ABSTRACT
The concept of creativity carries with it the idea that something new and useful has emerged from some form of human endeavor. This chapter discusses what creativity can mean for second-language learning in the classroom and suggests how particular forms of classroom talk, especially those that are dialogic in nature, can be part of this process of emerging new meanings. The second-language classrooms are places where a significant amount of social interaction occurs, the chapter views creativity as a social rather than an individual activity. A sociocultural perspective contends that cognitive acts have their roots in interactions between people. Human learning is a profoundly social activity, mediated largely through language. The learner actively interprets the intervening act, the mediation, in order to make sense of the support that the other is offering. When this occurs in a second language, the sense that the learner makes of the interventions is often the result of dialogic negotiation of meaning with the mediator.
