Adolescents creating cartoons: A developmental study of humor

Abstract

Developmental studies on humor have historically approached a limited age range – from birth until early adolescence – and have mostly considered humor interpretation and the production of situational and verbal humor. Focusing on cartooning, a highly demanding cognitive and communication activity, in this paper we aim to provide empirical data drawn from a larger age span than usual – 10 to 18 years old – to better understand what adolescents find humorous and how they create humor. Our corpus comes from nine workshops of cartoon production and interpretation conducted between 2015 and 2018, in which a total of 63 girls and 72 boys participated. Based on a fine-grained cognitive and communication analysis, we distinguished six different profiles of texts depending on: whether and how a fictional situation (i.e. a humorous incongruity) was built, its relation to the referenced situation addressed (topic), and the author’s motivation. Simple Correspondence Analyses enabled us to identify that these texts varied according to the adolescents’ age and the cartoon’s format (single panel or strip). Greater cognitive sophistication was evidenced in single panel cartoons and among middle and late adolescents, who also showed a concern for social issues. Some gender variations were found.

Humour, empathic concern and perspective‐taking in children. Cartooning about social inequality

“…The following two profiles present a humorous incongruity and vary according to the author's motivation (Pedrazzini et al, 2021).…”

“…On the one hand, our results are in line with the literature that reveals a major concern for socio-political issues and civic engagement among adolescents (Flanagan, 2004). In the particular case of cartooning, it has been found that 13-15 years old tend to privilege the creation of committed cartoons in order to condemn from their own viewpoint, faults and vices of society (Pedrazzini et al, 2021). This occurs in a greater proportion than in 10-12 years old.…”

“…Among the scarce studies that focus on humorous drawings and cartooning by children, some authors have explored their relation to humour development, metapragmatic skills and other socio-cognitive processes that develop during this stage (Karmiloff-Smith, 1990;Loizou, 2005;Loizou & Kyriakou, 2016;Pedrazzini et al, 2021;Pitri, 2011). Recent studies on the subject present some common patterns: (1) they all consider children as successful multimodal meaning-makers (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009;Jewitt, 2009), actively involved in understanding and constructing their own world; (2) they acknowledge students' right to participate and voice their abilities and needs (Dockett et al, 2011;Jalongo, 2003;Recchia & Loizou, 2019); (3) they base their design on workshops of varying duration in formal educational settings and (4) they propose tasks that involve the creation of playful cartoons, aimed to amuse and entertain (Loizou, 2005;Loizou & Kyriakou, 2016;Pitri, 2011), committed cartoons, as previously defined (Christopoulou, 2013;Loizou & Symeonidou, 2019), or both playful and committed cartoons (Pedrazzini et al, 2021). Pedrazzini et al (2021) conducted a developmental study centred on cartoons created by children and adolescents (10-18 years old).…”

“…Recent studies on the subject present some common patterns: (1) they all consider children as successful multimodal meaning-makers (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009;Jewitt, 2009), actively involved in understanding and constructing their own world; (2) they acknowledge students' right to participate and voice their abilities and needs (Dockett et al, 2011;Jalongo, 2003;Recchia & Loizou, 2019); (3) they base their design on workshops of varying duration in formal educational settings and (4) they propose tasks that involve the creation of playful cartoons, aimed to amuse and entertain (Loizou, 2005;Loizou & Kyriakou, 2016;Pitri, 2011), committed cartoons, as previously defined (Christopoulou, 2013;Loizou & Symeonidou, 2019), or both playful and committed cartoons (Pedrazzini et al, 2021). Pedrazzini et al (2021) conducted a developmental study centred on cartoons created by children and adolescents (10-18 years old). They distinguished different profiles of multimodal texts, based on their cognitive and communicative sophistication.…”

“…Led by a playful and/or committed motivation, the authors present a particular standpoint on a social/political issue while simultaneously considering multiple perspectives. In this way, cartoons promote diverse communicative-cognitive abilities that play an important role in children's development and learning (Pedrazzini et al, 2021(Pedrazzini et al, , 2022.…”