Ludic Strategies in Modern English-Language Mediatext (original) (raw)

Language Play

Lire Journal (Journal of Linguistics and Literature)

J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series, published from 1997 to 2007, have been globally acclaimed as one of the most popular novels with the most varied target readers. A lot of reviews have been made and by far, they focused more on the literary aspects. This research offers a different way of reading Harry Potter novels since it will focus more on language play as Rowling’s style of writing, which is believed to contribute to the comprehension of the literary elements. Language play is a means of foregrounding – linguistic forms that stand out in a text. The research is done to find out the language play forms contained in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and how these forms support the understanding of the literary elements. The research employs the descriptive qualitative method; various linguistic forms of language play are taken as the data, which are then investigated further in terms of the types of linguistic features. Afterward, these are connected with the liter...

Book review: Winter-Froemel, Esme and Zirker Angelika (eds.) (2015), Enjeux du jeu de mots. Perspectives linguistiques et littéraires [Stakes of wordplay. Linguistic and literary perspectives]. Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter

The European Journal of Humour Research, 2016

Winter-Froemel, Esme and Zirker Angelika (eds.) ( ), Enjeux du jeu de mots. Perspectives linguistiques et littéraires [Stakes of wordplay. Linguistic and literary perspectives]. 1 De Gruyter: Berlin/Boston. Esme Winter-Froemel is professor of Romance Linguistics at Trier University (Germany). Her main areas of research are semantics, pragmatics and written language. Since 2009, wordplay is a central focus of both her teaching and research. Since 2013, she is the head of the scientific network "The Dynamics of Wordplay: Language Contact, Linguistic Innovation, Speaker-Hearer-Interaction". Angelika Zirker is assistant professor of English Literature at Tübingen University (Germany). She has participated in several scientific projects combining linguistics and literature, such as the ongoing project on wordplay with Esme Winter-Froemel. The present book they edit is divided into three parts. The first part, entitled Jeux de mots entre locuteurs et auditeurs [Wordplay between speakers and hearers] deals with the necessary complicity between speakers and hearers for wordplay to be achieved. The second part, titled Jeux de mots entre les langues [Wordplay between languages], focuses on multilingual wordplay and discusses its translation. The third part, Jeux de mots et dispositifs sémiotiques [Wordplay and semiotic devices], returns on the principal focus of the book (i.e. the metalinguistic function of wordplay) adding the iconic dimension wordplay may be based on.

Bridging notions of language play and language awareness

This article explores the interface between language play and language awareness. Grounded in an understanding of two kinds of language play, ludic language play and language play as rehearsal, it shows how the shared theoretical underpinnings and distinctive features of both overlap with the concept of language awareness. Spanning across cognitive, affective, and social dimensions of learners' language awareness, both types of language play highlight learners' conscious perception and sensitivity to linguistic forms and functions, attention, noticing, alertness, and particularly engagement. The paper contends that there is a close connection between language play and language awareness, and thereby argues that language play episodes, whether for the purpose of amusement or private rehearsal, could yield insights into students' knowledge about language and their ability to reflect on it through engagement with language. Finally, the paper outlines implications for research on language play episodes and for their use in teaching to incorporate humor into the language classroom.

I can haz language play: The construction of language and identity in LOLspeak

The 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference Proceedings - 2011 (Canberra, 1-4 Dec 2011) , 2012

LOLspeak is a complex and systematic reimagining of the English language. It is most often associated with thepopular, productive and long-lasting Internet meme ‘LOLcats’. This style of English is characterised by the simultaneous playfulmanipulation of multiple levels of language.Using community-generated web content as a corpus, we analysesome of the common language play strategies (Sherzer 2002)used in LOLspeak, which include morphological reanalysis,atypical sentence structure and lexical playfulness. The linguistic variety that emerges from these manipulations displayscollaboratively constructed norms and tendencies providing astandard which may be meaningfully adhered to or subverted by users. We conclude with a discussion of why people may choose toparticipate in such language play, and suggest that the languageplay strategies used by participants allow for the construction of complex identity

Psycholinguistic Meanings of Playfulness

2019

The aim of the article is to describe psycholinguistic meanings of the word-stimulus "playfulness" in the linguistic world-image of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. The main method of the conducted research was the psycholinguistic experiment. The sample according to the criteria "gender" (males and females-included both age groups) and "age" (18-35 and 36-60) included 1,600 respondents with 400 people in each subgroup of respondents. The overall number of reactions to stimulus "playfulness" comprised 1,600 associative reactions with 475 unique associations including word combinations and sentences, where 159 reactions have frequency over 1,316 individual associations, and 0 refusals. The semantic interpretation of the results of the free association test made it possible to single out 19 psycholinguistic meanings, 12 out of them accounted for more than 1%: 1) "cheerful and joyful state", 2) "intention to attract the attention of the opposite or one's own sex", 3) "child-like spontaneity", 4) "agility, physical activity of an animal", 5) "daring and provocative behavior", 6) "agility, physical behavior of a human being", 7) "ease", 8) "changeability", 9) "behavior during a sexual intercourse", 10) "carelessness", 11) "mental activity", 12) "deliberate deceit". Taking into account the respondents' verbal behavior, the following components of playfulness were identified: flirting, impishness, humor, fugue (eccentricity), ease, imagination. The formulated psycholinguistic meanings of playfulness can be fully considered as such that give the most adequate and reliable model of the systemic significance of the studied word and which reflects the reality of linguistic consciousness.