in 30 days’ time? A slow crescendo with quarrels, drama, humour and suspense.The story is completed and, as it is in the form of a diary, it will be published a chapter a day.Rated: K+ - English - Romance/Adventure - Chapters: 19 - Words: 36,097 - Reviews: 114 - Favs: 32 - Follows: 70 - Updated: May 13 -Published: Apr 25 - Hermione G., Severus S.story ideas > by pjoaquamarine12story ideas inculdes Harry Potter and random ideas take them if you want just message me so I can see my ideas come to lifeRated: K+ - English - Chapters: 4 - Words: 321 - Updated: 1h ago - Published: May 12

Alexi Malfoy > by Voile HackDraco Malfoy and his younger sister, see each other for the first time in 3 years. All hell breaks loose and life goes on.Rated: T - English - Drama/Adventure - Chapters: 2 - Words - 1,106 - Favs: 1 - Follows: 4 - Updated: 1h ago - Published: May 13 -Sirius B., Draco M., Blaise Z., OCPoderoso, altivo e inmortal by MetisAndGalateaAbatida por la repentina desaparición de sus mejores amigos, Hermione decide viajar al pasado para destruir de una vez por todasa Voldemort. Planea asesinarlo en su niñez, pero sus planes cambian enormemente cuando crea un giratiempo y éste sólo puederetroceder cincuenta y cuatro años.Rated: T - Spanish - Mystery/Romance - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,983 - Published: 1h ago - Hermione G.The Dark Days: A Prequal to the Harry Potter Series > by Raw Sewage WritingsSpies of the Dark Lord are everywhere, even within the ranks of the Ministry of Magic. No one can be trusted and hope is quicklyfading. It is a time of war and they are dark days…Rated: T - English - Drama/Mystery - Chapters: 4 - Words: 9,941 - Follows: 1 - Updated: 1h ago - Published: Apr 7 - Lucius M., RufusS., Aberforth D.Reading the Series at Hogwarts: Goblet of Fire > by TheAngelsCryInBlood reviewsHere is the reboot of my reading series set in The Order of The Phoenix and starting with the Goblet of Fire, Slash from the get go.Dumble, Molly, Ginny and Ron bashing along with Angels, Gods, Demons and everything else from the old series.Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 13 - Words: 56,012 - Reviews: 111 - Favs: 178 - Follows: 226 - Updated: 2h ago -Published: Dec 7, 2013 - [Harry P., Theodore N.]

Figure 6.1 A screenshot from the Harry Potter pages from www.fanfiction.net

(such as www.bbc.co.uk) – towards a dynamic, visual appeal, this

organisation feels rather dated and unadventurous. Like the use of

vocabulary, perhaps the text-heavy design is intended to foreground the

engagement with reading and writing. (Significantly, and perhaps for

reasons of copyright, the page is devoid of any of the recognisable Harry

Potter iconography.)

However, there are elements of social networking here: tags such as

‘Favs’, ‘Follows’, ‘Updated’ and date stamps as well as the use of

authors’ icons and screen names. Additionally, the prominent position of

the ‘reviews’ tag signals that analysis is a key activity on the site: on the

chapter pages, writers frequently request feedback from readers. The

role of members of this dialogic site vacillates between that of writer and

reader within the environment, mirroring the way that fanfic facilitates a

fluid interplay between reading and writing more broadly. Taken together,

these elements demonstrate that this site is not simply an archive, but it

is actually a community which is part of a broader participatory culture,

as Jenkins (2006) terms it, enabled by online media.

6.3 Regulating content and distribution: censorship

and surveillance

Literary texts and regulation

Regulation and restriction of creative work can take many guises. This

section explores literature and regulation, focusing on modernist and

late twentieth-century writing and the extent to which ‘literariness’

featured in the changing legal attitudes to obscenity. Specifically, you

will consider texts censored through the Obscene Publications Act

(OPA), the impact of state surveillance in South Africa, and

internationally orchestrated attempts to suppress Salman Rushdie’s

1988 novel, The Satanic Verses.

In the first half of the twentieth century, literary texts were subject to

assessment against the OPA. D. H. Lawrence fell foul of the Act twice

with The Rainbow (1915) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928): in both

cases, expressions of sexuality and spoken discourse in his writing were

deemed to be obscene. Another text banned in the early twentieth

century was Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, published in 1928

and, like The Rainbow, prosecuted under the 1857 version of the OPA

‘which prohibited the sale of books, pictures and “other articles” that

“depraved and corrupted” the morals of young people and shocked


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“the common feelings of decency in any well regulated mind”’

(Souhami, 1998, p. 202).

The Well of Loneliness was groundbreaking in its subtle exploration of

lesbian desire and was published to favourable reviews. However, four

weeks after publication, the editor of the Daily Express wrote a

scathing editorial condemning the subject matter and appealing to the

Home Secretary to prosecute the publisher. Court proceedings began

in November 1928, resulting in the book being banned and British

publication being stopped (Souhami, 1998; Potter, 2013).

Case Study 2: D. H. Lawrence and censorship – the

Obscene Publications Act

This case study outlines the obscenity charges brought against

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover was Lawrence’s final major work. In 1928,

an uncensored edition was published in Italy and an abridged

version in the USA, before a censored version was published in the

UK in 1932. In 1960, Penguin Books produced an unabridged

edition and was charged under the recently introduced (1959) OPA,

effectively becoming a test case for the law, which allowed

publication of ‘obscene’ texts if their literary merit could be

demonstrated.

The case lasted less than three weeks and concluded with a verdict

of ‘not guilty’. The verdict was significant because it opened the

way for the UK publication of other texts containing explicit

material.

The second Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is dedicated

to the jurors in the obscenity trial:

For having published this book, Penguin Books were

prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, 1959, at the

Old Bailey in London from 20 October to 2 November 1960.

This edition is therefore dedicated to the twelve jurors, three

women and nine men, who returned a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’,

and thus made D. H. Lawrence’s last novel available for the

first time to the public in the United Kingdom.

(Publisher’s dedication, in Lawrence, 1961)


279

Writing on the 50-year anniversary of the ruling, Geoffrey

Robertson QC described the ruling as ‘a crucial step towards the

freedom of the written word’ (Robertson, 2010). Robertson argues

that the ruling was part of a broader move towards liberalism which

heralded the legalisation of homosexuality, abortion rights and the

end of the death penalty.

Activity 6.3


Turn to Reading B, ‘Obscene modernism’ by Rachel Potter, at the end of

this chapter. After reading, consider how Extracts 1 and 2 illustrate

Potter’s points about:

. networks of control

. the role of language

. literary freedom.

Extract 1

The following extract is from Geoffrey Robertson’s analysis of the Lady

Chatterley trial on its 50th anniversary, published in The Guardian

(please note: this text contains language that may be considered

offensive):

In 1960, in the interests of keeping wives dutiful and servants

touching their forelocks, Lady Constance Chatterley’s affair

with a gamekeeper was unmentionable. The prosecutors were

complacent: they would have the judge on their side, and a

jury comprised of people of property, predominantly male,

middle aged, middle minded and middle class. And they had

four-letter words galore: the prosecuting counsel’s first request

was that a clerk in the DPP’s office should count them

carefully. In his opening speech to the jury, he played them as

if they were trump cards: “The word ‘fuck’ or ‘fucking’ appears

no less than 30 times…‘Cunt’ 14 times; ‘balls’ 13 times; ‘shit’

and ‘arse’ six times apiece; ‘cock’ four times; ‘piss’ three

times, and so on.”

But what the prosecution failed to comprehend was that the

1959 Act had wrought some important changes in the law.

Although it retained a “tendency to deprave and corrupt” as


280

the test of obscenity, books had now to be “taken as a whole”

– that is, not judged solely on their purple passages – and

only in respect of persons likely to read them; in other words,

not 14-year-old schoolgirls, unless they were directed to that

teenage market. Most importantly, section 4 of the Act

provided that even if the jury found that the book tended to

deprave and corrupt it could nonetheless acquit if persuaded

that publication “is justified in the interests of science,

literature, art and learning or any other object of general

concern”.

(Robertson, 2010)

Extract 2

In 1928, James Douglas, editor of the Daily Express, wrote the following,

under the headline ‘A Book that Must Be Suppressed’, in an editorial for

the Sunday Express about Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness:

Its theme is utterly inadmissible in the novel … I am well

aware that sexual inversion and perversion are horrors which

exist among us today. They flaunt themselves in public places

with increasing effrontery and more insolently provocative

bravado. The decadent apostles of the most hideous and most

loathsome vices no longer conceal their degeneracy and their

degradation.

[…] The consequence is that this pestilence is devastating the

younger generation. It is wrecking young lives. It is defiling

young souls.

[…]

We must protect our children against their specious fallacies

and sophistries. Therefore, we must banish their propaganda

from our bookshops and libraries. I would rather give a

healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this

novel.

(Cited in Souhami, 1998, pp. 176–8)

In defence of literary freedom, Radclyffe Hall wrote to the Daily Herald:


281

If seriously written psychological novels are to be subjected to

arbitrary attack from the Home Office, which attacks result in

their being withdrawn, what chance has our sane and well

educated public of obtaining the best output from publisher

and author?

Must there never be any new pastures for the writer? Never

any new aspects of social problems presented to the adult

and open minded reader? Is the reader to be treated like a

kind of mental dyspeptic whose literary food must be

predigested by Government Office before consumption?

…

On behalf of English literature I must protest against such

unwarrantable interference.

(Cited in Souhami, 1998, pp. 184–5)

Discussion

Potter argues that censorship was effected by formal and informal

networks of control involving lawyers, publishers, printers, judges, postal

workers, and so on. The presence of a network of control is evident in

Extract 2, which reveals the power of a newspaper editor who

successfully triggers a prosecution of a book already in circulation. By

this point, The Well of Loneliness had been supported by the publisher

and disseminated by printers and distributors, but was stopped through

the editorial influence of the Daily Express.

In the quotation in Extract 1, Robertson suggests ways in which this

nexus of power was undermined in the Lady Chatterley trial, first

because those who were formally part of the network – in this case the

prosecuting counsel – miscalculated the likelihood of support from the

jury and witnesses, and second because the 1959 Act enabled the

acquittal of publications which served the ‘interests of science, literature,

art and learning’. So, ‘literariness’ becomes a legal defence.

In both extracts, we see language as a site of struggle. Obscenities are

forensically tallied in Robertson’s account of the Lady Chatterley trial,

and Potter observes that Lawrence, and other modernist writers, drew on

obscenities as a deliberate, confrontational way of exploring sexual

themes as well as the language of sex itself.

Linguistically, Radclyffe Hall’s writing is unlike Lawrence’s in this respect,

with more subtle references to sex. An irony of Extract 2 is that it is


282

Douglas’s text which is shocking to the twenty-first-century reader with

its vitriol and inflammatory language, designed to offend and divide.

Significantly, Douglas knowingly alludes to the 1857 OPA with his

reference to the corruption of ‘healthy’ boys and girls, thus tapping into a

formal network of control – the law.

Potter suggests that, beyond their value to shock, obscenities carried

with them a ‘transgressive energy’ which modernists associated with

literary freedom (see also Chapter 2, Sections 2.3 and 2.4 for creativity

and transgression). Thus, while part of the linguistic enterprise was to

foreground sexuality and the language of sex as suitable for literature,

another was to extend the boundaries of artistic freedom. In her plea for

free speech above, it is evident that Hall is exercised not so much by the

fact that her subject matter has been deemed offensive, but by the

circumscribing of topics for literature to only those approved by the

government.

Significantly, as Potter observes, there was a notable difference in the

response from the literary community between the prosecution of The

Rainbow in 1915 and that of The Well of Loneliness in 1928. At the time

of The Rainbow’s prosecution, Lawrence’s peers were relatively quiet;

however, during the prosecution of The Well of Loneliness, writers

including T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster and Aldous Huxley

openly protested. Potter argues that this change in writers’ willingness to

oppose censorship signalled a shift in attitudes which continued to gain

momentum until the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960

(Potter, 2013).

Undoubtedly in the second half of the twentieth century, social

attitudes towards ‘obscenity’ in literature and art were liberalised.

However, as the discussion of The Satanic Verses (later in this chapter)

will illustrate, less formal networks of regulation would threaten

freedom of speech several decades later.

Case Study 3: J. M. Coetzee – writing, politics and

surveillance

This case study addresses the secret, state-sponsored censoring of

Coetzee’s work, as well as Coetzee’s reflections on the impact of

censorship from Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996).

J. M. Coetzee is a South African writer and essayist who won the

Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. Among his best-known works is


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Disgrace (1999), a novel that explores the complexities of race

relationships in contemporary South Africa. Identity, sexuality and

politics are regular themes in his work.

Unlike D. H. Lawrence or Radclyffe Hall, none of Coetzee’s novels

was actually banned, although In the Heart of the Country (1977), a

book exploring colonisation, was briefly impounded by officials

(Head, 2009). Nonetheless, throughout much of his career he has

written in the shadow of a state system of censorship, which

began, formally, with the Publications and Entertainment Act

of 1963. This was followed by The Publications Act (1975), which

meant that books could be ruled ‘undesirable’ (and thus banned

from publication) if any of the following applied:

(a) it was indecent or obscene or offensive or harmful to

public morals

(b) it was blasphemous or offensive to the religious

convictions or feelings of any section of the population

(c) it brought any section of the population into ridicule or

contempt

(d) it was harmful to relations between any sections of the

population

(e) it prejudiced security, welfare, peace and good order

(f) it disclosed part of a judicial proceeding in which offensive

material was quoted.

(Adapted from Van Rooyen, 1987, p. 7)

Coetzee suggests that the censorship ‘apparatus’ only became

defunct as recently as 1990, and he has observed that until he was

50 all his creative work had to be approved by the state before it

could be published (Coetzee, 1996).

Activity 6.4


In Giving Offense (1996), J. M. Coetzee approaches censorship from

many perspectives, including the philosophical and artistic. Read the

following extract from his essay, in which he describes the impact on the

writer of working in a censoring environment. How is Coetzee using


284

metaphor to describe his experience of the relationship between the

writer and the censor?

At an individual level, the contest with the censor is all too

likely to assume an importance in the inner life of the writer

that at the very least diverts him from his proper occupation

and at its worst fascinates and even perverts the imagination.

In the personal records of writers who have operated under

censorship we find eloquent and despairing descriptions of

how the censor-figure is involuntarily incorporated into the

interior, psychic life, bringing with it humiliation, self-disgust,

and shame. In unwilling fantasies of this kind, the censor is

typically experienced as a parasite, a pathogenic invader of

the body-self, repudiated with visceral intensity but never

wholly expelled.

(Coetzee, 1996, p. 10)

Discussion

Coetzee has considered at length what it means for a writer, himself

included, to ‘create’ under the gaze of state censorship, both overt and

covert. In this account, the organic metaphors of parasite and pathogen

are compelling as the ‘censor’ is cast, in Coetzee’s account, as an

embodied attacker (insect or germ) which enters the creative core of the

artist, co-opting the artist, against their will, to self-censor or at least

‘govern the tongue’ as Heaney would have it (Heaney, 1988). One

thinks, too, of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, a penitential structure in

which the mere potential existence of an observer causes the individual

under observation to self-regulate in response (Bentham, 1843).The

censor’s presence occupies intellectual space in the artist’s psyche, thus

affecting creativity whether or not the end product is restricted.

Many writers have explored the ways in which explicit and implicit

censorship shapes their work.


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Activity 6.5


Read the following poem by Seamus Heaney. How is Heaney using the

event of passing through a checkpoint as a metaphor for writing? What

might be meant by the ‘frontier of writing’?

‘From the Frontier of Writing’

The tightness and the nilness round that spacewhen the car stops in the road, the troops inspectits make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of moreon a hill beyond, eyeing with intentdown cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogationuntil a rifle motions and you movewith guarded unconcerned acceleration –

a little emptier, a little spentas always by that quiver in the self,subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writingwhere it happens again. The guns on tripods;the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawkof clearance; the marksman training downout of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you’re through, arraigned yet freed,as if you’d passed from behind a waterfallon the black current of a tarmac road

past armour-plated vehicles, out betweenthe posted soldiers flowing and recedinglike tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

(Heaney, 1987, p. 6)

Discussion

Like Coetzee’s work, Seamus Heaney’s poetry was never officially

censored; however, he has written at length about the difficulties of

maintaining artistic freedom when writing within and about a politicised

context, in this case Northern Ireland (see Chapter 2, Section 2.6).


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In this poem, there is an awareness, immediate and distant, of being

watched and inspected (‘everything is pure interrogation’) and the poem

explores the impact of these censoring forces on creativity and the

struggle to resist them.

As with Coetzee’s artist responding to the pathogenic censor, here, too,

the driver internalises the censoring gaze of the checkpoint and remains

‘a little emptier, a little spent / as always by that quiver in the self, /

subjugated, yes, and obedient’. The experience lives on once the

checkpoint has been passed through, and on arrival at ‘the frontier of

writing’ it is repeated, metaphorically, with the imagery of another

militarised, unyielding, judgemental scene. Yet, in the final stanzas, the

speaking subject is ‘through, arraigned yet freed’ and the poem closes

on an ambiguous note with the images of oppression and censure

receding but, one suspects, still present in the imagination. For me,

through the act of writing itself, art (poetry) fleetingly pushes back

against the controlling, oppressive environment. The poet, aware of the

danger of being complicit in his own subjugation, struggles to find

resistance through writing. An optimistic interpretation would construct

the frontier of writing as a sort of threshold which takes the writer into a

creative space, within view of, but just beyond, the political and sectarian

tensions of day-to-day existence.

Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses

Coetzee suggests that although certain systems of censorship have

been dismantled as political landscapes have changed in, for example,

South Africa and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, new types

of censorship have emerged (Coetzee, 1996). An example he cites to

illustrate emergent attempts to suppress the publication of books

deemed ‘offensive’ is Salman Rushdie’s 1988 prizewinning The Satanic

Verses. The book tells the story of an Indian expatriate, Saladin

Chamcha, returning to his homeland, and explores, among other

things, alienation and expatriate identity using magical realism.

However, as the book gained notoriety, its representations of Islam

met with objections. The sense of outrage escalated and resulted in a

miasma of fear and violence: copies of the book were burned,

bookstores were firebombed, some of those involved with the

publication and distribution of the book were threatened, and in some

cases physically harmed and even killed. The Ayatollah Khomeini

issued a fatwa (ruling) calling for the death of the author, and Rushdie,

a leading novelist of his generation, went into hiding under police


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protection for nearly 20 years. The book was banned in many

countries, including India (an import ban), Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,

Kenya, Singapore and South Africa. The Rushdie case illustrates the

changed climate of opposition and organisation in which some writers

and artists have found themselves in the early twenty-first century. The

targeting and attempted suppression of The Satanic Verses comprised a

loose but violent combination of government edicts, threats to

individuals and businesses, and menacing public protests characterised

by a global reach and chilling unpredictability. Unlike a legal decision,

there is no court of appeal or opportunity to argue one’s case.

Nick Cohen, analysing the treatment of Rushdie in You Can’t Read this

Book (2013), argues that despite the freedoms afforded us by digital

communications and the perceived ease of sharing information, there

have emerged new threats to free speech, particularly in relation to the

production and publication of creative texts. Rushdie, a passionate

advocate for freedom of expression, nonetheless concedes that authors

would find it difficult to have a book that was critical of Islam

published now (Gompertz, 2012). Cohen has similarly argued that no

novelist would risk writing such a text: an element of self-censorship

lives on as a legacy of the violent reactions to The Satanic Verses. As

Coetzee argues in Giving Offense, Cohen and Rushdie observe that we

have entered a different era of censure, one in which digital

communication both enables and inhibits free speech. The 2014 case

of Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist campaigner who was targeted for

online abuse by Twitter users, two of whom were subsequently jailed,

has highlighted the potential censoring effect of social media,

particularly in attempts to silence women online (Topping, 2014).

6.4 Digital curation and distribution

The previous section has explored literary texts and regulation and

production. Here, we return to the affordances of digital environments

to produce, distribute and curate a range of art forms, including those

using video and audio.

Our first example is the elective, non-commercial UbuWeb (ubuweb.

com), an online archive which specialises in visual and performance

arts, including dance, music and theatre (see Figure 6.2). UbuWeb was

established in 1996 by the poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It is run wholly

by volunteers and uses server space donated from a network of

universities.


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Figure 6.2 Screenshot from UbuWeb (Source: UbuWeb, 2016)

Activity 6.6


Read the quotations below from UbuWeb’s founder, Kenneth Goldsmith.

What conclusions do you draw about:

. the economic model on which UbuWeb is based?

. UbuWeb’s values in relation to art and ownership?

. the affordances of curating creative work online?

[B]y the time you read this, UbuWeb may be gone. Cobbled

together, operating on no money and an all-volunteer staff,

UbuWeb has become the unlikely definitive source for all

things avant-garde on the internet. Never meant to be a


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permanent archive, Ubu could vanish for any number of

reasons: our ISP pulls the plug, our university support dries

up, or we simply grow tired of it. Acquisition by a larger entity

is impossible: nothing is for sale. We don’t touch money. In

fact, what we host has never made money. Instead, the site is

filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists – the

music of Jean Dubuffet, the poetry of Dan Graham, Julian

Schnabel’s country music … – all of which was originally put

out in tiny editions and vanished quickly.

However the web provides the perfect place to restage these

works. With video, sound, and text remaining more faithful to

the original experience than, say, painting or sculpture, Ubu

proposes a different sort of revisionist art history, one based

on the peripheries of artistic production rather than on the

perceived, or market-based, centre …

…

… As time went on, we seemed to be outgrowing our original

taxonomies until we simply became a repository for the

“avant-garde” (whatever that means – our idea of what is

“avant-garde” seems to be changing all the time). UbuWeb

adheres to no one historical narrative, rather we’re more

interested in putting several disciplines into the same space

and seeing how they interact: poetry, music, film, and

literature from all periods encounter and bounce off of each

other in unexpected ways.

(Goldsmith, 2011)

Yet, in terms of how we’ve gone about building the archive, if

we had to ask for permission, we wouldn’t exist. Because we

have no money, we don’t ask permission. Asking permission

always involves paperwork and negotiations, lawyers, and

bank accounts. Yuk. But by doing things the wrong way, we’ve

been able to pretty much overnight build an archive that’s

made publically accessible for free of charge to anyone. And

that in turn has attracted a great number of film and video

makers to want to contribute their works to the archive

legitimately. The fastest growing part of Ubu’s film section is

by younger and living artists who want to be a part of Ubu.


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But if you want your works off Ubu, we never question it and

remove it immediately; it’s your work after all.

(Goldsmith, 2010)

Discussion

UbuWeb is distinct from other examples in this chapter in that it takes no

funding from anyone – no commercial backing, payment from individuals,

private donations or crowd sourcing. This has several implications. First,

as Goldsmith suggests, it means that UbuWeb is a fragile entity, whose

future is not guaranteed. However, at the same time, not having funding

means it is wholly free from commercial influence on artistic decisions

about what to curate. Furthermore, while a volunteer-based operation

may be limited in what it can do, it will not be reliant on government

funding or similar resources. So while Goldsmith refers to the precarious

nature of UbuWeb, it has survived since 1996 and as its reputation and

collections grow, its prospects seem good. In the second quote,

Goldsmith links this lack of financial backing to his position on copyright.

His rationale is that if UbuWeb is not profiting from the sharing of a work,

then the creator should not object; on the contrary, the implication is that

the work is being given a new audience and prestige through its

selection for the archive.

The language used to describe the site and the work it curates frames

the enterprise as being on the fringes of a more commercialised art

world. Terms such as ‘Cobbled together’, ‘detritus’, ‘ephemera’ and

‘peripheries’ create a sense of impermanence and an outsider status.

Yet, there is also a conviction that ‘by doing things the wrong way’ and

being outside the system, UbuWeb is actually doing things the right way

and has a certain legitimacy. So there exist contradictory impulses of the

marginal, illegitimate, uncertain nature of both the archive and its

material on the one hand, and its importance, reputation and centrality to

the avant-garde on the other.

Additionally, a recurrent theme in Goldsmith’s writing about UbuWeb is

the affordance of the internet in relation to the archiving of certain types

of creative work. He suggests that ephemeral ‘detritus’ that may not

have a defined market value and would be otherwise lost from view, can

be preserved and shared online. He argues that, while for some genres,

such as painting and sculpture, the internet is not a particularly good

environment for displaying, for other genres – film, music, concrete

poetry, dance – it is an excellent fit as a repository and means of

sharing. A digital space also enables a sense of serendipity and fluidity


291

about the way in which art forms intersect and definitions (‘what is avant-

garde?’) and taxonomies are played with.

Finally, it is worth observing that the curation of and submission to this

archive is carefully controlled. This is not the open, community-based

approach that, for example, fanfic sites or Wikipedia embrace. Rather,

items must be selected for submission and volunteer editors look after

sub-collections. Nonetheless, UbuWeb is exploiting the internet as a site

of open distribution to a wider audience.

Distribution of creative work

Production, distribution and regulatory practices have changed

dramatically for some creative arts, such as music, since the late 1990s.

In particular, as with fanfic, the boundary between creator and

consumer has blurred as individuals are able to copy, remix and share

files.

The next activity looks at Reading C and considers the spreadable

model of distribution of creative work.

Activity 6.7


Turn to Reading C, ‘Spreadable media’ by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and

Joshua Green, at the end of this chapter. As you read, consider the


. What does Doctorow’s image of blowing a dandelion suggest about

how creative work is currently shared?

. How does this model of ‘spreadable media’ help to explain some of

the examples addressed earlier in this chapter?

. How is the ‘spreadable media’ model influencing the way in which we

engage with the creative practice of generating music?

Discussion

Doctorow’s image of the blown dandelion seedhead asks us to rethink

how creative work is shared (or ‘broadcast’ in Doctorow’s metaphor) and

controlled. Jenkins et al. argue that the image usefully illustrates what

they mean by ‘spreadable media’, the focus of the book from which this

reading has been taken. In this extract from the final chapter of the

book, Jenkins et al. underline what they see as the defining features of


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their model, ‘spreadable media’. These are: the flow of ideas, dispersed

material, open-ended participation, motivating and facilitating sharing.

The spreadable model foregrounds the significance of communities and

the role that they play in circulating, curating and appraising creative

work, acting as quasi-publishers. The model recasts the relationship

between audience and creator, in part by blurring distinctions between

these roles and recognising the multiple ways in which people respond

to and extend creative work. The Potter wars, for example, demonstrate

a lack of awareness of the ways in which fans of Harry Potter were

cultivating a community of enthusiasts and creators in their own right,

‘spreading’ free publicity.

Would the ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover have been circumvented in

the age of spreadable media? We regularly see courts fail in attempts to

enforce injunctions on embargoed material that has been placed online.

On the other hand, spreadable practices leave electronic trails or

footprints that potentially identify who has downloaded and distributed

digital material and as governments grant themselves increased rights

over citizens’ digital privacy, then perhaps the dandelion method of

dissemination might be curtailed. So is it, paradoxically, harder to control

the movement of digital objects but easier to trace them?

The ways in which music is acquired, played, shared and remixed have

changed dramatically. In 1975 you might have bought a vinyl record and

played it on a record player. It was portable but fragile and easily

scratched. In 1985 you could purchase, play and, crucially, compile

cassette recordings. Cassette recorders enabled remixing and curating

of songs, but the medium, the cassette, was easily damaged. CDs

supplanted cassettes and were theoretically more durable and of better

quality, but they were a more fixed mode of distribution – more difficult to

alter or record on to.

Digitised music distributed in file formats has further altered the way we

consume, share and produce music. And, as music has become more

easily reproduced, downloaded and shared, new regulatory frameworks

have been devised to enforce copyright. As methods of acquiring music

rapidly changed, the clash between new practices (such as peer-to-peer

file sharing) and the enforcement of copyright came to a head in the

lawsuit against Napster (a file-sharing site) in 1999. Although Napster

was shut down in 2001 as a free file-sharing service, it is regarded by

many as the precursor to contemporary online music distribution (see

also Chapter 5, Section 5.3 for a network analysis of the digital sharing

of music).

As with fanfic practices, there is a blurring of boundaries between

creating and listening. For instance, pieces of music are remixed,


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parodied, rerecorded and redistributed on YouTube (see an example in

Chapter 2, Section 2.5). Our engagement with music is a good example

of the ways in which technology, creativity, social practices and legal

regulation intersect and interact.

Much of the controversy surrounding the distribution of music comes

down to notions of ownership. Doctorow’s approach to intellectual

property is not so much a legal sense of the term, as we saw it applied

in the Potter wars case, but rather a conceptual exploration: what does it

mean to ‘own’ the rights to creative work? As you will see in the next

section, entities such as Wikipedia and Creative Commons licensing

generally, are moving away from fixed texts with defined authors, to a

more fluid, multi-authored way of creating.

An important point made by Jenkins et al. in proposing the notion of

‘spreadable media’ is that while it is useful to draw on biological

metaphors in order to capture changing patterns of creativity and

production – such as ‘viral’, ‘meme’ – such creativity is not an

agentless activity. Of people’s participation, Jenkins et al. state:

Both individually and collectively, they exert agency in the

spreadability model. They are not merely impregnated with media

messages, nor are they at the service of the brand; rather, they

select material that matters to them from the much broader array

of media content on offer (which now includes audience creations

alongside industrially produced works).

(Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 294)

(See also Chapter 5 for a discussion of agency in relation to

glocalisation).

6.5 Creative Commons and alternative models of

authorship and ownership

Creative Commons (CC) licensing, sometimes referred to as ‘copyleft’,

is a means of asserting ‘authorship’ of a digitised, creative work (e.g. a

text, a photograph, an image) while simultaneously sanctioning the

sharing and free distribution of it. In this way, Creative Commons

offers an alternative to conventional models of licensing, in particular


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that framed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) designed

to enforce copyright in digital environments.

CC operates at an intersection of creativity, technology and the values

of free distribution: its stated mission is to develop, sustain and

‘steward’ a ‘legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital

creativity, sharing, and innovation’ (Creative Commons, 2016).

Additionally, some CC licences allow a work to be modified and

republished: in this approach the creative work is not ‘fixed’ and nor is

its authorship or ownership. The CC licence shown in Figure 6.3

enables sharing in any format and adaptation. However, attribution is a

central tenet of CC and, with all CC licences, anyone sharing or

modifying a work must credit the originator, link to the source and

indicate whether changes were made.

Values, ownership and licensing

Creative Commons makes it possible for writers to signal their values,

widen recognition and build a following – especially when combined

with a spreadable model of distribution. Cory Doctorow publishes his


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Figure 6.3 Screenshot of a CC licence 4.0

science fiction with CC licences and explains that he fears obscurity

rather than piracy:

For me – for pretty much every writer – the big problem isn’t

piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great

aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today,

the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because

someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science

fiction sell half a million copies – in a world where 175,000 attend

the San Diego Comic Con alone, you’ve got to figure that most

of the people who “like science fiction” (and related geeky stuff

like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don’t really buy books.

I’m more interested in getting more of that wider audience into

the tent than making sure that everyone who’s in the tent bought

a ticket to be there.

…

Now, onto the artistic case. It’s the twenty-first century. Copying

stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today (or if

it does, it’ll be because civilization has collapsed, at which point

we’ll have other problems). Hard drives aren’t going to get

bulkier, more expensive, or less capacious. Networks won’t get

slower or harder to access. If you’re not making art with the

intention of having it copied, you’re not really making art for the

twenty-first century. There’s something charming about making

work you don’t want to be copied, in the same way that it’s nice

to go to a Pioneer Village and see the olde-timey blacksmith

shoeing a horse at his traditional forge. But it’s hardly, you know,

contemporary.

(Doctorow, 2008)

For Doctorow, CC licences make sense artistically and help raise his

profile. Furthermore, he argues that the practices of reproducing and

sharing that have become established with the internet are beyond his

control anyway: like ‘trying to get the food-coloring out of the

swimming pool’ (Doctorow, 2008). However, there are dissenters

among cultural commentators, such as Andrew Keen who argues that

the ‘mob chaos’ of the internet, where anyone can copy and upload

material, is ‘corrosive’ and will ultimately be disastrous for creators and

consumers of culture (Keen and Bell, 2007). You may well have your


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own thoughts about which vision of online creative practices you think

will prevail.

The free distribution and potential for adaptation with CC licences is

particularly well illustrated with Wikipedia, an iconic example of the

changing nature of creating, publishing and access. Case Study 4

focuses on Wikipedia and its models of joint authorship.

Case Study 4: Wikipedia and authorship

Wikipedia adopts a radical model of shared authorship, licensing

and publishing. Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is a free, open-

content ‘encyclopedia’ whose entries are co-authored by unpaid

volunteers and generally CC licensed. At the time of writing,

Wikipedia has 76,000 active contributors.

Writers effectively relinquish control of their text when they submit

it: entries are digital palimpsests and can be revised without limit.

Significantly, however, all submissions and subsequent edits can be

tracked using the ‘history’ and ‘source’ tabs. Therefore, unlike most

other texts, the creative process itself is documented and

transparent (within limits).

Wikipedia is run by Wikimedia, a not-for-profit organisation, and is

funded by voluntary financial contributions from readers. Unlike

other online sites, Wikipedia does not use advertising to raise

revenue, stating that advertising would be in conflict with its goal of

balance and neutrality, and that it would ultimately weaken readers’

confidence in the project (Wikipedia, 2016a).

While many have lauded its democratic, open approach to

constructing and sharing knowledge, criticisms of Wikipedia have

been levelled at the extent to which readers can trust the ‘authority’

of its contributors. While Wikipedia is often a first port of call for

information, its appropriateness as a ‘resource’, particularly for

academic work, is often questioned (Lea and Jones, 2011).

The final activity in this chapter returns to a consideration of

copyright, the law and the power of online communities. The Stop

Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) were put before

the US Congress in late 2011 as frameworks to police websites outside

US jurisdiction considered to be infringing copyright. The intention of

the proposed Acts was to cut off sites perceived to be engaged in


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‘piracy’ from advertisers, search engines and payment sites, as well as

to block internet service providers from providing access to them

(Wikipedia, 2016b). The protest against the proposed Acts was

international and powerful, with strong responses from Wikipedia and

an estimated 115,000 websites as well as demonstration marches across

the USA. Tim Berners-Lee was among the prominent figures who

expressed outrage at the proposed legislation (Wikipedia, 2016c).

In January 2012, the English language Wikipedia staged a ‘day of

darkness’ blackout in response to the bills. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of

Wikipedia, argued that SOPA was ‘destructive’ and ‘set a frightening

precedent of internet censorship’ (cited in Davies, 2012). Within days

of the January protests, political support visibly waned and the Acts

were withdrawn.

Activity 6.8


Look at the image in Figure 6.4, which was used on the English

language Wikipedia pages during the SOPA and PIPA protest in

January 2012. How do the authors use the semiotic resources at their

disposal to communicate concerns about the implications of SOPA and

PIPA?

Discussion

The use of grey and black is striking in this image, perhaps a reference

to being cast into a digital dark age and all that implies in relation to

knowledge making and distribution. The funereal imagery also implies a


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Figure 6.4 Image used on Wikipedia during the SOPA and PIPA protest in

January 2012 (Source: Wikipedia, 2016c)

sense of loss, underscored further by the word ‘fatally’. The long shadow

of the reflection suggests such legislation would leave a bleak,

irreversible legacy. The reference to ‘human history’ seems designed to

foreground the magnitude of what has been created and what might be

jeopardised.

The plea to ‘imagine’ is significant and hints at creativity in relation to

free knowledge. The use of the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ positions the

reader as being on the side of the right-minded.

In the final sentence, the discourse shifts from first to second person and

the reader is enjoined to ‘Make your voice heard’ with icons for social

media outlets. This is the face of modern campaigning. The voice is a

digital one and the icons highlight the significance of the participatory

communities that Jenkins and others have described in Reading C. As

with the legislators in the Lady Chatterley trial (Section 6.3 and Reading

B), the politicians in this case seemed to misjudge the mood of the

people. This is perhaps another example of the transition described by

Jenkins et al. in relation to who controls distribution.

Finally, the social media symbols, encircled in hopeful, contrasting white

against the monochrome backdrop, are positioned as opportunities for

voices to be heard.

6.6 Conclusion

This chapter has explored creativity and power: the power of the state

(and associated networks) to censor creative work; the power of

corporations to restrict circulation of texts as they assert ownership of

ideas, characters and brands; and the power of loosely aligned,

ideologically driven groups to suppress the circulation of creative work.

However, we have also considered how changing societal attitudes have

undermined government censorship and ways in which digital

environments empower individuals or communities of writers, as in the

Potter wars and the opposition to the SOPA.

The role of audiences and the blurring of the boundaries between

producers and consumers of creative work have been recurrent themes.

Audiences can extend the scope of characters and landscapes in fan

fiction; they can remix and rerelease music; and they can be co-creators

in Wikipedia. As new models of publishing, authorship, curation and

licensing emerge, our previously held assumptions about intellectual

property rights are challenged.


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In Reading C, Jenkins et al. refer to being in ‘a moment of transition’

in relation to the production and distribution of creative work. This

chapter has explored several transitional moments in the way creativity

is regulated: the shift in moral judgements signalled by the 1959 OPA

as tested by Lady Chatterley’s Lover; the coming together of artist,

corporation and fans in the Potter wars; the shift from state-sponsored

censorship to that of a more nebulous, borderless inhibition as

evidenced in the international aggression towards Salman Rushdie. A

similar moment of transition is signalled in the response to the SOPA.

As we move further into the twenty-first century, the tension between

creativity and regulation, particularly as experienced in digital domains,

will no doubt continue.

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Potter, R. (2013) Obscene Modernism: Literary Censorship and Experiment1900–1940, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Proulx, E. A. (1997) ‘Brokeback Mountain’, The New Yorker, 13 October.

Robertson, G. (2010) ‘The trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, The Guardian, 22October [Online]. Available at www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/22/dh-lawrence-lady-chatterley-trial (Accessed 2 March 2015).

Schwabach, A. (2011) Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works andIntellectual Property Protection, Farnham, Ashgate.

Souhami, D. (1998) The Trials of Radclyf fe Hall, London, Weidenfeld &Nicolson.

Thompson, S. (2008) ‘Business big shot: Harry Potter author JK Rowling’,The Times, 2 April.

Time (2013) Because It’s His Birthday: Harry Potter by the Numbers [Online].Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20130801013055/http://entertainment.time.com/2013/07/31/because-its-his-birthday-harry-potter-by-the-numbers/ (Accessed 2 March 2015).

Topping, A. (2014) ‘Jane Austen twitter row: two plead guilty to abusivetweets’, The Guardian, 7 January.

UbuWeb (2016) Home [Online]. Available at www.ubu.com/ (Accessed 1April 2016).


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Van Rooyen, J. C.W. (1987) Censorship in South Africa, Cape Town, Juta.

Wikipedia (2016a) About [Online]. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About (Accessed 1 June 2016).

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Wikipedia (2016c) Protests Against SOPA and PIPA [Online]. Available athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA (Accessed 1June 2016).


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Reading A: Fan fiction and copyright

Aaron Schwabach

Source: Edited version from Schwabach, A. (2011) Fan Fiction and Copyright:Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection, Farnham, Ashgate,pp. 1–129.

Fan fiction, long a nearly invisible form of outsider art, has grown

exponentially in volume and legal importance in the past decade.

Because of its nature, authorship, and underground status, fan

fiction stands at an intersection of issues of property, sexuality,

and gender. […] Among the more celebrated disputes over fan

writings are a dispute between SF [science ficton] author Larry

Niven and fan author Elf Sternberg over the latter’s use in fanfic

of a fictional species of alien beings created by the former; a

dispute between SF author Marion Zimmer Bradley and fan

author Jean Lamb over a work by the former that purportedly

resembled a work by the latter; and the recent dispute between

author J.K. Rowling and fan webmaster Steven Vander Ark over

the Harry Potter Lexicon, which Rowling once praised and more

recently succeeded, briefly, in suppressing, until the parties

reached an accommodation.

Unlicensed fan fiction presents a dilemma for content owners:

while fan fiction may infringe on the content owners’ copyright

and trademark rights, the fans who create and share it are the

biggest, and for some genre works very nearly the only, market

for the owners’ works. Active enforcement of intellectual property

rights may alienate consumers – fans – and harm future revenues.

On the other horn of the dilemma, some rights-owners fear non-

enforcement of those rights may result in their loss.

Fan fiction provides fans with an opportunity to enjoy, discuss,

and most of all inhabit the canon texts in ways that would be

impossible without it. Despite its essential role, though, fan

fiction’s legal status remains unclear. Many fans, including

academic fans, believe that fan fiction is another type of

information that just wants to be free: all or nearly all non-

commercial fan fiction should be protected as fair use. In contrast

to previous generations, today we live in a world of symbols and

texts that are all, or nearly all, owned; fan fiction is a way of

combating the inevitable alienation this produces.


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Balanced against this are the interests of copyright owners. U.S.

copyright law protects some economic interests, but very few

non-economic interests. Owners may object to fan fiction that

alters the nature of the original work – the literary equivalent of

scribbling mustaches on Grant Wood’s American Gothic (which

would earn the scribbler a quick trip to a Chicago jail cell), or

perhaps of scribbling mustaches on a postcard of American Gothic

(which is perfectly legal, if not original), but in the case of works

of fiction on the page or on the screen, they are not likely to get

very far: in the U.S. such rights in original works of art are

protected by the Visual Artists’ Rights Act, but there is no

counterpart for works of fiction. […]

[…]

Copyright protects the text – that is, the expression – of a work

of fiction, and under certain conditions may protect characters

within the work. Fanfic rarely infringes by direct imitation of the

work; that would defeat the purpose of fanfic. Instead, fanfic

takes familiar story elements and combines them in unfamiliar

ways. Doing so may nonetheless violate the copyright in the

original work if the new work is a derivative work, because the

copyright owner has the sole right to control the making and

distribution of derivative works. Certain uses that might seem

infringing, even if they incorporate protected characters or are

otherwise derivative, may be protected as fair use, as parody, or if

the use is otherwise sufficiently transformative.

In a literary sense, fanfic is necessarily derivative; it cannot

function otherwise. […]

[…]

J.K. Rowling and the commercially published fan fiction

While tolerant and even encouraging of amateur fanfic, Rowling

and her publishers have had no tolerance for commercially

published fan fiction. Rowling has said that she has read and

enjoyed fanfic and has made no attempt to suppress it [Rowling,

2008], although Warner Brothers, which makes the Harry Potter

movies:

[I]s not always as kind. They have gone after people who

have used Harry Potter on their web sites and aggressively


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fought for the rights to domains related to Harry Potter.

This has shut down a few Harry Potter fan sites with some

fan fiction. [Ibid.]

Despite these occasional excesses, though, “[t]here has been no

real effort on the part of Warner Brothers to seek to put an end

to Harry Potter fan fiction.” [Ibid.]

When movie copyrights are involved and an extra layer of

administration is added between the author and the fans,

tolerance tends to diminish. Thus Warner Brothers, the maker of

the Harry Potter movies, has cracked down on fan sites that

Rowling herself would most likely have left undisturbed. As seems

to be the norm in such matters, Warner Brothers’ enforcement

efforts have been at times ludicrously ham-handed:

[In December 2000] 15-year-old Claire Field received a letter

from Warner Brothers’ London legal department asking her

to turn over the name www.harrypotterguide.co.uk. Like her

dragon-defying idol, the British youth rebelled. She sent an

e-mail message to a British tabloid, the Mirror, which ran a

story about her. A U.K.-based online news site, the Register,

picked up the story, which was soon posted on fan-related

online newsgroups. Internet users from around world –

youngsters and adults alike – are now urging Field to fight

back.

“I’ve just read the news that the Evil Dark Arts experts

a.k.a. Warner Brothers are trying to cast some dark charms

and shut down this site. GOLLY! What total ROT. We have

got to get some good charms and wand waving to seriously

sort them out,” wrote a fellow Harry Potter fan on Field’s

Web site. [Grunier, 2000]

[…]

Such actions against noncommercial Harry Potter fandom seem

shortsighted; they show a misunderstanding of where Harry’s

money comes from, and of the value of fandom as free

advertising and marketing far more effective than any marketing

campaign Warner Brothers could actually buy. This

misunderstanding may be a temporary lapse, perhaps the result of

overzealous employees incompletely socialized into the culture of


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genre works; that would explain why these actions seem to be

more anomalous than not.

[…]

In general, the Harry Potter copyright machine has been tolerant

of fanfic and parody, even commercially published parody such as

the Belarusian adventures of Porri Gatter. Commercially published

parodies have also been tolerated in the Czech Republic, France,

Hungary, Indonesia, and throughout the English-speaking world,

even though the fair use and First Amendment concerns

underlying the U.S. Supreme Court’s protection of parody in

Campbell may have no counterparts in some countries. Works

which are merely new adventures of Harry Potter, […] or that

achieve substantial commercial success with a character based on

Harry Potter – Tanya Grotter – have not been tolerated.

Alternatively, commercially published works in certain large

markets—China, India, and Russia—may inspire a stronger

reaction because these countries are perceived, often incorrectly,

as more prone to copyright violation. India has been a particular

target: in addition to the lawsuits against Harry’s Bengali

adventures and his unrelated sound-alike Hari Puttar, the Potter

industry even sued the organizers of a Durga Puja festival in

Kolkata for building a large papier-mâché castle intended to

represent Hogwarts [AFP, 2007].

The HP Lexicon takes one step too far

The HP Lexicon, praised by Rowling, eventually went beyond

what she was willing to allow: in 2007 the site’s author, Steven

Vander Ark, and RDR Books, a small publisher in Muskegon,

Michigan, agreed to publish much of the information in the HP

Lexicon in book form. While the book could not reproduce the

entire content of the Lexicon website, with its detailed

descriptions and excerpted text for just about every person, place

and thing in the Potterverse, in its original form it still included

extensive sample text and, inevitably, spoilers for those who had

not yet read the entire series. Warner Brothers sued to stop

publication of the book. Although Rowling had not written a

guide to her own work, she stated that “[s]he had been planning

to write her own definitive encyclopaedia, the proceeds of which

she had intended to donate to charity.” [BBC NEWS, 2008] […]


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[…]

Rowling herself admitted that she did not think the HP Lexicon

would displace sales of the Potter novels, and said that she was

not sure she had “the will or the heart” to write her own guide

[Ibid.]. Also, she stated that she was motivated not by economic

factors but by “outrage”; under U.S. law, copyright is meant to

protect the author’s economic rights, not to protect the author

from feeling outraged [Hartocollis, 2008]. Nonetheless, the court

enjoined publication of Vander Ark’s book.

Although the injunction may have been bad news for Vander Ark

and RDR, it was not necessarily bad news for fandom. Judge

Patterson’s opinion was at best lukewarm toward Rowling’s

arguments; he observed that “[i]ssuing an injunction in this case

both benefits and harms the public interest.” Perhaps most

importantly, the court found that the Lexicon was not a derivative

work: “A work is not derivative, however, simply because it is

‘based upon’ the preexisting works.” The court reasoned that the

very existence of exceptions for parody and critical commentary,

which are of necessity based upon the works they parody or

evaluate, requires that “derivative” mean something more than

merely “based upon.” The court adopted the reasoning of Judge

Posner in Ty, Inc. that “ownership of copyright does not confer a

legal right to control public evaluation of the copyrighted work.”

In a footnote it highlighted the necessarily inverse relationship

between derivativeness and transformativeness:

[t]he law in [the Second] Circuit has recognized that “even

when one work is ‘based upon’ another, ‘if the secondary

work sufficiently transforms the expression of the original

work such that the two works cease to be substantially

similar, then the secondary work is not a derivative work

and, for that matter, does not infringe the copyright of the

original work.’”

The version of the Lexicon considered by the court failed because

it copied Rowling’s text extensively in a way that was not a fair

use of Rowling’s material. Even so, some of the section 107

factors weighed in Vander Ark’s and RDR’s favor. The first factor,

purpose and character of the use, weighed in the defendants’

favor because the use was transformative – that is, it altered the


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“expression, meaning, or message” of the original. The Lexicon is

a reference work; the seven Harry Potter novels tell a story. The

use of material from the two School Books [books used by Harry

at school, with annotations in the margin by Harry and his

friends] presented a bit more of a problem, because they are

partly reference works themselves. However, “the Lexicon’s use is

slightly transformative in that it adds a productive purpose to the

original material by synthesizing it within a complete reference

guide that refers readers to where information can be found in a

diversity of sources.” The best evidence of the transformative

nature of the Lexicon is that it was widely relied on as a reference

source, even by Warner Brothers, Electronic Arts (the makers of

Harry Potter video games), and Rowling herself. This was

undercut only slightly by defendants’ desire to make a profit by

providing the first comprehensive Harry Potter reference guide on

the market. Rowling’s and Warner Brothers’ complaint draws a

distinction that the court, and so far the law generally, do not

formally acknowledge, but that may become important in

assessing the legality of fanfic and other fan-generated content:

[T]here is a significant difference between giving the

innumerable Harry Potter fan sites latitude to discuss the

Harry Potter Works in the context of free of charge,

ephemeral websites and allowing a single fan site owner and

his publisher to commercially exploit the Harry Potter Books

in contravention of Ms. [Rowling’s] wishes and rights and to

the detriment of other Harry Potter fan sites.

The second factor, the nature of the underlying work, favored the

plaintiffs, as will always be the case with complex literary worlds:

“[i]n creating the Harry Potter novels and the companion books,

Rowling has given life to a wholly original universe of people,

creatures, places, and things … Such highly imaginative and

creative fictional works are close to the core of copyright

protection, particularly where the character of the secondary work

is not entirely transformative.”


[AFP (2007)] India Court Rejects Harry Potter Author’s Claim,

available at AFP, October 12, 2007, http://afp.google.com/


308

article/ALeqM5hZhGr-qlWfYdFig_iagNfYzU-l8w (last visited

October 19, 2010).

[BBC NEWS (2008)] Rowling Wins Book Copyright Claim, BBC

NEWS, September 8, 2008, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/

hi/entertainment/7605142.stm (last visited October 19, 2010).

[Grunier, S. (2000)] Warner Bros. Claims Harry Potter Sites,

ZDNET, December 21, 2000, http://news.zdnet.com/2100-

9595_22-96323.html

[Hartocollis, A. (2008)] Trial Over Potter Lexicon Ends With Olive

Branch, N.Y. TIMES, April 17, 2008, available at www.nytimes.com/

2008/04/17/nyregion/17potter.html?

_r=l&scp=5&sq=rowling&st=nyt&oref=slogin (last visited

October 19, 2010).

[Rowling, J.K. (2008)] Fan Works Inc., Fan Fiction Policies >>

Harry Potter: J.K. Rowling & Harry Potter!, www.fanworks.org/

writersresource/?tool=fanpolicy&action=define&authorid=108

(last visited August 19, 2008).


309

Reading B: Obscene modernism

Rachel Potter

Source: Edited version from Potter, R. (2013) Obscene Modernism: LiteraryCensorship and Experiment, 1900–1940, Oxford, Oxford University Press,pp. 1–5.

[Please note: this reading contains language that may be considered

offensive.]

Should there be limits on what literary texts express? If so, what

should these limits be and how should they be policed? These

questions preoccupied writers in the early twentieth century and

were important for the composition of novels and poems, as well

as discussions between writers about the proper boundaries of

literature. Literary texts have often fallen foul of the authorities,

whether on the grounds of blasphemy, political sedition, or

indecency. In the period of 1900–1940, however, the claim that

literary obscenity could corrupt the minds of the young and

impressionable fuelled the censorship of a huge number of

English-language texts and made it one of the most tightly

controlled periods in the history of literary expression. There

were a number of high-profile literary trials in the UK and the

United States, most notably the suppression of D. H. Lawrence’s

The Rainbow (London, 1915), James Joyce’s Ulysses (New

York, 1921), and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness

(London, 1928). There were also less institutionalized, but

sometimes just as powerful, forms of censorship that worked to

control the dissemination of writing: customs officers, postmen,

publishers, publishers’ readers, printers, typists, and even other

writers all played their part in the censorship process. These

networks of control operated in a space between state authorities

and the spheres of business and literary exchange, and produced a

widespread and self-regulated structure of book censorship.

While some US and UK legislators attempted to strengthen the

domestic control of obscene books and to bolster national

borders against the influx of obscene books in the 1910s and

1920s, there was also a freeing up of attitudes to literary obscenity

in the early twentieth century. Ulysses altered the parameters of

fiction through its obscene words, but Judge Woolsey’s

groundbreaking decision to liberate the book from New York


310

censorship in 1933 shifted the relationship between law and

literature. The literary trials and social changes of the early

twentieth century pointed the way for future developments. After

the Second World War attitudes to literary representations of

sexuality in the United States and UK changed further, with

statutory shifts and landmark rulings such as the Lady Chatterley’s

trial in the UK in 1960. But literary censorship did not go away in

the 1960s. It was merely transferred onto different terrain.

Censorship on the grounds of religious offence has re-emerged as

a significant issue in the past twenty years or so. In the UK, the

Racial and Religious Toleration Act of 2006 has replaced the old

laws of Blasphemy and Blasphemous libel, and works to prevent

the publication of writing that intends to incite religious hatred.

While the internet has made it extremely difficult to curtail the

dissemination of words, pressure groups have discovered new

ways to use the law to curtail the publication of offensive books.

[…]

Prosecutions for literary obscenity in Britain and America rose

exponentially from the 1870s through to the 1928 Well of

Loneliness trial in the UK and the 1933 Ulysses trial in America. A

literary drive towards frankness coincided with a new kind of

desire to stamp out sex in literature. The Obscene Publications

Act of 1857, as well as the interpretation of this law in the

Hicklin ruling of 1868, presided over the legal and editorial

censorship of modernist writing. These pieces of legislation

created both a particular structure of censorship, one which

enfranchised individuals and pressure groups to do much of the

work of censorship, and a very loose definition of obscene

writing. It was not necessary for a book to be considered obscene

as a whole; it merely had to be shown that a small extract from a

book, read out of context, had the ‘tendency’ to corrupt the mind

of a young person. Alongside these legal shifts, there was

increasing religious and moral pressure to stamp out obscenity in

fiction. What became known as the New Puritanism in America,

and ‘comstockery’ by those on the other side of the argument,

was run by Anthony Comstock, who created the New York

Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873. He famously boasted

two years before his death in 1915, ‘In the forty-one years I have

been [in New York] I have convicted persons enough to fill a

passenger train of 61 coaches…I have destroyed 160 tons of


311

obscene literature.’ [Lewis, 1976, p. 11] Much of what he

destroyed seems innocuous now: the mere mention of

prostitution, for example, was enough to send a book to the

pulping machine. Literary shifts towards more direct

representations of the human body from the 1870s through to the

early decades of the twentieth century coincided with the rise in

legal prosecutions of literary obscenity.

Modernist and avant-garde writers, with their more deliberate

flouting of moral conventions and exploration of sex and the

language of sex, ratcheted up this confrontational dynamic. They

also took these explorations further, twisting the language of sex

in new directions and developing aestheticized explorations of the

obscene. The word ‘obscene’ is from the Latin obsēnus, meaning

adverse, inauspicious, ill-omened; also abominable, disgusting,

filthy, indecent. In this definition the obscene person or thing

needs to be cast out of the group to avoid contamination of other

members. At the same time, the word referred to ideas about the

limits of representation; to those aspects of humanity or language

which ought to remain off-stage. The civic and theatrical origins

of the word, as well as its connections to threat and infection

were carried over into its modern statutory definitions. Obscenity

legislation in the United States and UK focused largely on the

corruption that could be unleashed through the representation of

sex and homosexuality and images of disease and social

breakdown were widespread. In literary texts, however, the

obscene referred to a much wider range of ideas. Sexualized

obscene bodies, bodies that deliberately violated historically

specific religious and legal taboos – Connie and Mellors having

sex in the grounds of an aristocratic estate in Lady Chatterley’s

Lover or Leopold Bloom masturbating while listening to the

church choir in Ulysses – were commonplace in modernist texts.

But there were also representations of the obscene boundaries of

the human form: Molly Bloom’s menstruating flow at the end of

Ulysses, Fresca pissing in the street in the first draft of The Waste

Land, the description of Bloom ‘easing his bowels’ in Ulysses, or

Nathanael West’s journey up the anus of the Trojan horse in The

Dream Life of Balso Snell, explored and stretched the fluid

boundaries of the human subject. As well as the everyday obscene

of menstruating and excreting bodies, there were the smashed and

distorted bodies of the First World War, figured as ‘obscene as

cancer’ by Wilfred Owen. Other taboo bodies appeared in


312

modernist and avant-garde texts, such as the sexualized physical

parts of Djuna Barnes’ lesbian subjects in Ladies’ Almanack. There

were the colloquial dirty words that were shouted from modernist

texts: the fucks, sluts, bitches, and cunts of Joyce’s, Lawrence’s,

Henry Miller’s, Lawrence Durrell’s, and Barnes’ texts. But the

obscene also took on moral significance for some writers, as its

meaning was pointed back at those who would curtail fiction on

the grounds of sex. For Lawrence it was the puritanical English

attitude to sex that was truly obscene, while for Miller it was the

militaristic violence of the 1930s. Finally, some of the most

intriguing explorations of obscenity moved outside the realm of

sex altogether. Wyndham Lewis and Djuna Barnes, in two novels

of the 1930s, The Revenge for Love (1937) and Nightwood (1936),

created grotesque images of bodies in the throes of obscene

laughter, capturing ideas of worldly exile and abjection.

Such literary explorations meant that the early twentieth century

was framed by an embattled context of legal censorship, and this

conflict between law and literature had artistic and legal effects.

One consequence was that it encouraged writers to connect

obscenity with literary freedom, so that obscene words and

images carried a transgressive energy with libertarian content.

Another was to incite writers to engage with censorship and

defend literary freedom. There were also material consequences of

this censorship culture. […] I argue that the resistance to

censorship mirrored, to some extent, the censorship networks that

controlled the dissemination of books. British and US customs

officials, postmen, printers and publishers operated as a loosely

connected network that curtailed the dissemination of modernist

writing. But, prohibited by the US and UK nation states,

modernist texts were often produced and circulated abroad,

mostly in Paris, so that modernist publishers created their own

semi-legal and private distribution networks in order to foil the

customs officials. The British and US authorities strengthened

their borders against the influx of obscene literature in the 1910s

and 1920s, and argued that obscene writing was a threat to

national security. But the period also saw the emergence of

international literary pressure groups, which created global

networks of writers and a robust defence of the international

rights of authors. Free speech groups, such as International P.E.N.

in the 1920s and 1930s, had an important impact on the claim

that authors had rights beyond national borders. The


313

internationalism of these efforts affected debates about literary

freedom, censorship law, and the nation state. By the 1930s, it was

reasonable to ask whether the dissemination of texts could

actually be controlled by nation states. When the Nazis burned

books by Jewish and Socialist writers in 1933, P.E.N. created a

‘German Library of the Burned Books’, a kind of surrogate

library that contained ‘all those works which in the “Third Reich”

have been burned, censored, and suppressed’. [P.E.N. News, 1934,

pp. 3, 4] The list served to legitimize and construct an exiled

group identity which tied itself to a moral and legalistic position

outside of national borders. It signalled something that writers

had long been claiming in the face of censorship proceedings:

banning a book did not eradicate it. Books might be censored or

destroyed, but they would continue to have an existence, whether

by being legally available in another part of the world, as

unauthorized pirated editions, or until some future moment when

they could be brought inside the law again.


Felice Flanery Lewis, Literature, Obscenity and the Law

(Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University

Press, 1976), 11.

P.E.N. News, no. 62 (March 1934), 3, 4.


314

Reading C: Spreadable media

Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green

Source: Edited version from Jenkins, H., Ford, S. and Green, J. (2013)Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, NewYork, New York University Press, pp. 291–8.

Writing for Locus, a trade publication for science fiction writers,

Cory Doctorow challenges established assumptions surrounding

the need for maintaining tight control over intellectual property.

He suggests such norms are “hard-wired” into us as mammals:

Mammals invest a lot of energy in keeping track of the

disposition of each we spawn. It’s only natural, of course: we

invest so much energy and so many resources in our

offspring that it would be a shocking waste if they were to

wander away and fall off the balcony or flush themselves

down the garbage disposal. […] It follows naturally that we

invest a lot of importance in the individual disposition of

every copy of our artistic works as well, wringing our hands

over “not for resale” advance review copies that show up on

Amazon and tugging our beards at the thought of Google

making a scan of our books in order to index them for

searchers. (2008)

Such attitudes may emerge “naturally” from our mammalian

predispositions, but Doctorow notes that they are not the only

ways we can understand our creative output. We might reimagine

our current intellectual property regimes as they might operate in

a world dominated by dandelions. The dandelion is playing a law

of averages, with each plant producing more than 2,000 seeds per

year and sending them blowing off into the wind. The results are

hard to deny when we see the number of dandelions sprinkling

the U.S. landscape each spring.

Doctorow draws parallels between this dispersal of seeds and the

ways that artists increasingly tap into participatory systems of

circulation in order to reach desired audiences:

If you blow your works into the net like a dandelion clock

on the breeze, the net itself will take care of the copying


315

costs. Your fans will paste-bomb your works into their

mailing list, making 60,000 copies so fast and so cheaply that

figuring out how much it cost in aggregate to make all those

copies would be orders of magnitude more expensive than

the copies themselves. What’s more, the winds of the

Internet will toss your works to every corner of the globe,

seeking out every fertile home that they may have – given

enough time and the right work, your stuff could someday

find its way over the transom of every reader who would

find it good and pleasing. (2008)

[…]

Doctorow’s account of circulation [is that] value and meaning get

created as grassroots communities tap into creative products as

resources for their own conversations and spread them to others

who share their interests. As institutions constructed by and for

mammals, media companies, educational institutions, newspapers,

and political campaigns display fear of this potential loss of

control and concern for the fates of their intellectual offspring.

The result has been, on the one hand, the development of

“enclaves” and “monopolies” which tighten the distribution of

their content and, on the other, a tendency to see grassroots acts

of circulation as random, unpredictable, even irrational.

But nothing seems to be stopping the dandelion seeds from

flowing beyond their walled gardens. As people pursue their own

agendas in sharing and discussing media content, they are helping

to spread the seeds – transforming commodities into gifts, turning

texts into resources, and asserting their own expanding

communication capacities.

The contemporary focus on the “viral” nature of circulation

expresses media companies’ and brands’ utter terror of the

unknown cultural processes now influencing all aspects of the

media and entertainment industries. To manage that terror, they

have often professed a mastery over a mysterious science that

allows them to produce “viral content,” rather than acknowledge

(and benefit from) the loss of control inherent in our networked

culture. Indeed, we have argued that these producers are

increasingly dependent on networked communities to circulate,

curate, and appraise their output. Web 2.0 companies have sought

to capture and capitalize on these generative activities; brands


316

have sought to corral their own brand communities; and trolls

have sought to manufacture and spread “memes” for their own

malicious joy and to disrupt the operations of groups which take

the web too seriously. Perhaps we might understand content

creators as mammals occasionally pretending to be dandelions but

then reverting often back to their true natures, like the fable of

the scorpion who cannot resist stinging the frog carrying him

halfway through their journey across the river. If it doesn’t spread,

it’s dead; true enough. But sometimes producers would rather die

than give up control.

However, often, audiences are as ambivalent about being the wind

scattering the seeds as the production companies and brands are

about letting their spawn fly away. And audiences have reason to

be nervous: many Web 2.0 practices are far from benign, seeking

to tap into their “free labor” in ways which profit the companies

but may not respect the traditions and norms of participatory

culture.

Those who are most prepared to embrace spreadability have often

been the people with the least to lose from changing the current

system – […] civic activists […], […] independent and Christian

media producers […], and people from the developing world […].

In each case, these groups accept a loss of control, seeking to

forge partnerships with audiences that helped them expand and

accelerate the circulation of their output.

Of course, we need to be cautious about displacing one biological

metaphor with another: we […] critiqu[ed] the use of “viral”

metaphors that depict culture as “self-replicating,” and we now

appear to be on the verge of […] comparing culture to the

dandelion seeds simply blowing on the wind. However useful

Doctorow’s analogy may be, it is a metaphor, not a system by

which we propose to make sense of spreadable media. The

choices over how we deal with intellectual property are ultimately

cultural, political, and economic – not biologically hardwired. We

should be concerned if the economic interests of companies are

the only forces determining the terms of our cultural

participation, […].

Audience members are using the media texts at their disposal to

forge connections with each other, to mediate social relations and

make meaning of the world around them. Both individually and


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collectively, they exert agency in the spreadability model. They are

not merely impregnated with media messages, nor are they at the

service of the brand; rather, they select material that matters to

them from the much broader array of media content on offer

(which now includes audience creations alongside industrially

produced works). They do not simply pass along static texts; they

transform the material through active production processes or

through their own critiques and commentary, so that it better

serves their own social and expressive needs. Content – in whole

or through quotes – does not remain in fixed borders but rather

circulates in unpredicted and often unpredictable directions, not

the product of top-down design but rather the result of a

multitude of local decisions made by autonomous agents

negotiating their way through diverse cultural spaces.

Similarly, so-called consumers do not simply consume; they

recommend what they like to their friends, who recommend it to

their friends, who recommend it on down the line. They do not

simply “buy” cultural goods; they “buy into” a cultural economy

which rewards their participation. And, in such an environment,

any party can block or slow the spread of texts: if creators

construct legal or technical blocks, if third-party platform owners

choose to restrict the ways in which material can circulate, or if

audiences refuse to circulate content which fails to serve their

own interests.

Spreadable media expands the power of people to help shape

their everyday media environment, but it does not guarantee any

particular outcomes. Nevertheless, we believe these processes may

hold the potential for social and cultural change. We hope we

have illustrated the many ways that expanding access to the tools

of media production and circulation is transforming the media

landscape, allowing for greater responsiveness to audience

interest, for greater support for independent media producers, for

the wider circulation of civic and religious media, and for

expanded access to transnational media content.

[We are] describing a moment of transition, one in which an old

system is shattering without us yet knowing what is going to

replace it, one which is ripe in contradictions as audiences and

producers make competing bids for the new moral economy that

will displace the broadcast paradigm which has dominated cultural

production and distribution throughout the twentieth century. Our


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[discussion represents] snapshots of this new culture-in-

development, glimpses into possible futures if some of these

tensions can be resolved. [Our] arguments […] represent appeals

to construct a system which pays more attention to the public

interest – defined not through elite institutions but by the public

itself, through its acts of appraisal, curation, and circulation.

Toward that end, let us revisit the claims about spreadability […].

Some of those statements about what constitutes a “spreadable

media” environment may have […] seemed arbitrary, overstated,

or even overwhelming to some of you. But our hope is that, in

light of our various investigations and examples […], our claims

will now be clear. Our intention is that the journey we’ve taken

[…] gives you a road map for a better understanding of how

value and meaning are being made and appraised in an age of

spreadability, a better understanding of some of the models for

understanding and transforming business practice in this

environment, and some language that might help us more

accurately describe and discuss the evolution of media circulation.

So […], spreadability focuses on the following:

The flow of ideas. [We have] sought to explain the rapid and

widespread circulation of media content not through a metaphor

of “virality” but through analyzing the social motives of those

who are actually doing the spreading. These practices often occur

at the intersection between an old media ecology based on

corporate control and a new media ecology based on

noncommercial sharing. These peer-to-peer exchanges may take

many forms – from the kinds of reciprocity characteristic of

traditional and modern forms of a gift economy to contexts of

competition and contestation among rival groups. The exchange

of media helps to anchor ongoing relationships and thus occurs

most often when the content being exchanged says something

significant about the parties involved. We have questioned the

industry’s assumption that it can create “brand communities” and

“fan communities” around its products, suggesting instead that

most of these exchanges occur within existing communities and

ongoing conversations. As marketers and other content creators

enter these spaces, they must think about questions of

transparency and authenticity and the differences in their own

commercial motivations and the social motivations of community

members. They must think about the types of content these


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communities most want and need, which best provides fodder for

the conversations and activities in which such groups are already

invested. And they must think about what happens as content

travels across cultural boundaries, sometimes stripped of its

original context, creating “impure” texts which are not simply

distributed from culture to culture but – in the process – often

bear the mark of audiences that remake, reinterpret, and

transform content.

Dispersed material. While [our] argument has centered on ways the

public can shape localized and participatory acts of curation and

circulation to their own ends, it is clear that content creators of

all types have deep stakes in how their content spreads. Brands,

for example, have seen spreadable media as a means of expanding

the resonance of company messages and developing more

meaningful relationships with current or potential customers.

Broadcast networks and producers have seen transmedia strategies

as a means of intensifying audiences’ engagement and deepening

fans’ investment in their success. Activist groups have deployed

“cultural acupuncture” to accelerate the spread and to amplify the

reach of their messages, even as they have also struggled with the

consequences of having their ideas and images sometimes used

against them. Thus, creators have to think about creating multiple

access points to content and texts that are both “grabbable” and

“quotable” – which are technically and aesthetically easy for

audiences to share.

Diversified experiences. Under the spreadability paradigm, mass-

produced and mass-distributed content is often customized and

localized for niche audiences, not by commercial producers but

rather by other community members. Fans evangelize for

entertainment they want others to enjoy. In the process, they

function as translators between a text’s contexts of production

and reception. Audiences act as “multipliers” who attach new

meaning to existing properties, as “appraisers” who evaluate the

worth of different bids on our attention, as “lead users” who

anticipate new markets for newly released content, as “retro

curators” who discover forgotten content which may still hold

cultural and economic value, and as “pop cosmopolitans” who

seek cultural difference and help to educate others about content

they’ve discovered from other parts of the world. And producers


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must think about these various motivations as they design content

and respond to audience feedback.

Open-ended participation. These acts of appraisal and circulation

reflect the practices of participatory culture. Participatory culture

is not new – it has, in fact, multiple histories (through fandom,

through struggles for greater popular control over media, through

histories of craft or activism) which go back at least to the

nineteenth century. What we are calling participatory culture has

much in common with these and much older forms of folk

cultural production and exchange. In thinking about these various

histories, it is crucial to realize that participatory activities differ

substantially, depending on the community and the media

property in question. We must be careful not to define

participation too narrowly in ways that prioritize “drillable texts”

over “accretion texts,” video creation over fan debate, or

“affirmational” fan activity over “transformational” fan activity.

Cultural participation takes different forms within different legal,

economic, and technological contexts. Some people have confused

participatory culture with Web 2.0, but Web 2.0 is a business

model through which commercial platforms seek to court and

capture the participatory energies of desired markets and to

harness them toward their own ends. While these Web 2.0

platforms may offer new technical affordances that further the

goals of participatory culture, friction almost always exists

between the desires of producers and audiences, a gap which has

resulted in ongoing struggles around the terms of participation.

Contemporary culture is becoming more participatory, especially

compared with earlier media ecologies primarily reliant on

traditional mass media. However, not everyone is allowed to

participate, not everyone is able to participate, not everyone wants

to participate, and not everyone who participates does so on equal

terms. The word “participation” has a history in both political

and cultural discourse, and the overlap between the two begs

closer consideration. In some cases, networked publics are tapping

this expanded communication capacity to create a more diverse

culture – challenging entrenched institutions, expanding economic

opportunities, and even, in the case of religious media, perhaps

saving our souls. Others are simply using it to get on with the

business of their everyday lives.


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Motivating and facilitating sharing. The current media environment

has become increasingly conducive to the spread of media

content. Partially, spreadability is the result of shifts in the nature

of technologies which make it easier to produce, upload,

download, appropriate, remix, recirculate, and embed content.

Digitization has made it simpler to change formats and cheaper to

circulate content. Partially, spreadability is the result of legal

struggles, as many groups are questioning the logic of tight

control over intellectual property and as mundane practices of

unauthorized use are making legal claims that seek to regulate

circulation moot. Whether media producers desire it or not, they

can no longer control what their audiences do with their content

once it leaves their hands. Seeking to compensate for this loss of

control, media producers and networks are developing new

business models seeking to benefit from at least some forms of

grass-roots circulation. The result is a more permissive climate,

one where cease-and-desist letters are giving way to appeals to

help spread the word. And even more radical experimentation is

taking place around independent and alternative media, which

must collaborate with supporters to survive. As producers

consider how audiences will create “divergences” from official

systems of distribution, listening to such practices might provide

insight for new models for content creation and circulation, proof

of an unanticipated surplus audience eager to engage with

material, or indications of emerging popularity for texts that had

been removed from commercial circulation.

Reference for this reading

Doctorow, Cory. 2008. “Think like a Dandelion.” Locus, May.

http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/05/cory-doctorow-

think-like-dandelion.html.


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Chapter 7 Looking back, leaping

forwards: a personal–political review

with critical–creative prospects

Rob Pope

7.1 Introduction

Look before you leap is criticism’s motto. Leap before you look is

creativity’s.

(Forster, 1951, p. 123, cited in Pope, 2005, p. xvii)

Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of

entering an old text from a new critical direction …

(Rich, 2001, p. 11)

This chapter will involve looking and leaping, being critical and

creative. In Adrienne Rich’s terms, it involves a radical act of ‘re-

vision’: looking back to see with fresh eyes, entering texts from new

directions. The main aim of the chapter is to encourage you to take a

fresh look at the key terms and ideas that inform this book as a whole,

and to do so in ways that are experimental and perhaps challenging. By

doing this, hopefully you will be encouraged to press beyond

conventional distinctions that are often made when discussing

creativity, which reflect whole clusters of supposedly opposite terms,

such as literary–non literary, personal–political, private–public, creative–

critical, rational–emotional, serious–play and reality–art.

This chapter will try to challenge these dichotomies and suggest that

we should adopt a fundamentally dynamic critical–creative approach to

the personal–political nature of verbal expression and interaction. The

dashes are crucial in each case. They express an underlying tension, an

essential interdependence: you can’t think or say the one without at

least implying the other.

Chapter 7 Looking back, leaping forwards: a personal–political review with critical–creative prospects

323

Here, in brief, is what this chapter does:

. Section 7.2, ‘Challenging dichotomies, and key terms recast’, takes a

fresh, historical and theoretical look at the core ideas of the

chapters in the book, and points to other ideas that are currently

emerging, as well as older terms worth revisiting. This is done

through using clusters of words and ideas in a variety of shapes and

designs, which you are invited to adapt and add to.

. Section 7.3, ‘Extended text, extending practice’, develops the

preceding theoretical activity through detailed work on two linked

series of texts – Alice Oswald’s poem Dart (2010 [2002]) and Bob

Dylan’s song ‘A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall’ (1963) – in a wide range

of genres and media. ‘Water’ figures centrally in both series of texts

and it provides an apt metaphor for a recurrent theme throughout

this chapter and, indeed, this book as a whole, in that the creative

process can be seen, in large measure, as the recycling, reusing and

transforming of resources, much as water evaporates, falls, freezes

and melts in a continuous process that is vital to all life on our

planet.

However, before proceeding, because some of the methods may be

unfamiliar, it is worth clarifying that the overall aims of this chapter are

to:

. encourage a critical-creative approach to texts, combining critical

analysis with creative reproduction

. invite you as a reader to explore your own powers of re-reading

and, by extension, re-writing, key terms as well as core texts

. promote an understanding of politics that acknowledges the

personal and public dimensions of power

. use these same approaches and perspectives to help you revisit the

terms and texts featured in this book.

The approach taken in this chapter is therefore quite different from

that taken in the other chapters. An obvious difference is that the texts

you are asked to read are embedded within the main chapter – this is

to reflect my interest in encouraging you to see the interconnectedness

between re-reading and re-writing, critiquing and creating. A second

difference is that the chapter involves more activities, to enable you to

explore your own perspectives, than commentary from an author (me).

It may be helpful as you work through the chapter to imagine it more


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as a workshop: it is designedly open-ended and exploratory, and will

involve you in examining, refining and revisiting your own

understandings and ideas about key concepts in this book.

7.2 Challenging dichotomies, and key terms recast

Throughout this chapter you are invited to engage in both critical and

creative activity. These are often presented as opposites or

incompatible, but framing them in this way can obscure their

complementary value and usefulness. Some preliminary distinctions –

and connections – are worth making at this point. Broadly, by being

critical I mean making analytical distinctions and arguing about

particular problems; by being creative I mean playing with and making

(creating) ideas, texts, images, and so on. I see both approaches as

essential for reaching an understanding about complex concepts, for

generating alternative possibilities and coming up with fresh solutions.

This potentially double-edged nature of critical and creative activity is

implicit throughout this book; this chapter simply attempts to make

that relation explicit and productive. With this in mind, let us begin to

critique some existing definitions of creativity and create some new

ones in the process.

Defining ‘creativity’

A good place to start an exploration of the notion of creativity is with

the influential writer and critic, Raymond Williams. Williams was

particularly interested in how the idea of culture has evolved over time,

an interest which led to his writing Keywords (1983), a book which

investigates in detail different words associated with culture.

Activity 7.1

Allow about 1 hour

1 Read through the extract on creativity from Raymond Williams,

reproduced in the ‘Creative’ box. Read it a couple of times or until

you feel that you have a good grasp of what the main terms and

issues are.

2 Next, summarise – in effect, rewrite – what you have learned, using

the steps set out below:

◦ Make a list of the main changes in the meanings and

applications of the various ‘create’ words (‘creation’, ‘creator’,

‘creative’, etc.) used in Williams’s extract. Do this down the


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page like a simple shopping list or checklist, so that you can

re-read the passage and check off items or insert ones you’ve

missed or had second thoughts about. (If the first list ends up

a mess, you will find it helpful to redo it.) The important thing

is to produce a clear, broadly linear structure to begin with.

This list can now be used to help inform a couple of further re-

readings and re-writings.

◦ Turn your list into a diagram in order to represent verbally and

visually the relations among the various versions of creativity.

This might take the form of a triangle, a square, a spiral, a

‘scatter’ – perhaps linked by arrows or dotted lines: whatever

shape seems to suit or fit. (Suitable shapes often take a while

to emerge, so be prepared to experiment until you settle on

one you are satisfied with.) You might, for example, want to

distinguish religious, artistic, commercial and other views of

creativity. These could be represented in a way that

emphasises opposition or interconnection, or some other

relation. Sometimes diagrams take the form of a map, flow

chart or timeline. Feel free to explore these possibilities too.

What is important here is to settle on a verbal–visual

representation that fits the text and suits you. (For an

example, see Figure 7.1.)

◦ Re-present the extract dramatically as a series of brief

speeches or thoughts. This might take the form of speech or

thought ‘bubbles’ springing from the text (as in cartoons) or a

scripted mini-dialogue with named or representative speakers

expressing different points of view. For instance, Augustine,

Tasso, Sidney and Wordsworth are all named and quoted in

the passage, while ‘God’, ‘the poet’, ‘advertising copywriters’

and others also have a palpable presence. Voicing some of

these positions dramatically – and perhaps indicating some of

their implications in order to produce brief imaginative

exchanges – is a good way of exposing the multivoiced nature

of Williams’s text while also transforming critical monologue

into creative dialogue.

3 Consider what light the process throws on the relationship between

critical and creative engagement.


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God the Creator Creative artist Creativity of humanity

Figure 7.1 A visual representation of Williams’s entry for ‘creative’ (Adapted

from Swann et al., 2011, p. 2)

Creative

Creative in modern English has a general sense of original and

innovative, and an associated special sense of productive. It is also

used to distinguish certain kinds of work, as in creative writing,

the creative arts. It is interesting to see how this now

commonplace but still, on reflection, surprising word came to be

used, and how this relates to some of its current difficulties.

Create came into English from the stem of the past participle of

[the root word] creare, L[atin] make or produce. This inherent

relation to the sense of something having been made, and thus to a

past event, was exact, for the word was mainly used in the precise

context of the original divine creation of the world: creation itself,

and creature, have the same root stem. Moreover, within that

system of belief, as Augustine [354–430] insisted, ‘creatura non

potest creare’ – the ‘creature’ – who has been created – cannot

himself create. This context remained decisive until at least [the

sixteenth century], and the extension of the word to indicate

present or future making – that is to say a kind of making by men –

is part of the major transformation of thought which we now

describe as the humanism of the Renaissance. ‘There are two

creators,’ wrote Torquato Tasso (1544–95), ‘God and the poet’. This

sense of human creation, specifically in works of the imagination, is

the decisive source of the modern meaning. In his Apologie for

Poetrie, Philip Sidney (1554–86) saw God as having made Nature

but having also made man in his own likeness, giving him the


327

capacity ‘with the force of a divine breath’ to imagine and make

things beyond Nature.

…

By [the late seventeenth century], however, both create and

creation can be found commonly in a modern sense, and during

[the eighteenth century] each word acquired a conscious

association with ART [another of Williams’s keywords], a word

which was itself changing in a complementary direction. It was in

relation to this, in [the eighteenth century], that creative was

coined. Since the word evidently denotes a faculty, it had to wait on

general acceptance of create and creation as human actions,

without necessary reference to a past divine event. By 1815

Wordsworth could write confidently to the painter Haydon: ‘High is

our calling, friend, Creative Art.’ This runs back to the earliest

specific reference I have come across: ‘companion of the Muse,

Creative Power, Imagination’ (Mallet, 1728). … The decisive

development was the conscious and then conventional association

of creative with art and thought. By [the early nineteenth century] it

was conscious and powerful; by [the mid-nineteenth century]

conventional. Creativity, a general name for the faculty, followed in

[the twentieth century]. [In fact, the first recorded instance of

‘creativity’, according to the second edition of the Oxford English

Dictionary (1989), is slightly earlier, 1875; but the word did not even

have an entry in the edition that Williams was using.]

This is clearly an important and significant history, and in its

emphasis on human capacity the term has steadily become more

important. But there is one obvious difficulty. The word puts a

necessary stress on originality and innovation, and when we

remember the history we can see that these are not trivial claims.

Indeed we try to clarify this by distinguishing between innovation

and novelty, though novelty has both serious and trivial senses.

The difficulty arises when a word once intended, and often still

intended, to embody a high and serious claim, becomes so

conventional, as a description of certain general kinds of activity,

that it is applied to practices for which, in the absence of the

convention, nobody would think of making such claims. Thus any

imitative or stereotyped literary work can be called, by convention,

creative writing, and advertising copywriters officially describe

themselves as creative.

(Williams, 1983, pp. 82–4)


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Discussion

Whether you responded with a small diagram and/or a brief drama – or

in some other way entirely – what’s important is that you did something

to and with the extract. You have not just re-read but actually re-written it

– on paper or screen, as well as in your head. In this way you will have

become aware that the business of defining creativity to some extent

always involves re-creating definitions. You will also have demonstrated

that interpretation is an act of performance (involving specific modes,

media and genres – in this case using pens, paper, keyboards, perhaps

colour), not simply the rehearsal of some single, abstract truth. In this

respect, even highly generalised theoretical discourse has a deeply

particular, material aspect to it. For instance, it’s one thing to identify the

French rationalist philosopher René Descartes with the position and

proposition ‘I think, therefore I am’ (Cogito, ergo sum). But it’s quite

another to discover that this famously free-standing one-liner in fact

occurs as just one of many subclauses in a long sentence, which itself is

part of a text that is framed as ‘meditation’ and ‘diary’ as much as

‘philosophical treatise’ (see Descartes, 2008 [1637]). Such is the

difference between disembodied idea and actual utterance – ‘theory in

theory’, so to speak, and ‘theory in practice’.

It is possible to go on to identify other potential key terms mentioned

in the box above – aside from the ‘create’ words as such. You will

have noticed that ‘original’ and ‘originality’, ‘innovative’ and

‘innovation’, ‘produce’ and ‘productive’, ‘make’ and ‘making’, ‘art’ and

‘arts’ are all used by Williams to help define the ‘create’ words. They

can be represented diagrammatically or in some other way and can fit

into, extend or even cut across the picture of creativity being

developed. They can occasion ‘pictures’ (verbal–visual representations)

of their own. But obviously these terms can themselves be defined,

singly or together, and prompt further refinement, radical overhaul or

outright rejection of some of the aspects of creativity already identified.

In short, there is much more work that could be done. And it too

could be done in seriously playful ways.

Turning just a few of these alternative terms into lists, diagrams and

dramas would make for many hours – if not days! – of studious fun.

In various ways, it would also be original, productive, and so forth, as

well as be about those terms and ideas.


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Defining ‘politics’

In this section you will continue your exploration (begun in Chapter 1)

of the concept of ‘politics’, not by reading a specific text to prompt a

number of rewritings (as you did in Activity 7.1), but by considering a

provisional verbal–visual ‘shape’ of my own. Everything here is offered

as serious provocation but should not be treated too solemnly.

Figure 7.2 was generated by, quite literally, ‘drawing lines’ between

terms that kept cropping up in and around dictionary and thesaurus

entries on ‘politics’. It was then a matter of putting them in order with

a couple of lines that made sense (direct derivations at the top, looser

associations at the bottom) and placing the key term at the centre –

surrounded by question marks for good measure. In rather more detail,

the kinds of enquiry this diagram is designed to express and prompt

are as follows. The upper part traces a line from the Greek city states

(polis), through the body politic of the Roman Empire, to the modern

politician of French and other revolutions. The lower line draws

attention to some suggestive and potentially awkward relations between

the police, as an instrument of public law and order, and policy as the

design and planning of priorities, especially in the state. Meanwhile,

what counts as proper or improper and polite or impolite is part of the


330

? ? ? ? ?

??

??

??

??

??

??

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

??

?

??

?

??

??

??

! ! ! ! !polis (Greek) politic (Latin) politician (French)

POLITICS

police policy polite, impolite

Figure 7.2 A possible ‘shape’

social mix too. All these terms and issues, it is suggested, are likely to

crop up in an investigation of what ‘politics’ has meant in the past and

in an interrogation of what it may yet mean. The list of one-liners and

phrases in the next box is simply another, slightly more discursive way

of highlighting commonly held views ranging from the cynical to the

considered.

Some common quotations and collocations

‘Man is by nature a political animal’ (Aristotle, 1999 [335 BCE], p. 5)

‘War is merely the continuation of policy by other means’ (von

Clausewitz, 1984 [1832], p. 87)

‘Politics is the art of the possible’ (von Bismarck, cited in von

Poschinger, 1895, p. 248)

‘The personal is political’

‘Party politics’

‘Sexual politics’

‘Politically (in)correct’

‘Politicians are all the same’

‘Let’s not talk about politics’

Together, then, the diagram and the list might lead one to ask

questions, and even frame further enquiries, along something like the

following lines. How far, with any particular text, are the politics

matters of public or personal concern – to do with states and inter-/

national institutions or with local and immediately pressing situations?

Party politics or sexual politics, for example? And how ‘impolite’ is it

to insist that other politics – representing other dimensions of class,

ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc. – be brought to bear? And so forth.

Activity 7.2


Using any material from this book, or other appropriate reference

materials, create your own ‘shape’ to define politics.

You could use some of the standard dictionaries and thesauruses, as

well as key texts on this topic. Potential resources include Williams


331

(1983), Bennett et al. (2005), Pope (2005) and the Arts Council of

England and Creative Partnership research reviews (2006–12). Add any

quotations or sayings that you find particularly revealing. Verbal, visual

and other materials for such a reshaping of ideas of politics are in fact to

be found everywhere – in books, on the internet, on the street, in your

bag or pocket. The challenge is precisely one of choosing and re-

combining. Dictionaries and the other reference books will help by

grounding your investigation in language, and therefore history and

culture, providing information as well as insight.

Random fishing or concerted trawls on the internet are likely to be the

first recourse for many readers. More immediately and perhaps most

usefully, however, you might begin with the chapters in this book. So

flick through the book in hand and then work systematically through its

contents lists and, above all, the index. (If you are using an ebook

version of this text, you could carry out a keyword search.) Either way,

you will find plenty of references to and discussions of ‘politics’ (it’s in

the book’s title after all), and plenty of things to quote and comment on,

as well as to question. Go about this both looking for and expecting

some kind of particular ‘shape’ or ‘design’ to form. It will gradually – and

perhaps at some point suddenly – emerge. Often it begins, as above,

simply by the act of noting and listing things. Keep in mind the overall

aim – trying to coordinate your own developing thoughts on what

‘politics’ can mean – and you will find you are also ‘revising’ parts of the

book in and on your own terms.

Discussion

There are, of course, lots of possible shapes that you could make in

creatively representing definitions of politics. Another cluster might

feature power, for example. This is a persistent term in definitions of

politics and readily extends to powerful, powerless, empowering,

disempowered, ‘balance of power’, ‘powers that be’, etc. (see Bennett

et al., 2005, pp. 274–8). Such an enquiry could also, with the help of a

dictionary such as the OED (Simpson and Weiner, 1989), trace the root

of the term through the French pouvoir, ‘to be able to, can do’, and go

on to pick up yet other closely associated terms such as potent,

impotent and potential. All these would throw revealing light on what

‘powers’ – personal and public, intimate and international – might be at

stake in a fresh re-visioning of politics.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of visually charged and verbally weighted

constructions of politics in terms of party politics, political allegiances

and political systems. Here are just some that occur to me:

. politics of ‘the Right’, ‘the Left’ and ‘the Centre’


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. Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, Independent …

. Democrat, Republican, ‘Tea Party’ …

. autocratic, dictatorship, oligarchic, populist, democratic, socialist,

anarchist …

. majority rule, minority, coalition, holding the balance of power …

. local and central government, national politics and international

relations …

. personality politics, multiculturalism, mass movements, global

governance …

. proportional representation, ‘one person one vote’, ‘first-past-the-

post’ …

. ‘show of hands’, ballot box, ‘ballots and bullets’, paper, electronic …

. ‘straw polls’, media polls, party-political broadcasts, televised leader

debates … .

The lists go on and on. So the very act of drawing them up can be

decisive in terms of selection and combination, who or what gets

included or excluded. In fact, making lists is probably the most

fundamental critical and creative act we routinely engage in – from

shopping lists, to-do lists, ‘address books’ and media listings to whom to

invite to a party and who counts as a member of any kind of party,

political and otherwise. Reviewing the list above will readily – perhaps all

too readily – suggest visualisations along oppositional, hierarchic and

more or less convergent or divergent lines. Meanwhile, every name,

noun or phrase – even a part of a word – brings along its own historical

baggage and cultural associations: ‘Republican’, ‘Labour’, ‘one person

(man?) one vote’, ‘democrat/-ic’, ‘social/-ist’. Such baggage needs

examining, repacking and sometimes discarding and replacing

completely; for the associations can be helpful or harmful, reassuring or

misleading. What’s more, for better and worse, many of the images

conjured up along each of the lines in the list above are often spatially

static or only dynamic in one direction (‘Left – Centre – Right’?).

Getting beyond stereotyped images and reflex reactions in order to

develop subtle, flexible and fully multidimensional responses is therefore

a crucial first step – or, rather, it is if currently dominant views of politics

are not only to be critiqued but also recreated. Imaginative thinking can

never be completely content with existing images, although it always

starts with them. ‘I must Create a System. or be enslav’d by another

Mans’ is how William Blake put it with characteristic panache in his

visionary poem Jerusalem (Blake, 1804–20). (Blake’s work is itself an


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inspiring object lesson in compound verbal–visual design; see Blake,

2009 and also Chapter 3, Section 3.3.)

The kinds of verbal–visual design featured in this section are a natural

complement to more conventional analytical writing and argument

(Mullarkey, 2006, gives a good theoretical overview, especially the final

chapters: ‘Thinking in diagrams’ and ‘The shape of thoughts to come’).

Such devices are especially relevant when treating creativity and

language because they offer opportunities to experiment as well as

explain, to demonstrate as well as describe – in short, to be both

creative and critical with words. But the principle applies equally to the

exploration of any culturally central term and concept: ‘politics’ and

‘power’ in the present instance. A diagram, a mini-drama, a list of

quotations – to begin with just the act of highlighting a term with

inverted commas or italics – these are all graphic and potentially

provocative ways of initiating further enquiries even while retracing

previous ones. More than purely personal or commercially constrained

‘mind maps’, such devices can help challenge theory and change

practices. They are what good ‘presenters’ of all kinds use when they

want not just to reinforce an existing message, but actually to re-

present and invite re-valuation.

In this respect, as is widely recognised, the graphics projected on

screens or printed on paper handouts to support ‘presentations’ can be

a bore or a boon. It depends both on whether they merely duplicate or

actually extend what has already been said, as well as on who has the

‘power’ to make the ‘point’ in the first place – and then respond in the

next (for further discussion, see Pope, 2005: Chapters 3 and 4; and

Pope, 2011). In fact, we could well add re-presentation, in the richest

sense, to re-vision, in Rich’s sense, to the current designedly critical–

creative vocabulary. And the emphasis, as always, is on ‘re-’ meaning

doing things not just again but afresh. You saw, for example, in

Chapter 5 of this book how the global phenomenon of hip hop can be

re-visioned and re-presented to have meaning at the local level. The

same principle, realised differently and at length, applies to the tasks in

the next section.


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7.3 Extended texts, extending practices

Now you are going to explore two longer stretches of text: Alice

Oswald’s poem Dart and Bob Dylan’s song ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna

Fall’. Both texts involve representations of water: what it is and does,

how people relate to it, and what it can mean, practically and

metaphorically. They also provide extended examples of people

working critically and creatively with language and other media, in ways

that are deeply personal as well as highly political. In reading, viewing

and actively coming to grips with these materials, you will hopefully be

prompted to think of possible writing and rewriting projects.

The first text, Alice Oswald’s Dart, is a dramatic narrative and poetic

meditation based on the river of that name; it was composed using live

recordings as well as archive material. The second text (really a series

of texts) is prompted by and organised around Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard

Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’; this features in a political photo-book, a

travelling exhibition, and an ecological activists’ website. Together,

these two texts address matters of pressing human concern, both

through the medium of water.

All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings

We begin with the poem Dart by Alice Oswald. This is a long dramatic

and narrative poem that follows the course of the river from where it

springs to where it flows into the sea. Oswald (b.1966) currently still

lives in Devon near the River Dart. In her preface, the author gives an

insight into the process of composition:

This poem is made from the language of people who live and

work on the Dart. Over the past two years I’ve been recording

conversations with people who know the river. I’ve used these

records as life-models from which to sketch out a series of

characters – linking their voices into a sound-map of the river, a

songline from the source to the sea. There are indications in the

margin where one voice changes into another. These do not refer

to real people or even fixed fictions. All voices should be read as

the river’s mutterings.

(Oswald, 2010 [2002], preface)


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The broader context is also worth clarifying. The poem was composed

as part of the Poetry Society’s ‘Poetry Places’ project funded by the

Arts Council of England’s ‘Arts for Everyone’ scheme; it later won the

T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize.

Activity 7.3

Allow about 1 hour

Now read and re-read the extract from Alice Oswald’s poem reproduced

in this activity. Begin by reading the text all the way through, silently and

then aloud. (The identifications in the margins are Oswald’s.) Look and

listen out for all the ways in which the language varies and the voices

change. The main thing is to let the words run through your mind and

mouth and ears. Doing it for or with someone else can be very revealing

too.

After a few readings, silently and out loud, you will have a feel for the

texture and structure of the poem. What it’s about and how it’s done will

start to become familiar. The following questions and activities should

help you make the most of your readings and performances.

. Where does one ‘voice’ or ‘language variety’ give way to another,

and what are the clues and cues for this in layout, sound-patterning,

changes in vocabulary, and syntax (in addition to Oswald’s marginal

notes).

. How do these cues affect the way you read the poem out loud,

perhaps by adopting a different pace, tone and manner?

. How would you characterise these various voices in (a) a single

word; (b) a phrase; (c) a sentence or two?

. Does it help to distinguish some aspects of the voices as external

(‘outer’, tending towards speech, almost audible) and other aspects

as internal (‘inner’, tending towards thought, almost inaudible)?

Consider what in the text prompts you to think this and how it might

affect your performance.

. Go on to look and listen for places where one voice or style seems to

overlay or break into another.

. Finally, would you say that there is still a single continuous voice

running through – perhaps underneath or alongside – this whole

piece? In her preface to the poem, which you have just read, Oswald

says: ‘All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings.’ So where

does that leave her – and you? And would you, for example, include

the marginal notes in a live reading?


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Extract from Dart by Alice Oswald

( … a dreamer

And then I saw the river’s dream-self walkdown to the ringmesh netting by the bridgeto feel the edge of shingle brush the edgeof sleep and float a world up like a corkout of its body’s liquid dark.Like in a waterfall one small twig caughtcatches a stick, a straw, a sack, a meshof leaves, a fragile wickerwork of floodbrash,I saw all things catch and reticulateinto this dreaming of the Dartthat sinks like a feather falls, not quitein full possession of its weight)

I wake wide in a swim ofseagulls, scavengers, monomaniac, madrubbish pickers, mating blatantly, screaming

and slouch off scumming and flashing andhatching fliesto the milk factory, staring at routine things:looking down the glass lines: bottles on beltsgoing round bends. Watching out for breakages,working nights. Building up prestige. Me withmy hands under the tap, with my brain coated ina thin film of milk. In the fridge, in thewarehouse, wearing ear-protectors.

dairyworker…

I’m in a rationalised set-up, a superplant.Everything’s stainless and risk can be spun offby centrifugal motion: blood, excrement, faecalmatter from the farms

have you forgotten the force that orders theworld’s fieldsand sets all cities in their sites, this nomadpulling the sun and moon, placeless in all places,born with her stones, with her circular bird-voice,carrying everywhere her quarters?

I’m in milk, 600,000,000 gallons a week.

processing, separating, blending. Very precisequantities of raw milk added to skim, piped intosilos, little screwed outlets pouring out milk to


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be sampled. Milk clarified milk homogenisedand pasteurised and when it rains, the rivercomes under the ringmesh netting, full of non-potable water. All those pathogens and spoilageorganisms! We have to think of our customers.We take pride in safety, we discard thirty bottleseither side of a breakage. We’ve got weights andchecks and trading standards

and a duck’s nest in the leat with four blue eggs

and all the latest equipment, all stainless steel soimmaculate you can see your soul in it, in ahairnet, in white overalls and safety shoes.

It’s a rush, a sploosh of sewage, twentythousand cubic metres beingpumped in, stirred and settled out and wastedoff, looped back, macerated, digested, clarifiedand returned to the river. I’m used to the idea. Ifork the screenings out – a stink-mass ofloopaper and whathaveyou, rags cotton buds,you name it. I measure the intake through aflume and if there’s too much, I waste it offdown the stormflow, it’s not my problem.

sewageworker

When you think of all the milk we get fromUnigate, fats and proteins and detergentsfoaming up and the rain and all the publicsewers pumping in all day, it’s like a prisoner upto his neck in water in a cell with only a hand-pump to keep himself conscious, the wholeplace is always on the point of going under.

So we only treat the primary flow, we keep itmoving up these screws, we get the solidssettled out and then push the activated sludgeback through. Not much I can do.

I walk on metal grilles above smelly water, Iclimb the ladder, I stand on a bridge above abrown lagoon, little flocs of sludge and clarifiedliquor spilling over the edge of the outer circle.The bridge is turning very slowly, sweeping thespill-off round and I’m thinking illicit sneakingthoughts – no one can see me up here, just meand machinery and tiny organisms.

I’m in charge as far as Dartmoor, themetabolism of the whole South West, starting


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with clouds and flushing down throughbuildings and bodies into this underground gridof pipes, all ending up with me up here on mybridge – a flare of methane burning off blue atone end of the works and a culvert of cleanwater discharging out the other end, twentyBOD, nine ammonia, all the time, as and when

(Oswald, 2010 [2002], pp. 28–30)

Discussion

(This is a lengthy comment because the text is multilayered and many-

voiced; possible readings, silent and out loud, are correspondingly

various and variable.)

Overall appearance on the page, especially spacing and layout, are the

first things that strike the eye, even before getting to meaning. So to

begin with I would be guided by the fact that most of the opening lines

don’t go all the way across the page and have plenty of space around

and between them. At the same time, the lines are uneven in length and

not organised in regular blocks. In other words, the first part is in a kind

of free verse and organised in what are usually called ‘verse paragraphs’

(by analogy with prose). Much of the text later does look like prose

because it stretches all the way across the page and comes in

recognisable paragraphs; though even these are interspersed with the

odd single line that stands out, and only some of them begin with a

capital letter. This much is obvious at a glance.

Slightly less obvious is the fact that any reading out loud is going to

have to engage with the persistent tension between sense and

sentences that run on and lines that keep on ‘turning’ at the ends

(‘verse’ initially meant neither more nor less than ‘a turn’, as in ‘reverse’).

With ‘free verse’ like this, because of the irregularity, that engagement

has to be especially flexible and resourceful. So, from the very first lines,

I would be looking, listening and feeling out for the length and strength

of pauses to register the effect of line endings. In the first two lines, for

instance, I would dwell firmly yet lightly on the gap introduced into the

phrasal verb ‘walk down’. This is here made to straddle two lines, and

marking the gap with a slight delay would be enough to signal a telling

difference: ‘(And then I saw the river’s dream-self walk / down to the

ringmesh netting by the bridge’. Thus the line itself turns ‘down’ even as

the sense flows on and the sentence continues; it’s a fine instance of

verse run-over, sometimes also called enjambment. What’s more, what

these lines expressly tell us is that we are here partaking of a special


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dream-like state, where the vision is metaphorical, heightened and

personified.

The punctuation is telling too. The opening bracket suggests this is in

some sense a world apart and yet apparently going on already: we are

plunging into the middle of an oddly separate yet ongoing experience. In

this respect the explicit identification of ‘a dreamer’ in the margin is

reassuring but almost superfluous. It’s a handy clue for the reader to

know who is speaking/thinking/dreaming, but like the identification of the

speaker in a play script, would probably not be read out loud. (It should

be pointed out that the opening of this extract had to be slightly edited

for this chapter. The initial bracket and the marginal identification of ‘a

dreamer’ apply to this passage but are drawn from a few lines earlier,

and the ellipsis has been added to signal the absence of those lines.

The broader point is that every re-production of a text entails a

transformation, in this case to fit a reading activity in a textbook.)

The opening prepares me for at least one voice that will be sensitive to

symbolic meaning and tuned along poetic lines. That is, as the last lines

of the first verse paragraph confirm, at least some of this will be a

‘dreaming of the Dart’, rich in imagery and sound-patterning (‘that sinks

like a feather falls’), and scrupulous in weighing values as well as verses

(‘in full possession of its weight’). When I’m reading/performing the poem

I would therefore deliver the more obviously poetic lines with particular

care, poise and precision, attentive to line endings and alert to nuances

of sound, sense and perception. My voice is that of an older male and

quite deep, but I would not want it to be fuzzy or muddy here. Your voice

may well be different, and your performance – like your interpretation –

will naturally be in some respects unique.

In addition to what I shall call the ‘poetic dream voice’ of Dart, although it

might also be called something like ‘the river’s verse voice’, we need to

recall the author’s prefatory remark that ‘All voices should be read as the

river’s mutterings.’ At all events, it’s a voice that surfaces later from time

to time, even in the midst of the apparently more prosaic, workaday

language identified with the ‘dairy worker’ and ‘sewage worker’. One of

several instances that stand out for me is the gap – and jump – within

the dairy worker’s declaration of faith in the industrial process: ‘We take

pride in safety, we discard thirty bottles either side of a break. We’ve got

weights and checks and trading standards’, which continues shortly with

‘and all the latest equipment, all stainless steel’. And yet there, tucked in

the middle of that sentence, is a line clearly set apart: ‘and a duck’s nest

in the leat with four blue eggs’. This sounds a distinctly poetic and

slightly archaic or dialectal note (a ‘leat’ is older English for a

watercourse) and also offers a passing, highly particular celebration of

nature. In effect, it’s a one-line miniature word-painting. On the page it


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stands out – and in performance it would ring out – as markedly,

perhaps refreshingly different from the surrounding celebration of

industrial hypermodernity. What’s more, that same, sinuously ongoing

yet variably spaced and paced sentence maintains a kind of dual vision

and double-discourse to the end: ‘and all the latest equipment, all

stainless steel so immaculate you can see your soul in it, in a hairnet, in

white overalls and safety shoes’. Stainless steel … soul … hairnet …?

These words belong to worlds that are usually kept apart. Yet here they

are made to collide and fuse. The challenges for the reader, especially

out loud, are both demanding and revealing. I must have read these

lines out a dozen times – each time more or less differently, more or less

satisfied with the effect.

The same goes for the rest of the passage, always with shifting

demands and variable responses. The sewage worker also has words

that belong to many worlds. Much of the time they represent formal

technical registers to do with the processing of sewage: for example, ‘I

measure the intake through a flume and if there’s too much, I waste it off

down the stormflow’. But these technicalities, which are often informed

by a sense of a system at full stretch and an operative under rising

pressure, are relieved by snatches of colloquial comment and frank

disclosure: ‘it’s not my problem … Not much I can do … all the time, as

and when’. Meanwhile, again, that ‘poetic dream voice’ keeps emerging

in one guise or another. For while both the dairy worker and the sewage

worker are represented through language that may be called ‘prosaic’ in

both senses (i.e. routine and not poetry), there are odd flashes and the

rhythmic stresses and strains of more overtly ‘poetic’ language too.

Sometimes this is a matter of an arresting sound effect: ‘It’s a rush, a

sploosh of sewage’. Sometimes it’s something more sustained and

perhaps unsettling: ‘and I’m thinking illicit sneaking thoughts – no one

can see me up here, just me and machinery and tiny organisms’.

Meanwhile, all the time, there are tricky decisions to come to about who

precisely is speaking or thinking what and why, and corresponding

adjustments to make in delivery. For example, with the dairy worker, ‘Me

with my hands under the tap’ sounds convincingly colloquial and context-

bound; whereas ‘I’m in a rationalised set-up, a superplant’ could be a bit

of personal boasting but has a hint of corporate-speak about it too. But

then, immediately afterwards, the poetic dream voice seems to cut in

with a direct address to the dairy worker, and by extension the reader:

‘have you forgotten the force that orders the world’s fields / and sets all

cities in their sites’. This language is also slightly archaic and mannered,

and in fact sounds like a quotation from a religious or philosophical text

(which I haven’t been able to identify yet). And so on. Decisions,

decisions … in the first place about who immediately is speaking these

words or thinking these thoughts, and in the second and third places


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about what discourses are indirectly in play from the distant past and the

insistent present. Sure, ‘All voices’ may ultimately be read, as Oswald

suggests, ‘as the river’s mutterings’. But that still leaves plenty of

pressingly immediate and more or less open questions about which

particular voices and presences (points of view, perspectives, even

absences) are potentially in play within and around the text at any one

time. The answer, of course, is not one but many and shifting. So we

may talk of re-voicings as well as re-visions. Your voice – like mine –

has a say in these too.

There are some theoretical issues that readily arise from the above

reflections on your reading and performance. The following questions

will help develop these: they connect directly to the key terms and

ideas already explored in Section 7.2.

Activity 7.4


Now answer the following questions on Oswald’s poem:

. Drawing on what you know about the composition and occasion of

the poem, and your experience of reading it, how would you

characterise the kinds of creation or creativity involved?

. Do you pick up a particular ‘politics’ in and around this piece:

ecological and environmental, and perhaps based on occupation and

gender too? How do these relate to the kinds of poetics in play?

. In particular, weigh the kinds of human–nature relation in the

balance: how far do we see people apart from or as a part of nature

– alongside or above, within or without?

. More generally, consider the kinds of power that are in play –

perhaps with equal emphasis on both terms. That is, who or what is

represented as having what kind of power (control, influence) over

whom or what? And what room for play (flexibility, freedom) is there

in the representation of those roles and relations – whether in the

text as composed or the text as performed? (This could also be

framed as a question on the relations between ethics and aesthetics,

as between politics and poetics in the second bullet point in this list.)

Discussion

Here are some of my own provisional thoughts to help the process

along. For instance, I tend to theorise the whole issue of creativity/


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creation along the lines of re-creativity and re-creation. This is perhaps

particularly obvious with this poem given that the poet’s compositional

process was based on tape-recorded interviews. As for the politics and

poetics of all of this, I would certainly be thinking about the relations

between milk factories, sewage works and ‘the river’s dream-self’ (still

wondering what that might be). And I would look closely at the

representations of the various processes, including the speech-thoughts

of the workers. But all the time I am aware – and my reading aloud and

reflections on it would constantly remind me – that this is a narrative and

dramatic poem with many made-up figures, ‘voices’ and sound effects in

play. The shifts and switches of texture – and therefore perspective –

range from the subtle and passing (‘Me with my hands under the tap,

with my brain coated in a thin film of milk’) to the obviously over-the-top

(‘I’m in milk, 600,000,000 gallons a week.’).

Even a single word can serve to conjure up a whole world, multiple

worlds: ‘sploosh’ (children’s speech, cartooning, onomatopoeia);

‘Unigate’ (milkmen, milk van, corporate capital); ‘BOD’ (‘Biological

Oxygen Demand’, technical measure of organic activity); ‘floodbrash’ (an

older dialect word for what’s left after a flood, sometimes used of artistic

effects); and so on. Each of these may serve as a clue to explore the

shifting grounds of interpretation and as a cue for a specifically nuanced

performance. There is, to be sure, a strongly implicit ecological agenda

and a specific environment (‘the Dart’) at issue. But there are

motivations, thoughts, feelings and effects that flow through and reach

beyond those issues alone. You, too, will have views on what these are,

and your own ways of seeing and saying them.

Subtle and complex texts can only be enriched by further re-reading;

they are never exhausted. Strong theories and core terms are the same;

they are prodigiously productive when pushed to the limit. Beyond that

they need to be refined or replaced by other ideas and, sometimes,

practices. The next section takes a more overtly multimedia approach

to a variable text in changing contexts.

It doesn’t really matter where a song comes from – it just

matters where it takes you

In this section you are invited to work through a series of activities to

consider another text, and to reflect on what its various

transformations over a considerable period of time can tell us about

the nature of creativity. The activities are organised around the various


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stages of production and reproduction to help you track key moments

of creativity.

The text you are going to consider is a Bob Dylan song, ‘A Hard

Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ (1963), whose transformations can be tracked

over more than 50 years: through the production of the song itself to a

travelling exhibition about climate change. Each emerges from a

moment of re-production. Even the ‘original’ song does not emerge

from nowhere but is a response to particular circumstances and echoes

previous texts (for another example, see Chapter 2, Section 2.5). At

each moment of re-production, there is a change in medium, context

and function, so the precise meanings and effects of the material vary

accordingly. In terms of power, the text is constantly being re-aligned

to express different individual and collective aims; so it acts as both

the source and the site of a wide variety of personal–political agendas.

You have seen throughout this book how texts can be recontextualised,

repurposed and revisioned for their creators’ own personal and

political ends. To be sure, someone and something called ‘Bob Dylan’s

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”’ is in a sense there all the time. But in

other senses, through other modes and moments of reproduction, a

whole lot of other people and things keep on getting in on the act.

The following activities are organised around two examples of creative

re-production. Activities 7.5, 7.6 and 7.7 focus on the way the song

comes into being, including the songwriter’s reflections. Then,

Activities 7.8 and 7.9 focus on the way the song is developed as part

of a travelling (and virtual) exhibition on climate change.

Activity 7.5


Read the last verse of ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, which is

reproduced in this activity. Then use the following questions to help firm

up your bearings and to identify specific aspects of the particular world

represented. You will notice that some of these questions overlap and

feed into each other:

. Who is represented ‘within’ the text, and who is doing the

representing ‘outside’ it? (Characters/figures, speakers, narrators,

performers, authors, etc.) For instance, Dylan is the text’s author

(outside the text) and there seems to be a dialogue going on (inside

the text).

. When and where are these things taking place, again distinguishing

‘inner’ textual and ‘outer’ contextual dimensions? (e.g. times and


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places sung and talked about; times and places of composition and

communication.)

. What basically is the text about? (Subject matter, topic.) Try to say

this in a phrase or two to begin with, and then a full sentence. For

instance, the text is ‘a bleak vison of the world’; a full sentence would

perhaps elaborate on this description.

. What kind of text is it and what is it made of? (Genres and media.) In

practice, talk of the kind or type of text often combines aspects of

genre and medium (e.g. ‘buddy movie’, ‘TV documentary’ and ‘eco-

activists’ website’).

. Why was it made – why does it seem to have been done?

(Motivation, purpose, function.) Attempting to discern the many and

various reasons – private and public, individual and collective,

deliberate and accidental, conscious and otherwise – why something

comes to be made is a fascinating, even if frustrating, task.

. How is it done – how well – and how do you respond? (Style and

structure, value and evaluation.) This draws together a wide range of

considerations, ranging from specific choices and combinations of

words (style) to larger aspects of textual organisation (structure).

Naturally, such considerations involve general issues of tradition and

judgement (‘how well’, value) as well as particular instances of

personal taste, awareness and expectation (‘response’, evaluation).

Extract from ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ by Bob Dylan

…

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?I’m a-goin back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forestWhere the people are many and their hands are all emptyWhere the pellets of poison are flooding their watersWhere the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prisonWhere the executioner’s face is always well hiddenWhere hunger is ugly, where souls are forgottenWhere black is the color, where none is the numberAnd I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe itAnd reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see itThen I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard


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It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

(Dylan, 1963)

Discussion

In terms of the who in this text, there are two main voices, which seem

to be of a parent and son. Notice the voicing of the insistent first-person

speech within the verses ‘I’m a-goin’, ‘I’ll walk’, ‘I’ll tell it and think it and

speak it and breathe it’. And notice how this is framed by repeated

questioning from the older speaker, presumably the parent (‘what’ll you

do now, my blue-eyed son? … my darling young one?’). Of the character

of the son, we can be certain of one thing – he has courage. The modal

‘will’ emphasises his determination to go out into the horrors of the world

he describes (see below) in order to bear witness to it. It is instructive to

consider how far this is substantially a dramatic monologue and what

would be lost (or gained) by taking the dialogue frame away.

The disorientating nature of the text makes the when and where

particularly difficult to ascertain. The use of the present simple tense,

mostly of the verb ‘to be’, suggests a place without past or future. As for

the place (or is it places?), ‘the deepest black forest’ is surprisingly

populated by people whose ‘hands are all empty’ (of what?). It is a world

where waters are the victims of flooding rather than its perpetrators. In

short, it is somewhere without the comfort of familiar reference points –

‘Where black is the color, where none is the number’. The only

seemingly positive image ‘the home in the valley’ is immediately and

brutally undermined by the following ‘meets the damp dirty prison’. What

is certain about this world is its horror – a place of executioners,

forgotten souls and hard, hard rain.

Exploring the who, when and where has already given us some notion of

the what of this text. So, for example, it could be validly described as ‘a

parent–son exchange which shows a bleak vision of the world that the

son is determined to bear witness to’. Of course, this is only one of

many possible descriptions and interpretations. Your own analysis may

concur with, complement or even, in places, contradict the one above.

As for what kind of text it is and what it is made of, it might be called a

‘political/polemical commentary’ which is presented (at least here) in the

medium of the ‘the printed word’, although, of course, it was originally

conceived of as being heard through the medium of song. Perhaps the

most elusive answer is that to the question of why it was made. We ask

such questions all the time, even when we know there are no


346

straightforward, complete answers. What prompted Dylan to write the

song? Even if we had the chance to ask him that question, his response

could not be taken as the one and only definitive answer. Beside any

irretrievably subconscious motivations, his answer would be filtered

through and coloured by the prism of his subsequent experiences.

In terms of how it is done, how well and how you respond to it, this is of

course a matter of personal taste (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3). After all,

you might love, loathe or not care or know much about Dylan at this

point. What is important is that you can articulate why you feel as you do

and, as part of your response, are able to point to textual features which

influence that feeling. You might, for example, consider the parallelism

(repeated yet varied phrasing); structural refrain; density and intensity of

metaphor; use of line and verse as visual as well as oral/aural

dimensions of utterance organisation.

Activity 7.6


Find recordings of the song by Dylan and other artists. (These should be

easy to find online – YouTube is probably a good place to start.)

Change, modify and develop your answers to the questions in the

previous activity in the light of listening to these performances. How do

the different treatments affect your interpretation?

Discussion

What is the effect of Dylan’s edgy nasal chanting and raw acoustic

guitar? Maybe you would characterise the sound differently. For

instance, how would you describe the precise rise and fall of voice and

emotion in the refrain: ‘And it’s a hard … It’s a hard rai-ai-ai-ai-ai-n’s a-

gonna fa-a-all’?

In searching for the song, you may well have come across a number of

Dylan’s performances of it at various stages of his long career. You may

also have come across different artists covering the song in their own

distinctive ways. Every single instance of reproduction and reception is

to some extent a fresh event and an occasion for a slightly or very

different interpretation. In this respect, all interpretations are

performative: they actively realise new possibilities and don’t just register

pre-existing realities. Indeed, even a silent reading of the written text can

be seen as a performative interpretation. And, much as Dylan has


347

realised this song in different ways over his career, our reading of the

same text can change each time we come to it.

Activity 7.7


Now read the quotations from Dylan below, which relate to the moment

of inspiration that triggered his writing of the song. Again, revisit the

‘who’, ‘when’, etc. questions (see Activity 7.5) and modify your answers

in the light of your reading of these quotes. Dylan recalls composing the

song in 1962 at a time when there had been tense confrontation

between the United States and the Soviet Union about the latter’s siting

of missiles in Cuba.

I wrote it [‘A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall’] at the time of the

Cuban crisis. I was in Bleecker Street in New York. We just

hung around at night – people sat around wondering if it was

the end, and so did I. Would 10 o’clock the next day ever

come? … It was a song of desperation. What could we do?

Could we control the men on the verge of wiping us out? The

words came fast – very fast. It was a song of terror. Line after

line, trying to capture the feeling of nothingness.

(Cited in Hard Rain Project, 2016a)

[But] it doesn’t really matter where a song comes from. It just

matters where it takes you. (R. Hilburn interview, The Los

Angeles Times, April 4, 2004)

(Cited in Bieri, 2008, p. 128)

Discussion

You may find that Dylan’s reflections on what inspired the song enrich

your own understanding of it. On the other hand, you may feel that it

narrows down and closes off potential interpretations. For Dylan, writing

the above account in retrospect, it clearly didn’t ‘really matter where a

song comes from’. Historically speaking, however, and in terms of the

musical and literary influences bearing on him personally at the moment

of composition, it clearly did and does matter. In fact, Dylan was writing


348

in a long-standing song and ballad tradition and out of an increasingly

commercial contemporary ‘folk’ scene. His opening words and the

ongoing dramatic frame ‘Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?’

derive from the ‘Where have you been, my son’ formula that stretches

back to the English and Scottish border ballads collected by Bishop

Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (2015 [1765]) and, most

famously, in ‘Lord Randal’ featured by Sir Walter Scott in his Minstrelsy

of the Scottish Border (2016 [1802–03]). The latter opens ‘O where hae

ye been, Lord Randal, my son?’ (for a full text and commentary, see

Pope and Macrae, 2012). Dylan also drew on and elsewhere paid

homage to the folk-song-collecting and protest-song-performing activities

of Pete and Peggy Seeger and Woody Guthrie, as did Joan Baez, Joni

Mitchell and other ‘folk’ singer-songwriters who emerged in the 1960s.

So, as noted in other parts of this book, a text never emerges from

nowhere. It always has its influences and antecedents, however

creatively original it may appear.

In the activities that follow you are asked to explore the second

example of creative reproduction, which focuses on the way the song

(words and sound) was taken up and developed as part of an

exhibition on climate change (involving images as well as words and

sound).

Activity 7.8


The full words sung by Dylan can be heard online (see Hard Rain

Project, 2016b), where they accompany a montage of images from the

book Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision with Nature (Edwards, 2009).

Each image is matched with a line from the Dylan song and all together

they constitute a visual–verbal montage of the whole thing.

Below are some examples. (Please note, some of these images may be

considered distressing.) Look at the images next to their corresponding

lines and answer the following question:

. How do these images change or modify your understanding of the

lyrics?


349

Figure 7.3 ‘And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall’

Figure 7.4 ‘I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’’


350

Figure 7.5 ‘I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it’

Figure 7.6 ‘Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’’


351

Discussion

Clearly, the photographs influence my/your interpretation of the lyrics

while the lyrics similarly impact on my/your understanding of the

photographs. So, for example, the seemingly innocuous ‘I met a white

man who walked a black dog’ assumes a particularly sinister meaning

when juxtaposed with Figure 7.7. This is a clandestine (and

subsequently notorious) mobile phone shot of a naked detainee being

threatened by a US soldier with a dog in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 2004. As with

other multimodal texts that you have encountered in previous chapters,

the meanings of the images and the words together are not simply

additive, but, rather, emerge through the interaction between them. Thus,

meaning lies as much in the relationship between the words and images

as it does in the words and images. Think back, for example, to some of

the political texts in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book where humour arises

from the interplay between words and images.

Activity 7.9


The following commentary was written by Fred Pearce (2007),

environment consultant for the New Scientist. Its main theme is that of

climate change. Read the text and comment on the effectiveness of

deploying Dylan’s lyrics in highlighting this crisis.


352

Figure 7.7 ‘I met a white man who walked a black dog’

Water is our most fundamental natural resource. We cannot

survive without it. But it is also our most renewable resource.

Those clouds forming over the Indian Ocean are just the latest

step in a never-ending water cycle. The stuff we drink today is

the same water that the first fish swam in, which the dinosaurs

drank and which froze across much of the globe during the ice

ages. Our planet probably has no more and no less than it

ever has. Each day some 200 trillion gallons evaporate from

the oceans or the land to keep the water cycle in motion. On

average it stays in the air for ten days before falling again as

rain.

But from the High Andes to the plains of India, from southern

Europe to northern China, rain is becoming increasingly

unpredictable. Global warming is pumping more energy into

weather systems and making them more intense, and that can

bring both floods and droughts. In places, rivers are running

dry as rains fail and we take ever more water to irrigate our

crops. Conflicts over remaining supplies loom. In other places,

warmer air is making storm clouds more intense and

generating super-storms and hurricanes. Hard rains are

creating havoc.

(Pearce, 2007)

Discussion

Your reflections might have included references to the fittingly

apocalyptic flavour in Dylan’s lyrics. Also, the refrain about ‘hard rain’

reflects the increasingly intense nature of the world’s weather systems

as a result of climate change, making water a bringer of death and

devastation, rather than life and sustenance. The use of Dylan’s song for

the project is clearly another example of a text that is recontextualised

and repurposed for particular political ends.

7.4 Conclusion

There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to

the dialogic context (it extends into the boundless past and the


353

boundless future). Even past meanings, that is, those born in the

dialogue of past centuries, can never be stable (finalized, ended

once and for all) – they will always change (be renewed) in the

process of subsequent, future development of the dialogue.

(Bakhtin, 1986a, p. 170)

The epigraph above is taken from a piece that Bakhtin first drafted in

1945; he added the words in brackets in 1972. They are among the last

words he ever wrote. Significantly and symptomatically, given Bakhtin’s

insistence on the ceaseless exchange of partly unique utterances, this

text is itself open to variable translation and interpretation, and

multiple transmission. So are all others. The above translation, for

instance, happens to match my own translation of the original, based

on the collection Estetika Slovesnovo Tvortchestva (‘Aesthetics of Verbal

Creation’) (Bakhtin, 1986b). However, a rather different translation,

working from the same volume, is offered in the classic introduction to

‘dialogism’ (Holquist, 2002). In addition to all sorts of slight variations

in wording, the main difference is that Holquist drops the brackets that

are in the original. Meanwhile, curiously, another rather different

translation of this passage (with the brackets this time) is reproduced

on the cover of a standard Bakhtin anthology (Bakhtin et al., 1994) –

but doesn’t actually appear inside! My argument is not with the author

and editor of these volumes, which are authoritative and invaluable.

The point is that even notionally ‘the same text’ is constantly changing

and ceaselessly subject to the varying aims and emphases of different

writers and re-producers – even leaving aside accidents, mistakes and

deliberate misrepresentation. Translation is simply one of the more

obvious forms of textual transformation. Again, then, the key concept,

awkward and picky though it may appear, is re-production: ‘producing

afresh’ even while apparently just ‘producing again’. So it’s always a

case of ‘something new’ from ‘something old’ and, conversely,

‘something old’ in ‘something new’.

Here we return to Adrienne Rich’s notion of re-vision, also introduced

at the beginning of this chapter, in order to move the term into pole

position:

Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of

entering an old text from a new critical direction …

(Rich, 2001, p. 11)


354

In this, the very last section in the book, which is the last of a series

of three, you are encouraged to pause for thought – and action. Re-

vision, in fact. And that, as the above definition reminds us, is

something far more searching and refreshing than simple ‘revision’,

with its usual emphasis on repetition and reinforcement. With all this

in mind, use this final checklist to help take a fresh look at what you

know and have done – and might now see and say otherwise. Do this

systematically but not too solemnly, and in any order that suits you:

. Whenever you come across discussion of key terms such as

‘creativity’, ‘politics’, ‘power’ and ‘language’ – ‘discourse’, ‘literature’,

‘narrative’, ‘performance’ and ‘poetry’ are just a few of the others –

explore the connections, distinctions and oppositions in play. Try

doing this diagrammatically (through verbal-visual shapes) and

dramatically (through points of view and voices).

. Every text, performance or image featured is of a certain kind and

in a particular material. Notice what that particular genre and

medium predispose you to see and say. Then consider how putting it

in another genre or medium would prompt you to see and say it

differently.

. All mediated communications entail moments and modes of (re)

production that are both plural and singular : plural in that various

times, places and persons are involved; singular in that the actual

instance or event is in some respects unique. Try to maintain a

sense of both.

. Each text has a potentially personal as well as public dimension, and

may express both individual and social concerns. Consider the

power relations in play within and around a particular text, and

whether it expresses a particular politics.

. Story and history are both kinds of narrative; drama and

conversation are both kinds of dialogue. Whenever you meet a text

that is routinely categorised as one of these kinds, consider how it

might be conceived and perhaps re-cast as the other.

. ‘Poetic’ texts are often thought to be more overtly patterned and

perhaps metaphorical than ‘prosaic’ ones. Try decreasing or

increasing the patterning and metaphor in some of the texts you

meet, gauge what the effect is and how far the poetry/prose

distinction holds.


355

. Expand any of the above analyses through systematic application of

the questions ‘Who?’, ‘What?’, ‘When?’, ‘Where?’, ‘Why?’ and

‘How?’

. Extend them critically and creatively by asking: ‘What if …?’, ‘What

else …?’

This checklist can help to provide a frame for active re-vision. But it

will only work if you respond in and on your own terms. After all, the

whole point is that you may now prefer to say and do things rather

differently.

This chapter is dedicated to the memory and celebration of Terry

Hawkes, 1932–2014. Teacher, scholar, editor and provocateur

extraordinaire.

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Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have

been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make

the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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DCblog, © Professor David Crystal, reproduced by permission of the

author. [Online] http://david-crystal.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/on-

obamas-victory-style.html (Accessed 17 August 2016); pages 103–12

(Reading B): Aboelezz, M. ‘Creating a counter-space: Tahrir Square as a

platform for linguistic creativity and polical dissent’, © Mariam

Aboelezz. Reproduced by permission of the author; pages 113–17

(Reading C): Excerpts from THE REDRESS OF POETRY by Seamus

Heaney. Copyright © 1995 Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of

Farrar, Straus and Giroux LLC and Faber and Faber Ltd; page 131

(McDonald’s ‘Favourites’ campaign): Taken from http://jeffreyhill.

typepad.com/english/2009/10/mcdonalds-poetry-ad.html#.

VgkaQtJVhBe; page 139 (History): Taken from: http://www.unilever.

ca/our-brands/detail/ben-and-jerrys/396352/. © Unilever 2015; pages

149–60 (Reading A): Kelly-Holmes, H. (1998) ‘The discourse of

Western marketing professionals in central and eastern Europe: their

role in the creation of a context for marketing and advertising

messages’, Discourse and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, © SAGE Publications;

pages 161–70 (Reading B): Krishna, A., Ahluwalia, R. (2008) ‘Language

choice in advertising to bilinguals: asymmetric effects for multinationals

versus local firms’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 35, Issue 4, ©

Oxford University Press; page 182 (Independent extract): Taken from:


362

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-gove-will-bury-

pupils-in-facts-and-rules-8540741.html © independent.co.uk; pages

195–6 (E. L. James review): Taken from: www.cuddlebuggery.com/

blog/.../review-fifty-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james/ Copyright © 2015

Cuddlebuggery Book Blog; pages 201–6 (Reading A): Crystal, D. (2004)

A Glossary of Textspeak and Netspeak, Edinburgh University Press; pages

207–12 (Reading B): Curzan, A. (2014) Fixing English: Prescriptivism and

Language History, Cambridge University Press; pages 213–15 (Reading

C): Copyright © Gautam Malkani. Reproduced by permission of

Gautum Malkani c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews,

London, W11 1JN; page 229 (Table 5.1): Song lyrics and translation

from: Alim, H. S., Ibrahim, A. and Pennycook, A. (2009) Global

Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of

Language, New York, Routledge. ISBN-10: 0805862854 ISBN-13: 978-

0805862850; pages 244–54 (Reading A): Pennycook, A. (2007) Global

Englishes and Transcultural Flows, Routledge, © Alastair Pennycook; pages

255–68 (Reading B): Taylor, B., Bain, P. (2003) ‘“Subterranean worksick

blues”: humour as subversion in two call centres’, Organization Studies,

vol. 24, no. 9, © SAGE Publications. [Online] http://oss.sagepub.com/

content/24/9/1487.refs?patientinform-links=yes&legid=sposs;24/9/

1487 (Accessed 12 November 2015); pages 269–70 (Reading C): Fox, S.

(2011) ‘Is there a global “call centre” speech style?’, Linguistics Research

Digest, © Sue Fox, reproduced with permission. [Online] http://

linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/is-there-global-call-

centre-speech.html (Accessed 16 November 2015); pages 280–1

(Extract 1): Robertson, G. (2010) ‘The trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover’,

The Guardian, 22 October 2010, © Guardian News and Media

Limited. [Online] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/22/

dh-lawrence-lady-chatterley-trial (Accessed 5 November 2015); pages

283–4 (Case Study 3): Coetzee, J. M. (1996) ‘Giving Offense’,

University of Chicago Press; page 286 (‘From the Frontier of Writing’):

From OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966–1996 by

Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by

permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC and Faber and Faber

Ltd; pages 289–90 (Goldsmith quote): Taken from: http://www.

poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/ubuweb-at-15-years-an-

overview; page 296 (Doctorow quote): Taken from: http://craphound.

com/littlebrother/about/. This file is licensed under the Creative

Commons Attribution Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

by/3.0/; pages 303–9 (Reading A): Schwabach, A. (2011) Fan Fiction

and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection, Edition 1,

Acknowledgements

363

© 2011 Ashgate Publishing. Reproduced by permission of Taylor &

Francis Books UK; pages 310–14 (Reading B): OBSCENE

MODERNISM: LITERARY CENSORSHIP AND EXPERIMENT by

Rachel Potter (2013): 2000 words (pp. 1–5). © Rachel Potter 2013. By

permission of Oxford University Press; pages 315–22 (Reading C):

Jenkins, H., et al. (2013) Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a

Networked Culture, © New York University Press; pages 327–8

(Creative): Williams, R. (2014) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and

Society, New Edition, pp. 82–86, © 1976, 1985 by Raymond William.

Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and Oxford

University Press, USA; pages 337–9 (Extract from Dart by Alice

Oswald): Alice Oswald, excerpt from ‘Dart’ from Spacecraft Voyage 1:

New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2007 by Alice Oswald. Used with

permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and The Permissions Company, Inc.

on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.

graywolfpress.org; pages 345–6 (Extract from ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna

Fall’ by Bob Dylan): © Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan Music Co., Special

Rider Music; page 353 (Pearce quote): Pearce, F. (2007) ‘Water: the

stuff of life’, Hard Rain 2nd edition, © Fred Peace, reproduced by

permission of the author. [Online] http://www.hardrainproject.com/

water_the_stuff_of_life (Accessed 17 August 2016).


364

Index

abbreviations in textspeak 204–6

Aboelezz, Mariam 82–4, 103–11

Achebe, Chinua 146–7

Ackroyd, Stephen 258–9

adhocracy 43, 53–4

advertisements

linguistic creativity 123–32linguistic innovation 185

multimodality 130–1, 142

multiple voices 137–40

poetic function 122–3

political dimension 142–7, 149–58, 161–9

product descriptions 120–1

purpose 119, 134

see also postersaesthetics 72, 177

Afro-Caribbeans 20

agency 219–20, 241

in call centres 236, 237–8, 255–67

language of hip hop 226–33, 244–52

Ahlbrecht, Bernd 156

Ahluwalia, Rohini 145, 161–9

Akindes, F.Y. 227, 244–5Al Shabi, Abul Qassim 109

Alim, H.S. 217

Allas, Marcia, 51–2

Allington, D. 231, 232–3

Alves, Dani 35, 38, 41

Amazon 44

Amis, Kingsley 194–5

amphibrach 124anthropology 30, 37, 176, 178

appropriateness in language use 176

Arab Freedom Anthem (song) 85

Arab spring 18, 44, 56, 62

Arabic language 80, 83–4, 104, 106–8, 110

archives, digital 288–92

Aristotle 23, 26, 29, 73, 331

Arnold, Matthew 29–30, 31assonance 72

Athens occupation 82

Auden, W.H. 91, 113

audiences 27, 58, 299

Augustine 327

Aung San Suu Kyi 24–6, 27

Austen, Jane 136

authority

creativity and tradition 180–4

team leaders 258–60see also power

authorship

alternative models of 294–9

fan fiction 273–8, 303–8

Bagnara, S. 238

Bain, Peter 220, 237–8, 255–67

Bakhtin, Mikhail 20–1, 22, 23, 34, 38, 71, 84, 137,353–4

Ball, A.F. 21

Balzac, Honoré de 135

Barnes, Djuna 313

Barthes, Roland 135, 154

BBC Trending 41–2

Beimers, P. 195–6

Bell, E. 296Ben&Jerry’s ice cream 138–40, 142

Bennett, T. 332

Bentham, Jeremy 285

Berners-Lee, Tim 298

Bhatia,Tej K. 163, 164

Bieri, G. 348

bilingualism 145, 161–9, 190

Billig, M. 78Blair, Tony 74–6

Blake, William 33, 125–31, 134, 333–4

blogs 209, 211

book blogs 195

food blogs 223–4

Obama’s speech 73–4, 97

Blyton, Paul 258

Bollywood movies 163Bourdieu, Pierre 174, 219

Brathwaite, Edward Kamu 114

British Asians 191–2, 213–15

Index

365

British National Corpus 171–2

Burgess, Anthony 189

Bush, George W. 186, 207, 209, 211

Cairns, H. 26

call centres 217–18, 220, 233–41, 255–70

Excell 237, 256, 262–7

management

authority 258–60

cynicism about 260–2

undermining 263–4

‘T’ call centre 256–9, 261–2, 266–7trade unions 256, 264–5, 266–7

Cameron, D. 178, 181, 194, 220, 235

Campion, Thomas 116

Cannon, S. 247

capitalism 142–4, 153–7

Carey, John 193

carnivals 84–5

Carter, Ronald 27, 30, 38–9, 70, 238cartoons 87, 222, 326

censorship 272, 278–88, 310–14

internet 297–9

centrifugal force 22

centripetal force 22

Chesters, G. 84

Chinese language 84, 108

Chomsky, Noam 50, 178Chouliaraki, L. 93

Chrabota, Boguslaw 153

‘Circles of flow’ (Pennycook) 227, 244–52

climate change 352–3

‘The Clod and the Pebble’ (Blake) 125–9, 131

Coca Cola 222

Coetzee, J.M. 283–5, 287

Cohen, Nick 288Collinson, David 258, 261, 266

comics 51–3

Communication Workers Union (CWU) 256, 266

Communism 143

computer games 189

Comstock, Anthony 311

‘conlangs’ 188–9

consonants in textspeak 203constitutive intertextuality 109–10

consumer attitudes 145

Convergence Culture (Jenkins) 42–3, 50–5

Cook, G. 149

copyright 272

creative commons licensing 294–9

Digital Millennium Copyright Act 272, 295

and fan fiction 275–6, 303–8and music 293

correctness in language use 176

counter-space 82–4, 103–11

Cranach, Lucas 61

create 327–8

‘Creating a counter-space: Tahrir Square’ (Aboelezz)

82–4, 103–11

creation 328creative 327–8


creative work, distribution of 292–4, 315–22

creative writing 181, 327, 328

creativity

and agency 219–20, 241

in call centres 237–8, 255–67

in hip hop 226–33, 244–52authority and tradition 180–4

critical–creative approach 323–56

and cultural values 29–34

defining 119, 325–9

economic asset 183

elitism and language of literature 192–7

and hip hop 226–33

and originality 29, 34–9, 78in political discourse 65–71, 92–3

analysis 71–3

copying and remixing 85–8

value of 88–92, 113–17

and power 299

re-creativity 343

regulating 272–8, 303–8

and value 171–3, 197–8see also linguistic creativity

Criado-Perez, Caroline 288

critical–creative approach 323–56

critical discourse analysis (CDA) 71, 77–8, 143

‘croppies’ 89–90

crowd, power and wisdom of 39–45, 50–64

Crystal, David 65, 73–4, 77, 97–102, 179–80, 201–6

cultural capital 174

culture

convergence culture 42–3, 50–5

definitions 30

high and popular 31–4, 188–92


366

participatory 321

sociocultural context 20, 22

transcultural flows 228–9

values 29–34, 272Culture and Anarchy (Arnold) 29–30

cummings, e.e. 185

Curzan, Anne 184, 187, 207–11

Cyrus, Miley 86

Dargis, M. 275

Darnton, Robert 63

Dart (Oswald) 324, 335–43Davies, L., 298

Dawkins, Richard 39, 87

De Vries, Kimberly M. 51–2

defamiliarisation 29

democracy 153

demonstrations 66, 68, 78–85, 103–11

Descartes, René 329

dialogical writing 34

Díaz, Junot 188–92

dichotomies, challenging 324, 325–34

dictionaries 187

digital curation and distribution 288–94, 315–22

Digital Millennium Copyright Act 272, 295

dilemmas 78

discourse 71

critical discourse analysis 71, 77–8, 143metaphors in 155

monologic 135, 137, 138

participation in 59–60

transgressive 105, 283

Western marketing 143–4, 149–58

see also political discourse

displaced interaction 27

Dixons’ Christmas advertisement 137–8, 140DJ’ing 217–18

Doctorow, Cory 53, 292–4, 295–6, 315–16

Dostoevsky Fyodor, 137

Douglas, James 281–3

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (Owen) 85

Duranti, A. 219

Duszak, A. 109

Dylan, Bob 324, 344–53

Eagleton, T. 30

East Coast Team 228–30

Eastern Europe, marketing in 143–4, 149–58

Edwards, M. 349–52

Egyptian Arabic 83, 108

Egyptian demonstrations 79–80, 82–5, 103–11

Eisenhower, General Dwight 123El Amrani, I. 106

Eliot, T.S. 189–90, 193, 283

elitism 192–7

Elizabeth I, Queen 27–8

Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion 123–5, 127, 131

Ellis, Warren 52–3

eloquence 177

‘elvish’ language 188–9embetterment 211

empathy 270

English language

in advertising 165–7

as global language 83, 108, 144–6

mixed Englishes 248–52

‘non-standard’ 19–20, 22

poetry 115–16proper English 213–14

as second language 163, 230

in social media 40, 45

teaching of 180–3

entextualisation 34, 37

Erdogan, Recep Tayyip 35–6, 37, 39, 44

Essex, Earl of 27–8

ethnicity 36, 99–100, 189Afro-Caribbeans 20

and call centre language 269

and hip hop 226, 247

ethos 23, 26, 72

Excell call centre 237, 256, 262–7

Facebook 44

‘fair use’ 276Fairclough, Norman 69, 74–9, 93, 109, 150, 155, 236

Fairey, Shepard 87

fan fiction 273–8

and copyright 275–6, 303–8

Faure, S. 247

feedback 278

Ferguson, C.A. 108

Ferguson, M. 151Fernie, Sue 255

fiction


mixed languages 189

Index

367

Field, Claire 275, 305

Fifty Shades of Grey (James) 195–7

films 85, 87, 189

Bollywood movies 163fan based 273, 274–5, 304–5

Finnegan’s Wake (Joyce) 116, 189

folk songs 349

Formalists 29, 77

Forster, E.M. 283, 323

Fox, Sue 239, 269–70

free verse 339

French language 145–6, 247–8‘From the Frontier of Writing’ (Heaney) 286–7

frontier imagery 155–6

Fukuyama, F. 149, 154

The Future of English (Graddol) 144

Garcez, Bruno 41

Garcia, M.C. 247

Gawne, L. 178gender 219

at call centres 266

and comics 52

and linguistic innovation 186

and online abuse 288

German language 44, 57–8, 59, 61, 146

Giddens, A. 219

Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (Coetzee) 283–5Global Frequency (Ellis) 52–3

globalisation 221–6, 240–1

advertising 142–7, 149–58, 161–9

call centres 217, 233–40, 269–70

definition 221

English language 83, 108, 144–6

hip hop 217, 226–33, 244–52

and the internet 41, 240glocalisation 221–2, 223–5, 241

in hip hop 226–7

Goldsmith, Kenneth 288–91

Goldsworthy, D. 246

Gompertz, W. 288

Google 44

Gordon, George 30

Gove, Michael 182, 183Graddol, David 144

graffiti 105, 174, 217–19

grammar 181–2

grass-roots political activity 78–85, 103–11

Greeks, Ancient 23

Greenblatt, S. 25, 33

Gribbon, L. 81

Grunier, S. 305

Hall, Radclyffe 278–9, 281–3, 310

Hall, S. 151, 152

Halliday, M.A.K. 151

Hamilton, E. 26

Han, Jin K. 161

Hansen, M.H. 22

Hard Rain Project 348, 349–52‘A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall’ (Dylan) 324, 344–53

Harding, Warren G. 207–9

Harrison, Tony 114

Harry Potter groups 273–8, 303–8

Hartocollis, A. 307

Hawaiian hip hop 227, 244–6

Hawas, S. 81

Hawkes, Terry 356Hazlitt, William 37, 46

Head, D. 284

Heaney, Seamus 67, 69, 285

‘From the Frontier of Writing’ 286–7

‘The redress of poetry’ 91–2, 113–17

‘Requiem for the Croppies’ 89–91

heightened reflexivity 93

Herman, E.S. 50Hesserl, S. 82

heterogeneity 221

heteroglossic language 34, 137–8

Hiatt, Mary 186

Higgins, Christina 230

‘high’ culture 31–4, 188–92

Hindi 145, 163–9

hip hop 217–19, 226–33, 240, 244–52Hirschkop, K. 21

Hoban, Russell 189

Holquist, M. 354

Homer 30, 192

homogenisation 221–2, 225, 238

Horace 85

Hoston, W.T. 74

Hughes, Ted 114Hultgren, A.K. 239, 269–70

humour

cartoons 87, 222, 326

cyber-humour 261


368

in demonstrations 79, 83–4, 106–7, 109–10

and incongruity 37

in posters 18

and power 38in social media 45, 79–80

subversive 237–8, 255–67

Humphrys, John 19, 20

Huq, R. 247

hypertextual 277

iambic octameter 126

ideologylanguage ideologies 176

meaning of 21, 22

political party 75

and racism 36

images

culture and 31–3

Hard Rain 349–52

internet censorship 297–9political discourse 66–8, 80–1

Wild West 155–7

see also advertisements; cartoons; films; graffiti;

television

incongruity 37

indexical sign 71

India 145, 163–9

Indignados movement 82innovation in language see linguistic creativity;

linguistic innovation

interdiscursivity 109

International P.E.N. 313–14

internet

censorship 297–9


creative language 178curation and distribution 288–94, 315–22

cyber-humour 261


memes 39, 41, 87–8, 240

regulating 272

SoundCloud website 231–2

Wikipedia 43, 53–4, 297–9

see also social mediainterpretation 329, 347

intertextuality 71, 108–10, 152–7

The Interview (film) 17

Irish literature 115–16

‘Is there a global “call centre” speech style?’ (Fox)

239, 269–70

Islam 287–8

Ivan the Terrible Part II (film) 28

Jakobson, Roman 121, 123

James, E.L. 195–7

Jameson, F. 149, 157

Japanese hip hop 248–9

Jefferson, Thomas 187, 210, 211

Jeffries, L. 29, 141

Jenkins, Henry 87, 272, 275, 276, 278Convergence Culture 42–3, 50–5

‘Spreadable media’ 292–4, 315–22

Jerusalem (anthem) 33, 333

Jespersen, Otto 186

jokes, political 106–7

Jones, S. 297

Jonson, Ben 211

Jowett, G. 74Joyce, James 192, 194

Finnegan’s Wake 116, 189

Ulysses 310, 312

judgements 173, 197–8

on language use 175–7

of value 184–7

Kapisi, King 246Kaufman, J.C. 29, 34, 218, 227

Keegan, W. 154, 157

Keen, Andrew 296

Kelly-Holmes, Helen 143–4, 149–58, 221

Kelman, James 192

Keraitim, S. 105

Keyes, C.L. 217, 219

Keywords (Williams) 325Kim Jong-un 17

King, Martin Luther 102

King Crazy GK 228–30

knowledge sharing 54

Korean hip hop 250–2

Koslow, Scott 161, 162, 163

Kress, Gunther 41

Krims, A. 252Krishna, Aradhna 145, 161–9

Kristeva, J. 71

Labour party 75, 77

Index

369

Labov, W. 178, 183, 186

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence) 278, 279–81, 282,

283

languageagency in 219–20

hip hop 226–33, 244–52

creativity in see linguistic creativity

heteroglossic 34, 137–8

ideologies 176

of literature 192–7

metalanguage 175

patterning of 123–5, 127socialisation 176

‘standard’ form of 22

and value 174–7

see also linguistic entries; mixed languages;

individual languages

‘Language choice in advertising to bilinguals’

(Krishna and Ahluwalia) 145, 161–9

language usejudgements on 175–7

political dimension 19–23

Larkin, Philip 194

Latin language 57–8, 61

Lawrence, D.H. 278, 279–81, 282, 283, 310

Lawver, Heather 275

Lea, M.R. 297

Leader, Z. 194, 195Leech, G. 136

Lefebvre, H. 82, 83, 103

Leo X, Pope 57–9

Lewis, Felice Flannery 312

Lewis, Wyndham 313

Liberman, M. 186

Lillis, T. 83

linguistic creativity 147, 178–80in advertisement and poem 123–32

and purpose 132–5

linguistic innovation 184–7, 207–11

linguistics 174–5

deviation 69

list making 325–6, 333

literariness 272, 277, 278, 282

literary stylistics 121–3literature

creativity 147

and the English language 146

language of 192–7

multimodality 141–2

in political discourse 27–9, 31

regulating 278–88, 310–14

see also fiction; poetrylocalisation 144–6, 221–3, 225, 241

in call centres 239

logos 23, 26, 72, 74

Londonstani (Malkani) 177, 191–2, 213–15

Luna, David 161, 162, 168

Luther, Martin 44–5, 56–64

lyrics and images 349–52

McChesney, Robert 50

McDonald’s 221–5

advertisements 185

‘Favourites’ campaign 131–2, 142

MacDonogh, Thomas 116

McGuigan, J. 30

McIntyre, D. 29, 141

Maclagan, E.R.D. 33Macrae, A. 349

Madrid occupations 68, 80, 82

Mahon, Derek 117

Makram, Omar 105, 106

Malkani, Gautam 177, 191–2, 213–15

Mallet, D. 328

mandation 209–10

Maori hip hop 227, 246market discourse 143–4, 149–58

Marti, P. 238

Martin-Rojo, L. 80, 82

material intertextuality 109

Maybin, J. 30, 34, 238

Mazzolini, Sylvester 59

MC-ing 252

meaningsin advertisements 127–8

ideology 21, 22

obscenity 312–13

media

and hip hop 217

historical perspective 44–5, 56–64

multimedia campaign 60–2

participation in 43, 50–3, 59–60, 68, 321production in 42, 69

spreadability 292–4, 315–22

see also films; internet; posters; social media;

television


370

media concentration 50

Mehrez, Samia 79, 105

memes 39, 41, 67, 69, 87–8, 240

metalanguage 175

metaphors 26

in discourse 155

in political discourse 69, 72, 76–7, 80

water as 324, 335

in writing 285–7

Metcalf, David 255

MetroLyrics 86

Miller, Mark Crispin 50Milroy, J. and L. 183

misunderestimate 207

Mitchell, T. 226, 227, 244, 246, 248

mixed languages 162, 164, 167–8, 188–92

Londonstani 177, 191–2, 213–15

other Englishes 248–52

mode 72

‘The modern politics of “not real” words’ (Curzan)187, 207–11

monologic discourse 135, 137, 138

Morreall, J. 37, 46

Morris, Pam 21

Morrison, C.D. 217, 219

The Movement writers 194–5

movies see films

Mubarak, Hosni 80, 83–4, 104, 107–8, 110Mukarovský J., 29

Mulholland, K. 218, 238

Mullarkey, J. 334

multimedia campaign 60–2

multimodality 72, 277

advertisements 130–1, 142

literature 141–2

lyrics and images 349–52multinational corporations 161–2, 165–7

multiple voices 135–40

Murdock, G. 153

Murray, Les A. 114

music

distribution of 293–4

rap music 174, 217–18

Myers-Scotton, Carol 162, 163, 166

Napster 293

Nassar, A. 103

National Curriculum 182

national stereotypes 145–6

neologisms 132, 187, 197, 207

networked public 58

Neuberger, J. 29New Caledonia hip hop 246–7

New Puritanism 311

news ballads 60–1

Neymar tweet 35–6, 38, 40–1

Ngugi wa Thiong’o 146

nominalisation 76–7

‘non-standard’ English 19–20, 22

Noon, Mike 258normalcy 207–8

North Korea 17

Northern Ireland 90–1, 115, 286

novelty see originality

Obama, Barack 36, 37, 67–8, 87, 187

victory speech 73–4, 97–102

obscene 312–13‘Obscene modernism’ (Potter) 280–3, 310–14

Obscene Publications Act 272, 273, 278–83, 311

occupations 78–84, 103–11

Occupy movement 79

Ochs, E. 176

O’Donnell, V. 74

Okrent, A. 189

‘On Obama’s victory style’ (Crystal) 73–4, 97–102originality, and creativity 29, 34–9, 78

Orwell, George 177

Oswald, Alice 324, 335–43

outsourcing 217

Owen, Wilfred 85, 312

Palin, Sarah 209–10

pamphlets 57–60, 61–3Panovic, I. 178

Parry, Sir Hubert 33

participation in media 43, 50–3, 59–60, 68, 321

‘Party in the CIA’ (Yankovic) 86

‘Party in the USA’ (Cyrus) 86

pathos 23, 26, 72, 74

patterning of language 123–5, 127

Pearce, Fred 352–3Pearson, S. 246

Pennay, M. 231

Penney, J. 87

Pennycook, Alastair 226, 227, 231, 244–52

Index

371

Peracchio, Laura A. 161, 162, 168

Percy, T. 349

performance 141–2

interpretation 329, 347political 73–4, 87

personal–political review 323–56

persuasion 23–6

Peterson, C. 18

Pettegree, Andrew 62–3

Phillips, W. 87

phonological creativity 123–4

Piller, Ingrid 163, 166Pinker, S. 175

plainness in language use 177

Plato 26

Platt, John 162

poetry

in campaign website 134

extended exploration 335–43

function 121–3linguistic creativity 125–31

in political discourse 89–92, 113–17

redress of 91–2, 113–17

text poetry 179, 201–2, 205

polis 21, 90, 330

political dimension

advertising 142–7, 149–58, 161–9

language use 19–23political discourse

creativity 65–71, 92–3

analysis 71–3

copying and remixing 85–8

value of 88–92, 113–17

grass-roots 78–85, 103–11

literature in schools 31

literature’s status in 27–9performance 73–4, 87

rhetoric 23–6

speeches 73–8, 97–102

see also demonstrations; posters

politics

definitions 21–2, 330–4

Dylan’s song 348

‘The modern politics of “not real” words’ 187,207–11

personal–political review 323–56

political systems 332–3

and surveillance 283–7

of understanding 188–92

of value 173–4

pop songs, remixing 86

Pope, R. 70, 323, 332, 334, 349‘popular’ culture 31–4, 188–92

posters

culture and 32–4

political 17–18, 35–6, 37, 39

Potter, Rachel 279, 280–3, 310–14

Pound, Ezra 193, 194

power 332, 334

and creativity 299of the crowd 39–45, 50–63

and evaluation 173

and globalisation 225–6

and humour 38

and media control 42, 43–4, 50

newspaper editor 282–3

see also authority

Prévos, A.J.M. 247, 248Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 136

problematizations 77–8

production in media 42, 69

progressives 180, 183

propaganda 74

Protect IP Act 297–8

Protestant Reformation 18, 44–5, 56–64

Proulx, E. Annie 274public space, occupation 80–2

punctuation marks in textspeak 203

purpose

advertisements 119, 134

and linguistic creativity 132–5

Raaflaub, K. 22

Racial and Religious Toleration Act 311racism 36, 40–1

Rae, John 180–1

The Rainbow (Lawrence) 278, 283, 310

rap music 174, 217–18

re-creativity 343

re-vision 323, 334, 354–6

rebus abbreviation 202

recontextualisation 34, 37, 38, 46in political discourse 85–8

‘The redress of poetry’ (Heaney) 91–2, 113–17

referential sign 71

referential texts 27


372

refudiate 210

regulating

creativity 272–8, 303–8

literary texts 278–88, 310–14remixing 68, 86–8

representational texts 27

reprints 59

reproduction, creative 344, 349, 354

‘Requiem for the Croppies’ (Heaney) 89–91

Rheingold, Howard 53

rhetoric 23–6, 67, 72

political speeches 73–8, 97–102rhymes 72

rhythm 131

Rice, Anne 274

Rich, Adrienne 114, 323, 354

Richard II (Shakespeare) 25, 27–8, 31, 33

Robertson, Geoffrey 280–1, 282

Robertson, R. 221, 223

Rogers, S. 79Rowling, J.K. 274, 275, 303, 304–8

‘rule of three’ rhetoric 98

Rushdie, Salman 278, 287–8

Russell, A.G.B. 33

Russian Formalists 29

Sarrasine (Balzac) 135

The Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 278, 287–8Saving Tigers campaign 133–5

Schellekens, E. 70

Schieffelin, B. 176

Schloss, J.G. 217

Schmitt, Bernd H. 161

Schwabach, Aaron 274, 275–6, 303–8

Scollon, R. and S.B.K. 105

scorecard, call centre 234–6Scott, A. 275

Scott, Sir Walter 349

Sebba, M. 105

The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 39

Sequential Tarts 51–2

Sewell, Graham 255

Shakespeare, William 25, 27–8, 31, 185

Shannon, C. 151Shepherd, D. 21

Short, M. 136

Sidney, Philip 327

Silver, Norman 179, 201–2, 205

similes 72

Simpson, J. 332

slang 191–2, 214–15

slogans 123, 165smart mobs 53

social class 219

social media

and demonstrations 85

humour in 45, 79–80

power of the crowd 39–45, 50–64

replication and mutation 18, 36

see also blogs; internet; Twitter; YouTube‘Social media in the sixteenth century’ (Standage)

44–5, 56–64

social semiotics 71–2

social stereotypes 185

sociocultural context 20, 22

sociolinguists 178

Socrates 74

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Blake) 125,128–9

Souhami, D. 279, 281–2

SoundCloud website 231–2

South Africa 278, 283–5

speech styles 239, 269–70

‘spin’ 74

‘spin doctors’ 74

‘Spreadable media’ (Jenkins) 292–4, 315–22Stalin, Josef 28

Standage, Tom 44–5, 56–64

Standard Arabic 83, 108

‘standard’ form of language 22

Starbucks 222

Sternberg, R.J. 29, 34, 218, 227

Stop Online Piracy Act 297–8

street dance 217–18structural intertextuality 109

stylistics 72

literary 121–3

in political speech 73–4, 76–7, 97–102

‘Subterranean worksick blues’ (Taylor and Bain)

237–8, 255–67

subversive humour 237–8, 255–67

Sudden Rush 244–5surveillance 278, 283–7

Sutherland, John 179–80

Swahili 228–30

Swann, J. 30, 70, 77, 219, 221, 238

Index

373

Swedenburg, T. 248

synthetic personalisation 236

Szego, C. 245

‘T’ call centre 256–9, 261–2, 266–7

tactical frivolity 84

Tagg, C. 19

Tahrir Square 82–4, 103–11

Takashi, K. 163, 166

Tanzanian hip hop 228–30

Tasso, Torquato 327

‘taste’ 71Tavassoli, Nader T. 161

Tawil-Souri, H. 104

Taylor, Phil 220, 237–8, 255–67

television 163, 189

versus Twitter 40, 42

Tetzel, Johann 57, 59

text messages 19, 20, 22

Textline database 143, 151Textspeak 20, 179–80, 185, 201–6

‘The discourse of Western marketing’ (Kelly-

Holmes) 143–4, 149–58

Thompson, Paul 258–9

Thompson, S. 274

Toffler, Alvin 41

Tolkien, J.R.R. 188

Top Boy (tv programme) 19, 20, 22Topping A. 288

trade unions 256, 264–5, 266–7

traditionalists 180–4

transcultural flows 228–9

transgressive discourses 105, 283

translation 354

‘trickle down’ metaphor 69

Trudgill, P. 22Tufekci, Zeynep 62

Twitter 42, 44, 209, 211

Neymar tweet 35–6, 38, 40–1

‘The Tyger’ (Blake) 129–30, 134

Tylor, Edward Burnett 30

UbuWeb 288–92

Ulysses (Joyce) 310, 312understanding, politics of 188–92

unregulated space 108

value

conflicting values 180–4

and creativity 171–3, 197–8

in political discourse 88–92, 113–17

cultural 29–34, 272judgement of 184–7

and language 174–7

politics of 173–4

Van Rooyen, J.C.W. 284

Vander Ark, Steven 276, 303, 306–7

Vaughan, J. 178

verse paragraphs 339

Vinson, J. 194voice in text 336, 340, 342, 346

von Clausewitz, C. 331

von Poschinger, H.R. 331

vowels in textspeak 203

Walcott, Derek 114, 192, 193

Wales, Jimmy 298

Walker, Alice 192Waller, D. 150

Warner Bros. 274–5, 304–5, 308

Warshauer Freedman S., 21

The Waste Land (Eliot) 189–90

water as metaphor 324, 335

The Way Women Write (Hiatt) 186

Weaver, W. 151

Weber, Heidi 162Weiner, E. 332

The Well of Loneliness (Hall) 278–9, 281–3, 310

Welsh, I. 84

Western marketing discourse 143–4, 149–58

Widdowson, H. 27

Wikipedia 43, 53–4, 297–9

Wild West imagery 155–7

Wilkinson, Barry 255Williams, Raymond 30, 325–9, 331

Willmott, R. 128

Winkler, M.M. 85

Withnall, A. 17

woodcuts 61

Woolard, K. 176

Woolf, Virginia 192, 193, 194, 283

Wordsworth, William 328writing

creative 181, 327, 328

dialogical 34

metaphors in 285–7


374

Yankovic, Weird Al 86

YouTube 68, 85, 122, 294, 347

Zack, Liesbeth 79–80, 106–7

Zephaniah, Benjamin 114

Zhang, Shi 161

Zimmer, Ben 210–11

Index

375