**2. Language and linguistic creativity**

*"The language is the infinite use of finite means."* 

*Wilhelm von Humbolt*

It can be claimed that language, which is the common ground especially for linguists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, educators, communication experts and even computer scientists, Then we can ask the question that

#### *Perspective Chapter: New Approaches to the Assessment of Domain-Specific Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102311*

why the language means so much for many different disciplines? Language is a talent representing a unique feature that is only special to human beings according to many researchers [37]. In other words, language is a tool used for the service of thinking [38] and also a tool aiding for making arrangements [37]. According to the writer of the chapter, language is both the representative of the creative potential of the person and a tool for expressing the creative potential of the person. Similarly, Holtgraves [37] states that language can be seen as a tool, which can be used to achieve particular goals.

Just as language is known to have more than one skill (listening/observing, speaking, reading, writing), creativity also has more ways/aspects. Because both of them have multiple structures, language and creativity can be likened to each other. The evaluation of these two concepts is very difficult because of the aspects they have.

It can be said that there are a great number of theories and models related to the creativity in the literature. A similar situation may also be seen in the scientific creativity (see [39–43]). However, the linguistic creativity does not have the same richness [44] and unfortunately has a limited research database in the literature. Furthermore, when the linguistic creativity is concerned, it is a limited perspective to think of the studies of language teaching. Moreover, it can be said that there are limitations in terms of the conceptual perspective.

The definition of language creativity varies just like creativity. For instance, there are researchers who state that language is an ongoing creation, and those who state that language can expand until the newly formed borders by exploring new resonances [3]. These definitions show that linguistic creativity has a turbulent history in the twentieth century linguistic [45]. Not only the term of the linguistic creativity is a special gift or draws an unexpected path with words but also it has a wide range of meaning starting from the understanding of the linguistic creativity to the special usage of the term. Variability is related with the concept of linguistic creativity. In other words, to be able to create different language structures, the flexible association of the language units is needed [46].

It can be said that if there is language in a place, there are also ideas. If there are ideas, associations are also there because the relationships, which are based on the associations, happen within the framework of the language person has. This situation reminds us the words that Wittgenstein said: "The borders of our language determine the borders of our World". On the other hand, it can be said that the language skill has both cognitive and social way. For instance, we benefit from language in our academic life, doing our daily chores, communicating with people, analyzing the events we face and use them through filtering personally and cognitively and as a result, we come to an assumption or conclusion.

When real life problems are mentioned, as a solution of them, maths and science based disciplines are remembered or there is a perception regarding of them. As mentioned above, in the focus of the experience and problem takes place the language. Thereby, it can be said that in the solution of every kind of problems, language processes remain. For that reason, associations and analogies take place in the framework of the domain-specific creativity.

### **3. The controversy face of the evaluations: creativity**

The questions that what the creativity really is and if it is possible to measure it or how the ideal evaluation scale should have always been discussed by the field experts. In the field of psychology and psychometry, the persuasive and convincing seen criterions are mentioned as the "validity" criterions. In this sense, a couple of

validity kinds were defined. One of them is defined as "face validity" and it means that the content of the test has a meaning for field experts. The second kind of validity is known as "construct validity". This validity type means whether the content of the test is based on the nature of the creativity. The third kind of validity is named as "predictive validity" [47]. In this kind of validity, test should foresee everything related to the creativity concept. For instance, to be successful in the field of life needs creativity. Just like Weisberg's [36] example pointing out that RAT measures the potential of the creative thinking capacity: "If you want to determine the potential of a good marathon runner, you should measure his capacity of lungs not his speed of running". Why shouldn't we use the scales which will help the creativity integrate into the education programmes or measure the potential of the creativity automatically? Because the biggest service of an assessment tool is to determine the individuals who have the potential of the creativity in the future?
