ABSTRACT
By: Mariah Parker (0000-0001-8947-8681) and Ruth Harman
This chapter explores how language play, and especially spoken word, hip hop and theater games, provide our youth with ways to deepen their critical and creative awareness of language as a pliable repertoire of choices. The first section explores how linguists and cognitive scholars conceptualize the “literariness” of language (e.g., Cook, 1994; Jakobson, 1985). Why, in other words, is language play an important element in literature and everyday discourse? The chapter then moves to exploration of the ways our Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CS SFL) programs support language play and creativity.
