ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we were concerned with the kinds of creativity that go unnoticed – the natural ability of any language user to produce utterances that are novel. It was argued there that lexical priming provided an adequate account of such creativity. But as we noted, there are other kinds of creativity, where language is used in startlingly novel ways, whether by accident or design. One of these kinds of creativity occurs when someone says or writes something that surprises the recipient, whether because of its incongruity, humour, wordplay or simple oddness. Carter (2004) has shown that linguistic creativity of this kind is deeply embedded in the ordinary language practices of non-literary users of English (if the word ‘ordinary’ can be used of a facility that is always special, however often it is used). A theory of the lexicon must have something to say about such language.
