Metapragmatics of children’s humour

Abstract

The special issue Metapragmatics of children’s humour seeks to contribute to the development of a research area which is still scarcely explored in Spain. In general terms, it is concerned with the study of children’s humour from a linguistic perspective. Contributions which constitute this volume cover the analysis of linguistic sources of humour – markers and indicators following the nomenclature provided by the GRIALE research group (crf. Ruiz Gurillo, 2012: 78-86) – which appear in the stories written by 8,10 and 12-year-olds from five schools located in the province of Alicante. These 448 humorous essays constitute the seeds of CHILDHUM corpus, which is currently under construction and supported by several research projects (https://dfelg.ua.es/griale). Humour is understood in the theoretical framework of this research as a metapragmatic ability whose development throughout the age range from 8 to 12 years – parallel to the stage of primary school in the Spanish education system – has its reflection in the humorous verbal behaviour of the schoolchildren. The determination of the criteria and linguistic clues utilized by the boys and girls of our study in their written productions permits to establish metapragmatic maturation patterns in relation to humour competence, which has some important applied outcomes. The attention to the diverse linguistic, psychological and social variables in the analysis of the metapragmatics of humour evolution during the studied period constitutes, in turn, another important value of the present collective work.