The Meanings of the Concepts of Creativity and Being Creative in Everyday Language
Engin Arık, Beril Tezeller ArıkCreative and creativity as abstract concepts are hard to define and they have different meanings in scientific studies and everyday language. This study investigated the meanings of the Turkish terms “yaratıcı” (creative) and “yaratıcılık” (creativity) in everyday language by using the data from social media. The study aims to reveal the meanings of the terms creative and creativity by using Big Data methods, corpus linguistic approaches, and prototype theories. The Turkish data were collected from Twitter between February 2018 and March 2019 using Rich Site Summary (RSS) and Application Programming Interface (API) without duplicates, retweets, or replies. In this way, 40,382 tweets containing yaratıcı and 13,007 tweets containing yaratıcılık were obtained. The yaratıcı data consisted of 124,028 types and 828,661 tokens whereas the yaratıcılık data consisted of 57,448 types and 268,886 tokens. With the help of Antconc and Lancbox software and statistical analyses such as frequency, log frequency, MI, DeltaP and G, the results showed that the meanings of yaratıcı and yaratıcılık in everday Turkish and in dictionaries and scientific texts did not overlap. For example, the words such as intelligence, thinking, thoughts, and imagination could all be seen in the dictionaries and significantly in the data. But the word “kreatif,” which is used in the dictionary entries for yaratıcı, was not significantly used in the data. Instead, #creativity was used significantly frequently for yaratıcılık in the data. Moreover, phrases such as using various solutions and divergent thinking could be both seen in the scientific definitions and significantly frequently in the data. But phrases such as solving problems and motivation, which are used in the scientific definitions, were used rarely in the data. Therefore, when updated, the dictionaries shoud benefit from the uses of these terms in everyday life, the scientific texts should underline to what extent the definitions differ from everyday language, and research should be conducted by taking into account these differences.
Yaratıcılık ve Yaratıcı Olma Kavramlarının Günlük Dilde Anlamları
Engin Arık, Beril Tezeller ArıkYaratıcı ve yaratıcılık soyut kavramlar olduğu için tanımlanması güçtür ve bilimsel çalışmalarla günlük dilde çeşitli anlamlarda kullanılmaktadır. Bu çalışmada Türkçede yaratıcı ve yaratıcılık kavramlarının günlük dilde ne anlamlara geldiği sosyal medyadan elde edilen veriler analiz edilerek araştırılmıştır. Çalışmada, Büyük Veri yöntemleri ve derlem dilbilim ile ilkörnek kuramları kullanılarak yaratıcı ve yaratıcılık kavramlarının anlamlarının ortaya çıkartılması hedeflenmiştir. Bu çalışma için Twitterdan Şubat 2018- Mart 2019 tarihleri arasında Rich Site Summary (RSS) ve Twitter beslemeleri (API) yardımıyla, Türkçe filtresiyle, içinde “yaratıcı” ve “yaratıcılık” geçen, birbirinin kopyası olmayan, bir twiti RT ibaresiyle aynen tekrarlamayan ve bir twite cevap niteliğinde olmayanlar toplanmıştır. Bu şekilde toplam 40.382 adet yaratıcı içeren ve 13.007 adet içinde yaratıcılık geçen twit otomatik olarak elde edilmiştir. Yaratıcı verisi 124.028’ü farklı sözcük olmak üzere toplam 828.661 sözcükten, yaratıcılık verisi ise 57.448’i farklı sözcük olmak üzere toplam 268.886 sözcükten oluşmaktadır. Bu verilerin analizinde Antconc ve Lancbox programlarından ve sıklık, logaritmik sıklık, MI, DeltaP ve G gibi çeşitli istatistiksel analizlerden yararlanılmıştır. Sonuçlar günlük dilde yaratıcı ve yaratıcılık kavramlarının kullanımı ile bu kavramların sözlüklerdeki ve bilim alanlarındaki karşılıklarının birbiriyle örtüşmediğini göstermektedir. Örneğin, sözlüklerde kullanılan zeka, düşünce, düşünme, hayal gücü gibi kavramlar güncel dilde de anlamlı bir şekilde sıklıkla kullanılmaktadır. Ancak sözlüklerde yaratıcı tanımı için kullanılan “kreatif” sözcüğü günlük dilde sıklıkla kullanılmamakla birlikte yaratıcılık sözcüğünün İngilizce karşılığı olan creativity hashtag (#) işaretiyle birlikte sıklıkla kullanılmaktadır. Ayrıca, bilim alanlarında kullanılan farklı yolları kullanma, farklı düşünme gibi ifadelerle günlük dilde sıklıkla karşılaşılırken problem çözme ve motivasyon gibi kavramlar nadir kullanılmaktadır. Dolayısıyla, sözlüklerde tanımlar güncellenirken bu yeni bulgulardan yani kavramların günlük dilde kullanımlarından yararlanılmalıdır. Bilimsel tanımlarda ve araştırmalarda ise, bu kavramların bilimsel tanımlarıyla, sözlüklerdeki tanımlardan ve günlük dilde kullanımlarından farklılıklarının altı çizilmeli ve bu farklılıklar dikkate alınarak araştırmalar yürütülmelidir.
The meanings of words can differ from each other depending on the context, for example, in scientific texts, dictionaries, and everyday usage. When it comes to the meanings of abstract concepts, which are not easy to define, these differences grow further. This study investigated the meanings of the two abstract terms, yaratıcı (creative) and yaratıcılık (creativity) in everyday Turkish, focusing on their usages in social media, especially in Twitter. In doing so, it benefited from Big Data methods and followed corpus linguistic approaches. These methods help researchers to tackle the variety of usages in the huge and observable data. Corpus linguistic approaches have already been used in creating English dictionaries, e.g., Collins COBUILD, and expanding the definitions of words according to the usages of the words in real life. This study also followed the prototype theory, which creates categories according to similarities of the concepts and in relation to prototypes as well as levels of concepts such as basic, subordinate, and superordinate.
Method
Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms in Turkey, which is the number five country in terms of the number of users in the world. The data were collected from Twitter between February 2018 and March 2019 using Rich Site Summary (RSS) and Application Programming Interface (API) protocols. The data were filtered according to language (Turkish), and the duplicates, the tweets with RT (retweets), and the conversations (replies) were removed from the data so that each tweet/usage had an equal opportunity to contribute to the meanings of the targeted words. The data were then converted into xlxs and txt formats for analysis. To analyze this data, Antconc and Lancbox corpus linguistics softwares were used. With the help of these softwares and other statistical tools such as Excel, type/token frequencies, logged frequencies, Mutual Information (MI), entropy and relative entropy, lexical gravity (G), probabilistic uncertainty (Δp), and Log-Likelihood (LL or G2) were computed for further analysis.
Results
The data consisted of 40,382 tweets containing yaratıcı and 13,007 tweets containing yaratıcılık after duplicates, retweets, or replies were remowed. The yaratıcı data consisted of 124,028 types and 828,661 tokens whereas the yaratıcılık data consisted of 57,448 types and 268,886 tokens. Excluding the frequently observed functional words such as “bir” (a), “ve” (and), “bu” (this), “çok” (many), among others in all types of Turkish corpora, both sets of the data included nouns such as “yaratıcı” (creative), “yaratıcılık” (creativity), “adam” (man), “çocuk” (child), “insan” (person), “sanat” (art), and “şey” (thing) in the first 100 most frequent words in the corpus. Moreover, the yaratıcı data included “Allah” (God), “fikir” (idea), “hayat” (life), “reklam” (advertisement), and “yazarlık” (writing/authorship) while the yaratıcılık data had “düşünme” (thinking), “eğitim” (education), “hayal gücü” (imagination), “sıfır” (zero), and “zeka” (intelligence) in the first 100 most frequent words in the corpus.
Discussion
The results showed that the meanings of yaratıcı and yaratıcılık in everday Turkish and in dictionaries and scientific texts did not overlap. For example, the words such as “zeka” (intelligence), “düşünme” (thinking), “fikirler” (thoughts), and “hayalgücü” (imagination) could be both seen in the dictionaries and significantly in the data obtained from Twitter. But the word “kreatif,” which is used in the dictionary entries for yaratıcı, was not significantly used in the data. Instead, #creativity was used significantly frequently for yaratıcılık in the data. Moreover, phrases such as using various solutions and divergent thinking could be seen in the scientific definitions and observed significantly frequently in the data. But phrases such as solving problems and motivation, which are used in the scientific definitions, were used rarely in the data.
These results indicated that when updated, the dictionaries shoud benefit from the uses of the terms such as yaratıcı (creative) and yaratıcılık (creativity) in everyday life. Moreover the scientific texts should underline to what extent the definitions differ from everyday language because there could be major differences in the uses of the terms in texts and in everyday life. Research should be conducted by taking into account these differences especially when it comes to developing tests and scales to measure creativity.
