Cover not available

In:Performing Metaphoric Creativity across Modes and Contexts
Edited by Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Blanca Kraljevic Mujic
[Figurative Thought and Language 7] 2020
► pp. 311–342

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 13
Figuring it out

Old modes and new codes for multimodality, technology and creative performativity in 21st century India

 | Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.7.13nai
Abstract
Satya Nadella, Vikram Chandra and Manjul Bhargava, three public figures of Indian origin, have recently suggested that significant similarities exist between the creative processes involved in writing poetry and in producing computer codes. This paper explores some of the consequences of drawing on unfamiliar ‘non-western’ cultural traditions to augment current theories of creativity, coding and performativity. More specifically, it examines the premise that ‘creativity’ relies on an able grasp of rules, extends to a risk-taking capacity to break these very rules and, sometimes, to combine them with other embodied modes such as music and dance. The chapter argues that this premise is investigated in Indian treatises from Bharata to Nagojibhatta, who may have been early advocates of multimodality in the pre-modern world.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: “Coding teaches us how to think”
  • 2.Compositionality and Creativity: ‘Poetry is the best code’
  • 3.Metaphor and Inference: “I am a riddle in nine syllables”
    • The puzzle
    • The challenge to its own medium
    • The engagement with pattern
  • 4.Performativity and Emotion: “We want an object of diversion, which must be audible as well as visible’’
  • 5.Conclusion: “Eureka! Immense.”
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (55)
References
Bharata (1951). Natyasastra (M. Ghosh, Trans.). (Original work, circa 1st century AD).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhargava, M. (2015). India Questions Math Genius Professor Manjul Bhargava. [Video file]. NDTV (2015, January 21) Retrieved from [URL]
Bhaskara (1817). Līlāvatī (H. T. Colebrooke, Trans.). (Original work, circa 12th century).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boden, M. A. (1990). The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999). Computer models of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 351–372). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chandra, V. (2014). Geek sublime: Writing fiction, coding software. London/ New York: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of emotions in man and animals. London: Murray. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davidson, D. (1984). Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, P. (2007). Emotions revealed, second edition: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life (2nd ed.). New York: Holt Paperback.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garrett, J. A. (1973). Classical dictionary of India. New York: Burt Franklin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. & Cameron, L. (2008). The social-cognitive dynamics of metaphor performance. Cognitive Systems Research, 9, 64–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W., & Colston, H. L. (2007). Irony in language and thought: A cognitive science reader. New York: Psychology Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goody, J. (1986). The logic of writing and the organization of society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hemachandra, A. (circa 12th century AD). Kavyanuprakasha.
Jobs, S. (2013). Retrieved from [URL]
Kiparsky, P. (1994). Paninian linguistics. The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 6, 2918–2923.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2003). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Low, G., & Cameron, L. (1999). Researching and applying metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milton, J. (2003). Paradise lost. London: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1667).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nadella, S. (n.d.). Retrieved from [URL]
Nagojibhatta (circa 18th century AD). Patanjalasutravritti.
Nair, R. B. (1986). Telling lies: Some literary and other violations of Grice’s maxim of quality. Nottingham Linguistic Circular 14 (Special Issue on Pragmatics), 53–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nair, R. B., Carter, R. & Toolan, M. (1988). Rewarding risks: Clines of metaphoricity. Journal of Literary Semantics, 20–40.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nair, R. B. (1997). Technobrat: Culture in a cybernetic classroom. New Delhi, India: Harper Collins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2002a). Lying on the postcolonial couch: The idea of indifference. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2002b). Translation, text and theory: The paradigm of India. New Delhi, India: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2003a). Narrative gravity: Conversation, cognition, culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2003b). The aesthetics of the ordinary: Evoking narrative wonder within the linear grammar of modernity. Evam: Forum on Indian Representations 2: Vols. 1 & 2, 266–288.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Poetry in a time of terror: Essays in the postcolonial preternatural Delhi /New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011a). The nature of narrative: Schemes, genes, memes, dreams and screams. In A. W. Geertz, & J. S. Jensen (Eds.), Religious narrative, cognition and culture: Image and word in the mind of narrative (pp. 117–146). London: Equinox Series in Religion, Cognition and Culture.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011b). Thinking out the story box: Creative writing and narrative culture in south Asia, TEXT, Special Issue, Vol.10, 1–22.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Narrative as a mode of explanation: Evolution & emergence. In M. Lissack, & A. Garber (Eds.), Modes of explanation: Affordances for action and prediction (pp. 140–154). London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Virtue, virtuosity and the virtual: Experiments in the contemporary Indian English novel. In U. Anjaria (Ed.), The history of the Indian novel in English (pp. 251–266). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). The nature of language and the language of nature: Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘sabda tattwo’ or ‘the essence of words’ as an integrationist text. In A. Pable (Ed.), Routledge Research Series (pp. 45–62). London/ New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). Intending to mean, pretending to be: Reflections on the limits on genre. In R. Page, B. Busse, & N. Nørgaard (Eds.), Rethinking language, text and context: Interdisciplinary research in stylistics (pp. 147–163). London: Routledge.. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nair, R.B. (2019) Epithymetics: The Psychology of Desire. In Misra, G. (Ed.) Psychology: Cognitive and affective processes, volume I in the series Indian council of social sciences research (ICSSR) research surveys and explorations Research (ICSSR) Research Surveys and Explorations (pp. 204–270) Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nair, R. B. & de Souza, P. (Eds.) (2020). Keywords for India: A conceptual lexicon for the 21st century. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plath, S. (1960). The colossus and other poems. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (1986). The rule of metaphor: The creation of meaning in language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Language in society (pp. 1–23). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Staal, F. (2006). Artificial languages across sciences and civilizations. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 34 (1), 89–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Sanskrit grammar. Retrieved from [URL]
Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Handbook of creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turner, M. (1996). The literary mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. (1992). On verbal irony. Lingua, 87(1–2), 53–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Tseng, Ming-Yu
2024. ‘Just Like Pandemic Prevention’: The Semiotic Flow That Interweaves Multimodality, Metaphor, and Narrativity. Metaphor and Symbol 39:2 ► pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Nair, Rukmini Bhaya
2021. ‘Do You Believe in God, Doctor?’ The Atheism of Fiction and the Fiction of Atheism. Sophia 60:3 ► pp. 749 ff. DOI logo
Nair, Rukmini Bhaya
2022. Postcolonial pragmatics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 1083 ff. DOI logo
Nair, Rukmini Bhaya
2022. Postcolonial pragmatics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue