ABSTRACT
Many scholars who have written about creativity have often noted that creativity is an elusive term and it is hard to define it. Maybe we are asking the wrong question when we ask ‘What does creativity mean?’ Instead, the question we should perhaps be asking is ‘How has creativity been used?’ While the former denotes a static, dictionary-like meaning a word such as creativity can carry, the latter indicates the multiple, dynamic, situated, ongoing semiotic nature, life and ontology of a word in accordance with the context in which it has been and is used. Creativity is a topic that crosses over different genres and disciplines. Before we investigate ‘creativity’ with reference to the domain of language, language teaching/learning and applied linguistics, we first need to consider what we can learn from how creativity has been defined and written about in other domains. This chapter looks at the rhetoric and language of creativity in the general academic literature and examines various approaches, perspectives and frameworks that have been used to define creativity.
