Language and Creativity: Improvisation

Abstract

Improvisation is a ubiquitous aspect of both everyday and ritualized interactions. When composing utterances, speakers draw from a vast repertoire of expressions and patterns that allows for spontaneous invention across a range of situations and contexts. This entry explains how one's ability to improvise varies along a continuum and is made possible, in part, by socialization practices that include routine activities and frequent repetition while also allowing for some variation and individual invention. Past and current research suggests that repeated exposure to the conventions of particular speech genres and exchange systems, combined with an expansive stock of idiomatic, formulaic, or semi‐formulaic speech provides the building blocks out of which both planned discourse (e.g. in a scripted public speech) and improvised oral discourse (e.g. in informal conversation or in an unplanned public speech) are born.