1. Digital writing and creativity
Summer School: Language and New Media

2. How is spelling valued online?

4. What is creativity?
Implicit in this analytical stance towards creativity is also the notion that underpinning the creative process is our ability to recognise and exploit our experience of the world and in the semiotic systems within which we work [….] On the one hand, creativity involves understanding and being able to exploit old patterns, structures and rules, and on the other it involves breaking out of old patterns and coming up with new ones.
Jones (2014: 6)

5. Creativity and digital ‘writing’
What are the systems that are exploited in digital writing?
Systems that predate digital media
Orthography
The rules that govern how written system represent sounds (graphemes and phonemes)
E.g. Where to place <ng> and <gh> in words?
Spelling
The application of orthographic principles to individual words
Typography
Use of fonts and layout
Punctuation

6. Unconventional spelling is principled
Which of the following examples is more effective?
Why does the other not work?
Down with skool
Down with zguul

7. Types of respelling (Tagg, 2015)
Colloquial contractions and respellings (Weber, 1986)
Kinda and gonna
Nope, yeah, yep
Regiolectal respellings (Androutsopoulos, 2000)
<Summat>, <sumfing>, <summort>
Phonetic spelling
Letter and number homophones: 2, 4, u, b, c
Eye dialect: <thort> for <thought>
Abbreviations and acronyms
NATO, lol
Consonant writing
<pls>, <txt>, <wk>
Visual morphemes (Bolinger, 1946) xx
Colloquial contractions and respellings don’t reflect pronunciation
(Eye dialect is the respelling of a word in a more straightforward yet unconventional way; in Sebba’s (2007, p. 34) words, ‘[u]sing sound-symbol correspondences which are conventional for the language, but are the wrong ones for the particular word’: eg, <thort> for <thought>’. Unlike colloquial contractions, they change the sound of the word.)

8. Unconventional spelling is principled
What do the following forms mean?
Pls
eae

9. Creative spelling and (older)media?
LEAVING TONITE STOPPING OVER KC ARRIVE HOME SUNDAY MORNING SEVEN THIRTY DON'T WORRY EVERYTHING OK WILL GIVE DETAILS WHEN ARRIVE WALT.
(Telegram from Walt Disney to his brother and business partner, Roy, on the night that Mickey Mouse was born, 13 March, 1928)

10. Indexicality and respellings
Colloquial contractions
Eye dialect
Colloquial contractions can indicate general social characteristics
Education and/or social status
before you comment on how much education someone may or may not have check your own spelling "She was am old lady with a family“. (Comment from RIP Margaret Thatcher Facebook page, my emphasis)

11. Enregisterment
Indexicality become established through a series of processes known as enregisterment
The linguistic norm is noticed by an outsider
It becomes stabilised in the association with a particular group
Age, gender
It is documented in meta-linguistic commentary (e.g. prescriptive judgements)
These form the basis of stereotypical judgements about particular types of people

12. Spelling and gender Herring and Zelenkauskaite (2009)
CMC as ‘linguistic markets’ (Bourdieu 1977) where language use (including typography and orthography) is the symbolic currency.
Are there gender differences in abbreviation and insertions in iTV SMS? What do they mean?
Abbreviations
Clippings
Consonant respellings
Letter/number homophones
Phonetic spelling
Omission of punctuation
Repeated punctuation!!!!
S p a c e s within w o r d s

13. Findings Women wrote longer SMS messages than men
Women used more non-standard forms of spelling and typography than did men
Women used a greater variety of non-standard typography than did men

14. Variation and prestige
Sociolinguistic studies have found that men are more likely to use the non-standard forms and women are more likely to use standard forms (e.g. Labov, 1972; Trudgill, 1974)
overt prestige
covert prestige

15. Prestige and value online?
Herring and Zelenkauskaite (2009)
The iTV SMS context is a heterosexual market where the symbolic capital is ‘attractiveness’
The non-standard typography indexed ‘emotional expression and creativity’, typically ‘feminine qualities of sociability’

16. Activity Let’s watch David Crystal talking about Texting
How do his arguments support what we have covered so far?
What other points does he make that we have not covered?
Is texting damaging our spelling?

17. Value of new media creativity?
What are the cultural politics of creativity? How are the processes of creativity acquired, debated, regulated and changed? (Jones 2014)

18. orthography and language ideology

19. Vernacular Literacies
Literacy practices that are not part of educational or professional institutions but are relatively free from institutional control, rooted in everyday practice
‘Vernacular’ refers to local varieties of language, those that are first to be acquired: the most local and informal, uncodified and often classified as non-standard).
(Androutsopoulos 2010: 206)

20. Spelling and scripts Scripts
There are multiple orthographic systems
Scripts
Scripts are the resources within a given alphabet
What are the ‘characters’ that are used to represent these graphemes?
Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Coptic, Hebrew etc etc.

21. Transcripting
What are the affordances of and constraints on digital writing for multilingual participants?
Digraphia
The use of two scripts for the representation of the same language (Androutsopoulos 2009)
Transcripting
The use of one orthographic system for another language
E.g. the roman alphabet for Greek or Arabic
Transliteration can be:
Using the example <η>
Phonetic <i>
Visual <n>
Keyboard based <h>
Approaches can be
Phonetic
Orthographic (trying to retain the look of Greek)
For example, <ϴ>
Phonetically <th>
Orthographically <8>
Historically, British English standard spelling is the outcome of bilinguals (Sebba 2007, p.81)
Transliteration is the conversion of one text into the script of another

22. An example of Greeklish (from Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou 2003)
Which kind of Greeklish is this? Orthographic or phonetic? Why would this choice be important in this context?

23. Androutsopoulos (2014)
Complexity of the linguistic repertoire by multilingual speakers
German/Greek
Complexity of our superdiverse contexts
Migration and work patterns are highly fluid
Ethnographic study (3 years)
7 Greek students originally living in Hamburg
Gave informed consent to view Facebook profiles
Gave interviews
2 selected for close analysis

24. Zach’s move to Greek
The use of the Greek script as well as the translation of the Greek and the German suggests a more to the Greek identity that Zach posts during his time in military service in Greece.

25. Activity Read the extract on the next slide.
What features of Arabizi are identified?
What value judgements are made about Arabizi?
Who is said to be concerned about Arabizi?
What evidence is given for the claims?
What problems are there with this report?

26. ‘Arabizi is destroying the Arabic language’
JEDDAH: Arabizi, a term that describes a system of writing Arabic in English, is now more popular than ever, especially online.
Parents and teachers are becoming more concerned over the popularity of this new trend. Some see it as a threat to the Arabic language. A non-English speaker does not need to speak the language to communicate with others in Arabizi. Numbers are also mixed in Arabizi to represent some letters in Arabic, such as 2, 5, 6, 7 and 9. Most Arab Internet users find this way easier than typing in Arabic. Teachers fear that this will weaken their Arabic language ability or even replace the language in the future. Arabic professional professors from the Arab world consider it a war against the Arabic language to make it disappear in the long run. Miral Dibawy, a 21-year-old university graduate, is using Arabizi because she finds it easier when typing on the Internet and sending text messages. She also admitted that it has weakened her Arabic language ability when it comes to writing. “I was so addicted to this language when chatting and sending texts to my friends. When it came to my research paper, I was finding it hard to write in Arabic. I had to write it in Arabizi first and then translated it into Arabic,” said Miral.

27. Summary ‘Non-standard’ respellings are not adhoc but principled
They are not exclusive to social media
The values of the choice of script and the type of respelling reflects identity through a process of indexicality that can be more or less direct
The choice of respelling can be shaped by other medium and social factors such as genre and audience design
There are strong value judgements associated with respellings and transcripting, not just in English but in other languages too.

28. Activity
In pairs, look at the examples of respelling on your hand out.
What kind of respelling has occurred?
What systems have been used creatively?
What kinds of effects are created by the respelling?
Identity? (age, gender, education)
Implicatures? (humour, informality)

29. References
Al-Issa, A. and L.S. Dahan (eds) (2011) Global English and Arabic: issues of language, culture and identity. Bern: Peter Lang.
Androutsopoulos, J. (2014) Moments of sharing: Entextualization and linguistic repertoires in social networking, Journal of Pragmatics 73, p.4-18.
Jaffe, A, Androutsopoulos, J., and Sebba, M., (2012) Language and Social Processes : Orthography as Social Action : Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power. Berlin/Boston, US: De Gruyter Mouton.
Jones, R. (2014) Discourse and Creativity. Routledge.
Koutsogiannis, D. and Mitsikopoulou, B. (2003) Greeklish and Greekness: Trends and Discourses of “Glocalness” Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 9 (1).
Tagg, C. (2015) Exploring Digital Communication. London and New York: Routledge.