Microgenesis of language creativity: Innovation, conformity and incongruence in children’s language play Asta Cekaite Linköping University, Sweden article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Language play Creativity Child interaction Repetition Performance abstract The study examines young children’s engagement in language creativity, in this instance, spontaneous language play. It presents an analysis of peer group interaction in a multi- lingual preschool setting for 3- to 6-year-olds in Sweden. Combining video-ethnography and detailed interactional analysis, it explores the interactional organization, textual features, evaluative/affective stances and social functions that characterize language play. The theoretical perspective draws on interactional sociolinguistics and the Vygotskian (2004) notion that imagination and creativity are built on patterning (i.e., recogniz- ability), innovative transformations and manipulations of prior materials, experiences and understandings. Here, creativity is shown to be a collective and normatively guided process: it is located in peer group collaborative performances, and involves peer group language, affective and aesthetic socialization. The analysis shows that children’s spon- taneous language play is characterized by an aesthetic in which that which is incon- gruent, unexpected and also recognizable is exploited and appreciated. It feeds on the ongoing tension between predictability (routine of culturally recognizable activities) and the novelty/improvisational character of in situ performance. Creative language use serves as a multifaceted locus for aesthetic, affective and normative (ideological) stance taking and mutual socialization. Through their performances, the children socialize each other into sensitivity to what kind of contributions constitute valued verbal genres of the peer group culture. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. “Creativity is present, in actuality, not only when great historical works are born but also whenever a person imagines, combines, alters, and creates something new, no matter how small a drop in the bucket this new thing appears compared to the works of geniuses.” (Vygotsky, [1967] 2004: 10–11). 1. Introduction Young children’s spontaneous language play offers ubiquitous examples of creative language use (Cook, 2000), and the empirical exploration of children’s interactions may be useful for understanding the microgenesis of language creativity. Here, microgenesis is conceptualized as the emergent development and learning that takes place within moment-to-moment social interaction (Ochs and Schieffelin, 1982). In the present study, language play situations are examined while paying attention to the social dimensions of creativity and documenting the social interactional architecture of creative processes in E-mail address: asta.cekaite@liu.se. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.01.007 0388-0001/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Language Sciences xxx (2017) 1–11 Please cite this article in press as: Cekaite, A., Microgenesis of language creativity: Innovation, conformity and incongruence in children’s language play, Language Sciences (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.01.007