Formulaic creativity: Oral poetics and cognitive grammar

• We connect Parry-Lord's formulas and themes to frames and constructions in cognitive grammar.
• Verbal creativity and language acquisition are idiomatic for both oral poetics and cognitive grammar.
• Formulaic creativity is the opportunistic reuse of idiomatic patterns in situated improvisation.
• Oral poetic formulas can be studied as constructional patterns linked to conceptual frames.
• Formulaic acquisition, phraseological creativity, the constructicon, and multimodality are the most promising areas.

This paper proposes to rethink the study of oral performativity in the context of modern cognitive science. To that end, we list a number of so-far unrecognized parallels between the Parry-Lord theory of composition in performance and what has come to be known as “usage-based” approaches to grammar and language acquisition in the field of Cognitive Linguistics. We develop these connections into an integrated whole, opening up the way for a research program in the new field of “cognitive oral poetics”, and relating it to a number of very topical questions in present-day cognitive science (creativity, language acquisition, multimodality). The conclusion vouches for a closer collaboration of literary theorists, linguists, and cognitive scientists in the establishment of cognitive oral poetics.