Whether creativity can be taught or not has remained an unresolved and recurring topic of debate in creative writing. Writing that is creative and imaginative is distinguished from translation, which is more derivative. However, both activities are creative in their own unique ways. With the intent of fostering creativity in creative writing, I…

Few individuals--whether scholars or laypersons--think that the words "smart" or "intelligent" suffice to characterize a person's intellectual strengths. In this article, the author reviews a set of terms commonly used to characterize intellectual strengths and then introduces the concept of "synthesizing"--an…

I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…

In a Dialogue section of the "Journal of Sociolinguistics" (vol. 26, no. 1), author pairs introduce a number of themes and debates in sign language sociolinguistics, explore why these are debates; how the debates are situated within sociolinguistics as a whole; and how spoken language sociolinguistics does or does not have similar…

This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive among adults, much less is known about how children acquire such variation. The literature thus far indicates that the pathway of development involves first producing only…

Shin and Mill (2021) propose four steps children go through when learning "variable form use." Although I applaud Shin and Miller's focus on morphosyntactic variation, their accrual of evidence is post hoc and selective. Fortunately, Shin and Miller recognize this and encourage tests of their ideas. In support of their work, I share data…

This paper considers the issue of the norm in the context of learner corpus research and its implications for foreign language teaching. It seeks to answer three main questions: Does learner corpus research require a native norm? What corpus-derived norms are available and how do we choose? What do we do with these norms in the classroom? The…

American Norwegian (AmNo), a moribund heritage variety of Norwegian spoken predominantly in the Upper Midwest of the US, licenses "wh"-infinitives (i.e. indirect questions), which are structures that are not acceptable in either standard Norwegian Bokmål or Norwegian dialects. Adopting a spanning-account of syntax (Blix, 2021; Julien,…

Comparing legal, policy, and statute writing--from stone records of ancient Britain civil servants to opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court--this article demonstrates how weaving threads of textual language variation and change can innervate writing in the disciplines and history of the English language courses, particularly courses designated for…

Chinese is a highly complex language with internal variation unprecedented in most other languages. Yet, that does not mean Chinese is unique in the sense that it cannot be compared to other languages and new concepts need to be introduced for the description of it. This paper is dedicated to the question of how to apply the notion of…

Background: This study reports on new contexts in which formulaic language has been used in the years since 2013 when the last synthesis was carried out. The background presents an old but still useful definition and lists themes under which research was arranged in 2013 and which continue to be used. Aims: This study has a particular emphasis on…

While language is clearly an important aspect of (labor) migration, there have not been many contemplations and interrogations, although truly compelling and necessary, on language varieties and their place and position in labor migration and transnational work in the contemporary world, and hence why we intend to do so in this article. In our…

There is tremendous variation in the use of American English by major geographic regions, as well as within these regions or cities, and by cultural background. The variety of English spoken by many African American people in the United States is called African American English (AAE). AAE affects early literacy skills in ways that may require…

Language ideologies are a powerful way of perpetuating inequalities, as peripheralized speakers who have internalized the lack of legitimacy attributed to them often end up reproducing censure rather than resisting it. Foregrounding the affective dimension, this paper explores the role of shame as a fulcrum articulating the individual with the…

Testing practices and the construct of English both serve separately and interactionally to promote activities of modernity and coloniality. Tests categorize and rank learning and knowledge in discrete, static ways. The construct of the English language through standardization and other processes upholds linguistic purism ideologies. Such concerns…