Abstract
The ability to produce and comprehend multiple meanings in words and expressions, such as those included in linguistic humor, develops during the school years and is directly related to the development of metalinguistic reflection. The purpose of this study is to analyze metalinguistic reflections that children and adolescents present on different types of verbal jokes. Participants were 42 children and adolescents in second, fifth, and eighth grades (14 participants per group) from Querétaro, México. They were presented with four verbal jokes (two lexical and two syntactical) and four non-jokes. Participants were asked to determine whether each text was a joke or not and to explain their reasoning. Results revealed differences by school grade in the students’ ability to distinguish jokes from non-jokes and in the type and quantity of their reflections. Moreover, lexical jokes were easier to understand and analyze than syntactical jokes, especially for younger participants.
Highlights
Responses about ambiguity were more frequent in fifth and eighth grade than in second grade. This indicates that during the first school years children acquire the ability to observe that verbal jokes are based on structures or words that entail two readings
Results show significant differences by school grade in the ability to interpret a joke as a joke and a non-joke as a non-joke, that is, to reflect on the characteristics that make a text a joke
This suggests that the ability to reflect on jokes as a text type grows significantly during the school years
Summary
Later language development is characterized by significant achievements at all linguistic levels (Nippold, 2007) Regarding phonology, it appears that the articulation of polysyllabic words is strengthened and that the child adapts to the accent of the community (Nippold, 2007). In terms of morphology, during the school years new compound words via prefixes and suffixes and the use of multiple morphemes become more complex and there is presence of new derivative morphemes (Nippold & Sun, 2008; Ravid, 2004) This is because these new forms correspond to morphologically complex words that are part of the system of written language that children have access to during their reading and writing experiences at school (Nippold, 2007; Snow & Uccelli, 2009)
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