Fictional interaction in children’s humorous narratives

Abstract

This paper analyses the construction of fictional interaction in humorous narratives written by children of 8, 10 and 12 years of age, as compiled in the CHILDHUM corpus. These informants were asked to write a humorous story about an imaginary school exchange program with Mars. The analysis will explore the ways in which children shape their fictional conversational interactions with Martians, and how the data that arise can be correlated with the psychosocial and metalinguistic maturation of the children. This preliminary qualitative study reveals that children aged 8 demonstrate a certain degree of aggression towards the image of Martians, whereas this tendency reduces in the narratives of 10-year-olds. In regard to how they deal with the orality vs. writing opposition, the 8-year-olds essentially write like they speak, and once again it is by the age of 10 that a turning point can be perceived towards a higher awareness of the typographical conventions of the written representation of orality.