Children’s humour development: A linguistic perspective

Baker, Giulia and Aldridge-Waddon, Michelle ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6087-2589 2022. Children’s humour development: A linguistic perspective. Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development 10 (3) , pp. 572-600.

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Abstract

By applying findings from an investigation into English-speaking children’s ability to comprehend verbal riddles, this paper advances an established model of children’s humour development by expanding stage 5 to include four sub-stages: (a) lexical and phonological ambiguities; (b) morphological ambiguities; (c) syntactic ambiguities and (d) idiomatic ambiguities. Sixty children equally divided from three British school Year Groups: Year 2 (aged 6-7), Year 4 (8-9) and Year 6 (10-11) participated. Their understanding of riddles was measured (a) receptively through a multiple-choice task in which they were required to identify an ambiguous punchline and (b) productively through a verbal explanation task in which they were required to explain their understanding of a riddle containing an ambiguous word/phrase. Responses were analyzed using a linguistically based classification system and explanations are offered as to why some ambiguity types are easier/harder for young children to comprehend.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
ISSN:	2148-1997
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 January 2023
Date of Acceptance:	12 November 2022
Last Modified:	20 May 2023 16:48
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/155605

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