Humor production in children’s narratives in Spanish

Authors

  • Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo Professor of Spanish Linguistics Department of Spanish Studies, General Linguistics and Literary Theory Faculty of Arts University of Alicante Ap.99 E-03080 ALICANTE (SPAIN)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze children’s production of humor from a linguistic perspective. Our research focuses on linguistic aspects of humor production and appreciation analyzed through a corpus of 148 narratives in Spanish about the same subject –a school trip to Mars? handwritten by nine-to-ten-year-old schoolchildren. Understanding humor as “the experience of finding something amusing”, the types of appreciation that children enjoy are: physical discrepancy; violation of expectations, rational behavior, and conceptual thought; production of linguistic rules in Martian language; and distortions/exaggerations. From this linguistic approach, these types of incongruity stem from logical mechanisms based on reasoning – analogy, coincidence, etc. – rather than on syntagmatic relationships, such as juxtaposition or parallelism, to quote but two. The children involved can use a number of humorous markers, including exclamations, and humorous indicators ?metaphors and phraseological units, amongst others ? to narrate an adventure in this fantastic world. The present study would thus corroborate the acquisition of humor competence by children, based on the linguistic elements that they use in narratives.

Keywords: humor competence, humor production, humor appreciation, incongruity, children.

Author Biography

Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo, Professor of Spanish Linguistics Department of Spanish Studies, General Linguistics and Literary Theory Faculty of Arts University of Alicante Ap.99 E-03080 ALICANTE (SPAIN)

Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo is a Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alicante. Her research interests include humor, irony, phraseology, spoken Spanish, and pragmatics. She leads the GRIALE Research Group since 2002. She has been also the head of four research projects financed by various Ministries in Spain. She has published several articles in journals such as Spanish in Context, Onomázein, Revista Española de Lingüística, Verba, Español Actual, Lingüística Español Actual and Oralia. Some of her publications are as follow: L. Ruiz-Gurillo, L. & M-B. Alvarado-Ortega (eds.), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; L. Ruiz-Gurillo (2013): Parody as evaluation: about a television sketch in Spanish, ELUA 27, 319-341 (http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/36629/1/ELUA_27_09.pdf); L. Ruiz Gurillo (2012): La lingüística del humor en español. Madrid: Arco/Libros. She is also the editor of a monograph devoted to metapragmatics of humor, especially to metapragmatics of children (Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016, forthcoming).

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Published

2017-06-21

How to Cite

Ruiz-Gurillo, L. (2017). Humor production in children’s narratives in Spanish. Calidoscópio, 15(2), 222–231. Retrieved from https://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2017.152.01

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2017): May/August

Section

Articles

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