CHILDREN’S JOKES: A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH

CHILDREN’S JOKES: A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH

Like any other form of cultural activity, the art of telling and understanding jokes requires a special kind of competence. Any joker needs to master culturally accepted patterns of what and when can, must and must not be ridiculous. However, what is ridiculous is not the same in children and in the grown up. Adult people have their own topics to laugh at, and their jokes contain some apparently more complicated logical devices. At the same time, we adults usually regard as silly many things that seem ridiculous to children. Taking a closer look, one can find that this “silliness” is quite logical in its own way. Schoolchildren themselves, from a certain age, start to distinguish so called “children’s jokes” which are still ridiculous for them, though already perceived as childish and silly.
The way in which the same jokes are told and understood in groups of children of different age is quite revealing. Our illustrations have been collected from tellers aged from 5 to 12. Here is one example. A 9-years-old boy is speaking to a girl of 6:
A mad man is writing a letter from a lunatic asylum: “We are living quite well here.
Recently a swimming pool has been built for us. We practice highboard dives into the pool. They say that if we don’t misbehave the pool will even be filled with water.”
The girl asks perplexed:
- Why filled with water?.... Oh, I see, so that all of them be drowned there!
She laughs, while the boy tries to explain:
- Why can’t you see! They were jumping into an empty pool!
The girl pays no attention to this remark and starts to tell another joke. She doesn’t understand the point of the boy’s joke. As she couldn’t grasp the inverted logic of the joke’s plot, she stopped to think and invented a point of her own, adducing the first seemingly plausible common-sense explanation (“so that all of them be drowned there”). The little stop before laughing, needed for a brief reflection, I would call “giraffe effect”, in accordance with an anecdotal motive of a giraffe who always laughed on the next day after having heard a joke, due to his long neck - and, correspondingly, the long way the words must do in order to be understood in the head. The understanding is insightful, it comes in a Gestalt-like type, but sometimes requires a certain effort to see something which is not evident. As we have seen, the girl did an effort and came to a result, though not very successfully.
The joke she told in her turn is long enough. In its more or less canonical version its point consists of a four-lines rhyme whose content is related to the whole of the plot. The girl did not recall the whole rhyme and took as the point of the joke only one word from the rhyme, a comic address to a policemen by the protagonist. The rest of the rhyme was not available to her memory - and may had been hardly available to her complete understanding when she heard the joke first. Since the boy knew the fuller version, he didn’t laugh.
The difference between variants of a same joke is a precious source of evidence. Sometimes the text is more or less considerably reduced by the teller. Some links are missed and, as result, the narrative coherence and wholeness of the text are lost. However, the joke seems ridiculous to the teller himself, as it is in this particular way that he or she understands and remembers the joke. That is, the joke remains funny for the teller even if the point is missed. In other cases, some minor variations can be observed. In the boy’s joke about the mad man and a swimming pool, a detail is also missed, but it is of lesser importance. This kind of variation can in some cases be interpreted as evidence for certain stages of mastering the jokes’ humour.
As for the structural reduction of a joke, it can be caused not only by an incomplete understanding of the plot. Sometimes, one remembers the story, but cannot reproduce the text literally. Thus, if the point consists of an original play of words (or a rhyme, as it is often in children’s jokes), it turns out to be badly damaged or missed. Compare the texts that follow:
a) There are four crows in a tree. One of them says: “I’ve got a cow”. Another one says: “I’ve got one hundred rubles”. The third one says: “I’ve got a watch”. The forth one says: “I haven’t got anything”.
The next day they meet again. The first crow says: “Somebody has stolen my cow”. The second one says: “Somebody has stolen my money”. The third one says: “My watch has also been stolen”. The fourth one says (singing a rhyme with the first line from an ABBA’s song): “Money, money, money, / one hundred rubles in my pocket, / it’s half past one, / it’s time to milk my cow”.
The same joke in a 5-year-old boy’s version goes like this:
b) There were two crows in a tree. One of them says: “I’ve got an alarm-clock”. Another one says: “I’ve got a sofa”. The third one says: “I’ve got a house”. Later they meet and the first one says: “I’ve got no alarm-clock”. The second says: “I’ve got no sofa”. The third one comes and says: “I’ve got a house, a sofa, and an alarm-clock.”
The distinction made in classical rhetoric between the figures of speech and the figures of thought can be in a way applied to jokes. When the exact words are replaced with synonyms, a figure of thought remains intact, whereas a figure of speech is broken down. If the jokes built on a pun are told in such way that the pun in removed, as the 5-year-old boy’s version, this means that the teller, although understanding the story itself, does not quite understand the point. Compared to those who tell the joke correctly, he laughs at something different.
This fact is a good illustration of an idea once explicitly formulated by Lev Vygotsky: the meaning comes from outside. First is a form of activity; the understanding of its meaning comes later. Everybody is sure to remember from his own experience that the little ones often learn verses by heart without understanding the exact meaning of the words and even misconceive the sentences’ division into words. Some day they attain a right understanding, and it comes in form of insight. But the lack of understanding does not impede recitation - or jokes telling and laughing at them. The understanding of the meaning of a joke starts from a shared activity, from a joint laughter in a company. It is to turn one day into the laughter at the joke’s point.
It means that only a competent listener can evaluate the reductions and transformations as damaging the coherence and the wholeness of a text. The wholeness depends on the general orientation of the text towards its logical end containing the point of the joke. The point is the base of all periphrastic transformations which bring about synonymic but equally valid versions. Unlike adults, children laugh readily at familiar jokes and their variants, with a sort of “a joy of recognition”. All the more vivid is their reaction on unsatisfactory versions. The variants where something is affected which is important to the right functioning of the text are immediately detected by competent listeners as not ridiculous (for instance, in the form of an offensive question directed to the teller: “When must we start laughing?”).
It can seem that the amplification of a text (when the teller adds some details from his own fantasy) is not so harmful as reduction or change of some elements, and even makes the story more entertaining. Nevertheless, the teller’s additions usually contrast to other parts of the text and the denouement - except the cases when the additions are placed in special zones where the teller’s fantasy is welcome and appreciated. I would label as “points of growth” such zones where the amplification is acceptable (acceptable up to the connection with another plot in a chain-like mode). Of course, the amplification is limited by a competent listener’s intuitive sense of proportion between what is said and how many words are used. The genre of joke is laconic enough.
Here we are mainly interested in the amplifications which deteriorate the joke, when the teller adds some details not only redundant, but also spoiling the result, going
against the laconic proportion I have just mentioned. In the example that follows we can see both types of amplification:
A king says: “I‘ll give my daughter, two sacks of gold and half of my kingdom to the man who will cross an enchanted wood”. So, a German runs and runs and runs, and suddenly sees a falcon who says: “Stranger, do you want me to give you a wise hint?” - “Get out of here, leave me alone”. He goes farther and sees a field full of the dead who have resurrected. In a moment he flees away horrified. The same story with a Pole. Here comes a Russian. “Stranger, do you want me to give you a wise hint?” - “Yes”- “If you meet an evil spirit, ask him: “What do you want, the evil one?”” So, the Russian asks when sees the field of the dead: “What do you want, the evil one?”” Everything disappears immediately. He goes on and sees another field, full of bleeding octopuses. He is swimming in blood, some invisible hands are strangling him. “What do you want, the evil one?”” Everything disappears immediately. And then he sees a very-very white hand showing out from a bush; it looks as if somebody very weak has died. “What do you want, the evil one?”” - “A piece of pa-a-a-per! I’ve been sitting here since two years ago!”
Here the description of the horrors seen by the heroes is completely up to the teller’s fantasy. He puts the bloody octopuses this time and, say, angry robots that time. It doesn’t really matter: the better is the teller’s art, the more interesting becomes the story due to these details. But some details appear here as redundant elements that have nothing to do with the point and even make it less amusing, as would note a competent listener: “a very-very white” (about the hand), “it looks as if somebody very weak has died”, “I’ve been sitting here since two years ago!”
The interviews have shown that many of the younger listeners (and tellers) who laugh much at this joke have no idea about what is the piece of paper needed for. Russian adults and the elder children understand without any place for doubt that the piece of paper is to be used as toilet paper by the person sitting in the bush. But to laugh, it is not necessary to know what is the paper for.
Even more interesting is the fact that the explanation about the purpose of the paper use by the bush-sitter makes the joke more ridiculous only to the elder children who grasp immediately the true point of the story when it is explained. The younger ones take this information seriously, but cannot link it with the general meaning of the text and do not start to laugh.
That is to say that along the way from laughing in company to laughing at the true point of a joke, we can trace three stages in the mastering of the meaning: first, there is neither understanding nor way to explain; second, no understanding, but it is possible to explain; third, a complete competence and no need to explain. The version cited above was collected from a second stage informer, after the explanation concerning the activity of the bush-sitter and the use of the paper. Nevertheless, we find in the text some redundant details. They are redundant only from a completely competent point of view, because they add comism only for those listeners who don’t understand the use of the piece of paper. Such superfluous amplifications added naively to increase the comic effect by second stage tellers usually contain hyperbolas, possibly the most primitive form of comism.
A complete competence means that the redundant elements fade away. Thus, the texts have a kind of interior mechanism intended to restore the distorted versions. That is why a more or less commonly recognised invariants do persist in spite of a broad exchange of distorted variants charged with redundant details. In case if the proposed variations are convincing and do not affect the wholeness of the text, several equally valid variants appear, often reproducing the same plot in a new environment and with new actors.
We will not dwell here on the semantic structure of jokes and on the question whether any specific structural features exist that distinguish children’s jokes from the adults’ ones. It is a big task to elaborate a semantic system for representation of joke’s structure and it is not yet completed. However, there are several reasons to suppose that children’s and adults’ jokes are built with principally the same devices, though the object of laughter and some functions of jokes-telling differ. An important difference is the fact that in adults the jokes often are told in a right place and a right time, when the content of the joke is related to a real situation like a proverb would be. This seems to be practically absent in children. Let us turn to some functions of children’s jokes in order to see why it is necessary to understand the point of jokes - and why it is not enough to laugh in company without any real understanding.
It is the wit that is required to see something as ridiculous, both in life and in a joke. This ability supposes, first, a sort of emotional distance from the situation (as it was cleverly observed by Henry Bergson) and, second, a move of the frame of the usual context of perception, due to which an actor turns into a character, or personage.
To be taken as ridiculous, a situation first of all should be seen as contradicting to a norm - and this contradiction being extremely exaggerated can be quite enough for children to laugh (Kornei Chukovsky called it “the children’s trend to topsy-turvy”).
In order to put the contradiction explicitly on the foreground, it must be expressed as a part of a usual way of things, as a norm: a personage is naively acting as a fool, he is not aware of the contradiction. But we, spectators, are. We, spectators, do recognise his foolery and laugh at his naivety from our own, non-naive point of view. As Sigmund Freud has remarked, “the naive is analogous to a joke in its text and its content”. A great many of illustrations can be found in Chuklovsky’s book, where the observations on children’s behaviour and speech are very amusing and match with models of jokes about children (a subgenre of adult jokes).
It can be said that in those cases when there is neither primitive “mechanisation of life” (an important source of comism, according to Bergson), nor evident topsy-turvy, and there is instead a foolish act naively performed as if it was all right, in such cases the ability to see a situation as ridiculous requires an idea about the naive point of view of the personage. Meanwhile, it is a highly problematic for a child to imagine another point of view. Children’s egocentrism which according to Jean Piaget is the main characteristic of infantile thought is being gradually overcome while growing up. Chukovsky has a brilliant illustration of the initial phase of this long way: a two-year-old boy, when feeling offended, announces in a threatening tone: “Now I’ll put you in the dark!” And shuts his eyes, being sure that the whole world is plunging in the darkness.
The naivety of the point of view of a joke’s protagonist is a considerable help: this point of view is simpler than one’s own. You have an advantage not to be a fool, you are not so naive as the protagonist. Note that the art of laughing at the naive is very useful to the one who often finds himself in a situation of being naive compared to wise adult people around him.
Although children’s humour, both ready-made and occasional, has no such elaborated technique of ambiguous hint as the adult humour has, and makes instead an extensive use of exaggerations, topsy-turvy, primitive “mechanisation of the living”, an ambiguity is anyway the foundation of joking as a form of behaviour. Where does the ambiguity come from?
The prototypic scheme of joke and fooling is: “a provocation > a reaction to the provocation > a message “It is not serious, it is but a joke!””. This is the pattern of verbal or non-verbal play among children or between children and adults. Thus, a 6-year-old girl says to her parents: “What a nuisance that you are!” And after a little silence comments: “It is a joke” and laughs. It is a typical egocentric joke, because the form of the provocation is not explicitly motivated for the listeners. In such cases the adults usually laugh not at the joke, but at the joker’s silliness.
On the next stage of the development of occasional humour from playful provocation under the veil of naivety, the provocation begins to be related to the context of situation. Thus, a 7-year-old boy, being together with his mother and another women who has complained of a stomach-ache, says to her: “It looks like you have helminths”. As well as the girl of the previous example, he does not say it quite seriously. The boy does understand that he is saying something which is not quite acceptable to be discussed and which affects not very decent topics, but he waits for a comic effect because his provocation is made in the right place and time, and so it is motivated.
In ready-made jokes which are our main concern here, the comism is canned, already prepared for consumption, though coded. In the content of the jokes we can see what kinds of situations have already been transformed by humour - in part, because they needed laughter to be overcome. In jokes, a child turns symbolically to an actual and very familiar content: these are the psychological problems of mastering of the cultural norms and prescriptions. An observation by Bruno Bettelheim about the fairy tales can be applied to jokes too. He wrote: “the fairy tale clearly does not refer to the outer world, although it may begin realistically enough and have everyday features woven into it. The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrow-minded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual” (Bettelheim B. The Uses of Enchantment. N.Y., 1977 - p.25).
In many jokes, the relations with the authority, force and those who impose the regulations are presented in a comic light. The regulations themselves are so absurd that one can laugh at them freely; a personage can bring to the mind the father, and the lunatic asylum, a summer camp. Some protagonists are quite feasible for projection of one’s little and indefensible self.
There is a special category in children’s folklore where the alarming object is described directly - these are “horror stories” told usually in the night and intended to frighten the listener. Some of these stories give birth to jokes when their ends are changed into the ridiculous ones. They start to match with a widely used constructive device of jokes, where the actors frighten at some, say, horrible sounds or threats, and then a fearless protagonist appears to demonstrate that there were nothing to fear (e.g., a drunk man haunting a fly). In such jokes, the “horrible” content is already presented in a ridiculous form, and that is why it is not the listener, but the naive personages who frighten. Thus, in comparison to the “horror stories”, the fears and naivety are being taken over by the personages of the jokes from the users of the jokes.
The last thing we would like here to comment on is the problem of distinguishing children’s jokes from adults ones. There are many criteria and all them not very formal, and they mainly are external with respect to the form of a joke. It appears that some jokes even can have parallel lives in children and in adults. Here is an example, recorded from children:
Clinton and Eltsin are on a plane, flying over America. Clinton tears his leg off and throws it down. When flying over Russia, Eltsin tears off his hand and throws it down: “There is nothing I would refuse to give to my country!” They land. Two years later they meet again. Clinton says: “When we landed then, I saw a dog, killed it and got its leg sewn to my body. The only problem is that now when I approach a tree the leg lifts automatically”. Eltsin says: “As for me, when I got out the plane, I saw a thief who wanted to rob me. I shot him dead, took his hand and got it sewn to me. Now I go shopping with five rubles in my pocket and come back with fifty”.
The motive of theft contrasted to the declaration “There is nothing I would refuse to give to my country!” makes us suppose the existence of a politically engaged adult prototype, whereas the absurdity is attractive to children who may not be aware of political connotations of the text.
Of course, the jokes told by the grown up vary considerably depending on the educational background, age and social group of the teller. Many of so called “adult” jokes differ from children’s jokes but in the subject, the model being the same.
If we approach the form of jokes in a developmental perspective, we can find that it is a relative cognitive complexity of the construction that matters to the distinction. Setting apart the background knowledge necessary to recognise the hints in a joke, we see that the understanding of jokes requires a certain semantic operation, a logical device which can be more or less complicated. The operation may be the same, while the subject may differ: thus, we find it possible to classify some adult jokes based on a veiled mention of an obscene word along with children’s jokes (e.g., the adult plot - and the word mentioned - is related to sex, while the children’s one, to scatological sphere).
A joke is a coherent narrative, an anecdote. Its plot is compressed and reduced - sometimes up to a short dialogue - , and transformed in order to present a situation in two aspects. Combining them, a comic effect appears. To remember and retell a narrative, a “narrative competence” is required as a part of general linguistic competence. Everyone knows that children are usually bad tellers. Apart from their egocentrism (that is, specific difficulties in tuning their words up to the listeners’ minds), often we meet meagre speech, with scarce lexicon, small variety of syntax and expressive devices. Jokes with their formulaic structure allow to get over the meagre quality of speech, and at the same time invite to a theatrical improvisation, though in strictly limited zones which we labelled as “points of growth”.