The Words We Use are Black and White
- Submitting institution
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The University of Bolton
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 0049_27_REF2_SH_01
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Safkhet Select
- ISBN
- 978-3945651018
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Words We Use are Black and White (Safkhet Select, 2014) explores the many ways in which humans fail to communicate, analysing in particular the failures of interpersonal dialogue. The research for the book involved investigating how Reader-Response theory and Bakhtinian dialogics apply to the writer of creative works. It focussed specifically on how the notion of reader-as-creator of a text relates to the creative process, the psychological studies of creativity, and critical theories of creative writing practice.
The novel’s title is inspired by Jacques Brel’s idea that “When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in colour”. He goes on to say that these words in colour are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. The research investigates how in writerly terms this “colour” and meaning can be effectively represented given that all communicative (literary) acts must be at best a (mis)representation of those highly personal colours.
The novel was launched at events in England, Wales and Ireland, and readings and interviews have been given at various locations both in person and online. Elements of the research have been included in three successive conference papers at Great Writing: The International Creative Writing Conference, published in Creative Writing and Education (Multilingual Matters, 2015) and TEXT: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses (AAWP). The study of communication and writerly acts of composition has fed directly into work with the HE Committee of NAWE on the Research Benchmark Statement for Creative Writing (NAWE, 2019) and will feature in a contracted book with Palgrave, provisionally entitled The Games Writers Play, scheduled for publication in early 2022.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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