Exploration of Linguistic Creativity in Multilingual Speakers

PI: PD Dr. Agnieszka Ewa Krautz

Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr. Elena Salakhyan

Student Research Assistants: Anna Töws, Antonia Hahn, Waldemar Schauermann, Luis Rößner, Franziska Čavar

In this project, we will explore the notion of linguistic creativity in its narrow sense of lexical creativity. Specifically, we will look at three areas that relate to the: (1) production of compound nouns; (2) coining of novel metaphors; and (3) use of diminutive forms, which reflect the more playful aspect of language use and flexibility when operating in multiple linguistic systems. We expect to observe a multilingual/bilingual advantage stemming from a greater representational system of morphemes, words, phrases as well as ways of combining them. Furthermore, we predict that, if the advantage is present it may be mediated by two factors that have been shown to influence verbal creativity in bilingual speakers, namely, selective attention and metalinguistic awareness.

The novelty of this project relates to the use of psycholinguistic experiments to explore the notion of creativity. The findings will be generalized to research on multilingualism and its relevance to the creative industries, such as the advertising market, press market, or broadcasting industry.

gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/432519830