The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

23Bilingual Language Play and World Englishes

ALEXANDRA A. RIVLINA

1 Introduction

Bilingual language play is a manifestation of bilingual creativity, or “bilinguals’ creativity,” defined by Braj Kachru as “those creative linguistic processes which are the result of competence in two or more languages” (1985: 20). The concept bilingual creativity embraces a wide range of creative bilingual practices. These include, first, bilingual literary or discursive creativity found in contact literatures and in “the creative ways language is used to affect social change” (Bolton & Jones 2010: 454); and, second, linguistic creativity, or creative language per se, connected with the innovative use of linguistic forms across languages. Bilingual language play is bilingual linguistic creativity par excellence, when the manipulation of linguistic forms from two languages is foregrounded and highlighted by rhetorical devices such as punning, hybridization, or rhyming; in other words, when the juxtaposition of linguistic forms from different languages is played on.

Numerous studies show that multilingualism fosters linguistic creativity because a multilingual speaker has “both more leeway and more means for linguistic creativity than a monolingual person because he/she has more resources to draw on, manipulate and be creative with” (Hülmbauer & Seidlhofer 2013: 396). Moreover, multilingualism develops in bilinguals and multilinguals the degree of metalinguistic awareness that many monolinguals ...