UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Multilingual English users' linguistic innovation

Wei, L; (2020) Multilingual English users' linguistic innovation. World Englishes , 39 (2) pp. 236-248. 10.1111/weng.12457. Green open access

[thumbnail of Wei-2020-World_Englishes.pdf]
Preview
Text
Wei-2020-World_Englishes.pdf - Published Version

Download (916kB) | Preview

Abstract

Can ‘non‐native’ speakers of English innovate in English? This seemly simple question bothers sociolinguists and sociolinguistic research because we feel uncertain whether the ‘inventive’ productions by ‘non‐native’ speakers should be treated as evidence of creativity or mistakes. This article aims to tackle this question from a translanguaging perspective, using data from social media communication amongst multilingual English users in the Sinophone world. Examples include a range of creative expressions that mix elements of English with those from other languages and semiotic means. A translanguaging perspective raises questions about the very notion of named languages and offers a radically different way of analysing these expressions as socio‐politically meaningful linguistic innovations. The theoretical and methodological implications of the translanguaging approach for the study of linguistic innovation by multilingual language users and for the study of world Englishes are discussed.

Type: Article
Title: Multilingual English users' linguistic innovation
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1111/weng.12457
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12457
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10093289
Downloads since deposit
128Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item