Abstract
This paper shows that traditional language games are governed by linguistic principles and thus speakers avoid deviating too much from their linguistic knowledge. We also show that speakers can consciously challenge part of linguistic systems and rules by designing a novel language game. Two of the traditional language games in Japanese, dajare and shiritori, will be described to illustrate the effect of linguistic principles on language games. We will then introduce a hitherto undescribed language game designed as a conceptual art, and see how it is created through the balance and tension between creativity and unexpectedness on the one hand and grammatical well-formedness and meaningfulness on the other. Designing language games-or studying designs of language games-may tell us a lot about the nature of our creativity.
