Scripts in interaction: fixity and fluidity in Greek trans-scripting practices

Abstract This article examines scriptal hybridity in Greek digital discourse through the framework of trans-scripting, a script-focused extension of translanguaging. Moving beyond digraphia and biscriptality, which conceptualize scriptal choice as functionally distributed and socially compartmentalized, trans-scripting highlights how fluid and context-specific recombinations of scripts serve as semiotic resources in mediated discourse and interaction. The analysis focuses on two non-canonical script practices in Greek: Greeklish (Romanized Greek) and Engreek (Greek-scripted English) and is organized in two case studies. The first analyses feature-level script alternations in advertising discourse, utterance-level trans-scripting in online discussions, and instances of trans-scripting in language-ideological discourse. The second case study is based on a diachronic Reddit corpus (151,268 comments, 2015–2021) and documents patterns and functions of Engreek in user-generated discourse. Synthesizing these findings, the paper proposes a typology of four trans-scripting patterns: grapheme-level alternations, rescripting of lexical items and chunks, contextualized double voicing, and language-ideological critique. Trans-scripting simultaneously destabilizes inherited mappings of language and script while reproducing language-ideological fixities, contingent on genre, medium, and interactional context. Overall, the study underscores the importance of scriptal hybridity in contemporary digital literacies and its significance for understanding identity, ideology, and semiotic creativity in networked communication.