Children’s Funny Remarks in the Field of Linguistic Humour Theory

Abstract

Abstract:The article analyses, from folkloristic and humour theoretical aspects, humorous material of children's remarks collected during the all-Estonian kindergarten folklore collection campaign held from October 2010 to January 2011.The main focus is on this subtype of jokes as they appear in kindergarten environment and from the point of view of kindergarten teachers. The material is divided into two groups: 1) spontaneous sayings, recorded during daily activities and interaction; 2) answers to the teacher's questions, guided by her interest (the teacher may have recorded discussions on a given topic). The article aims to investigate the utterances that teachers have perceived as funny or worth recording and to analyse the theoretical mechanisms of humour they are based on.

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“…(Female, 28 years old, interview) Such errors in early word use (also labelled as "naming errors", "developmental errors", or "incongruent labels"; see Johnson & Mervis 1997) are typical for young children and are incongruous enough for parents to notice them and consider them humorous. They are also similar to the phenomenon that has been labelled as "lapsesuu" ('out of the mouth of a child') in Estonian folklore studies (Põldmäe 1941;Voolaid 2016). As children grow up, some of these weird and funny expressions fall into oblivion, while others become a stable part of family folklore.…”

“…Whereas psychology, linguistics and social studies have contributed to my analysis of children as subjects and objects of family humour, I mainly approach this issue from a folkloristic perspective. Children's humour has been recognized as an important area of study by folklorists; they have focused on the categorization of its different genres and the interpretation of meanings attributed to them (Bronner 1988: 113-142;Tucker 2008: 26;several contributions in Sutton-Smith et al 1995), on particular genres within the theoretical frameworks of folklore and humour studies (Voolaid 2016), on the link between humour and identity (Lanclos 2003: 48-83), on the educational potential of children's humorous folklore (Mingazova & Sulteev 2014) and on other topics. Folklorists' studies helped me to map the topical and generic field of children's humour, as well as to outline several functions humour can potentially have for children.…”

Children’s humor development: A case of Indonesian children

“…To understand humor, the brain needs to process in both hemispheres, namely the language processing part of the brain, which is known to be more dominant in the left hemisphere along with the right hemisphere associated with emotional responses. It helps children place themselves somewhere different, to enact social roles that they normally would not do (Voolaid, 2016).…”