ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the extent to which examples of everyday spoken discourse display creative properties. The data for discussion are drawn almost exclusively from a unique corpus of spoken English. The chapter discusses the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) corpus and its organisation into differerent speech genres and social contexts of use. It focuses on review of some key figures of speech and forms of language used for what can be considered to be creative purposes. Morphological creativity, whereby the derivational potential of words and morphemes is creatively exploited, is surprisingly common in everyday talk. The analysis of conversational snippets allows an appropriate focus on particular creativity-prone features of language but it can also be an atomistic practice. Spoken creativity grows from interpersonal interaction in which a shared context allows the marking of attitude in a more overt manner than in written contexts.
