engleski

Language, (situated) creativity and conceptual integration

Evolutionarily speaking, moments and conditions that foster creativity are often those that are caused by crisis and existential challenges that need to be addressed so as to restore balance and/or create advancement to social groups and individuals. Teachers at all levels of education have been facing such challenges during COVID pandemic and their rather urgent transition to online teaching environment. Creativity can be discussed in terms of two complementary perspectives: the perspective of (creative) individuals and their cognitive capacities and the perspective of communities surrounding potentially creative individuals, that is a larger situational context within which creative solutions are born. In my talk I will address the two perspectives and their relation to language, or, more specifically, in relation to the nature of language and the ways languages are taught. Language is complex and dynamic, and cognitive mechanisms, such as conceptual integration, proposed to be responsible for semantic complexities, meaning construal, and dynamics of thought (Fauconnier & Turner 2002, Geld & Stanojević 2018, Turner 2014) point to the importance of investigating and teaching languages as endeavors yielding novelty and creative solutions. Cognitive science tells us that human creativity probably appeared at the time when our working memory had developed to the extent that we could simultaneously juggle two seemingly distant, different or contradictory elements. The integration of such elements results in creative wholes. Naturally, creativity that results in such composite wholes has its contextual preconditions and triggers. This aspect of creativity has been labeled as situated (see Nonaka and Zhu 2012) and largely discussed within disciplines focused on economic growth. However, I believe that this particular aspect of creativity needs to be expanded and redefined as education-based situated creativity and become a backbone of education. Recent research conducted among Croatian teachers, including teachers of English and German as L2, has shown that the above- mentioned transition to online teaching environment served as a strong trigger for creative processes. Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books Geld, R. & Stanijević, M.-M. (2018). Strateško konstruiranje značenja riječju i slikom - konceptualna motivacija u ovladavanju jezikom. Zagreb: Srednja Europa Nonaka, I., & Zhu, Z. (2012). Pragmatic Strategy - Eastern Wisdom, Global Success. New York: Cambridge University Press Turner, Mark (2014). The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark. Oxford University Press

language, situated creativity, conceptual integration

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