Norms at play

Abstract This article focuses on the complex nature of the creative freedom often displayed in acts of digital social writing. Drawing on theoretical contributions from philosophy of language and psychology, the authors argue that even in communication where prescriptive norms are deliberately challenged, creative ways of multilectal and multilingual writing are still shaped by norms and normativity. Mutually recognized norms are part of the common ground that communicators must maintain to secure audience uptake.This is illustrated with three examples, where explicit and implicit negotiations of norms take place in online contexts. In both antagonistic and friendly contexts, we see that successful norm-violating communication involves a collaborative interplay of layers of normativity . Instances of norm shifts and norm challenges of the sort displayed here should not be seen as special cases or fringe phenomena, nor as acts of inherent socio-political significance, but as frequent and highly adaptable moves typical of human language use. Improvised norm shifts manifest a form of creativity that is basic to linguistic communicative competence.