Performing Punctuation

A transdisciplinary exploration of English punctuation's power and limits, this book invites readers and performers to reimagine and transform the rules that shape language and identity.

Performing Punctuation is a transdisciplinary collaboration that challenges the colonial legacy embedded in the English language's use of punctuation. Gathering a diverse group of writers and performers—including both Māori and Pākehā voices—the book combines essays, performances, and experimental texts that converse across disciplines, creating space to rethink how language functions and whom it serves. Tracing the strident and rigid punctuation practices of the English language, laced with cultural and linguistic hierarchies, this book exposes the colonial roots of punctuation.

Together, the contributors recast punctuation as responsive, playful, generous, and inclusive—opening space for a wider diversity of readers, listeners, performers, writers, and practices. Spanning literature, poetry, visual and performance art, cultural studies, language education, postcolonial studies, language studies, film, and sound, Performing Punctuation offers insights for academics, practitioners, and students across the arts and humanities who seek to explore how language can be decolonised, reimagined, and performed.