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The Lore and Language of American Children
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17984 |
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CULTURE
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5 / 1990 |
3,755 Words |
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Sheila K. Webster
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Children in the United States, like all people everywhere, use folklore to define and to express themselves. And, like all people, children define themselves not only in terms of their own groups but also in contrast with other groups - particularly adults. For a child, as for a grown-up what she is not may be as significant as what she is.
Most of us former children have at some time sung songs, played games, or told jokes and stories that we knew would bring frowns - or worse - from the adults around us. Sometimes we didn't even really understand what was "dirty" or wrong about our titillating childhood recreations; just knowing that some of our rhymes, songs, and games were forbidden was enough to make them attractive. Sharing them and the adventure of performing them with our peers created what anthropologist Victor Turner called communitas, the egalitarian sense of community that people often experience when they share a ritual or other activity that has significance for them. Nor does the sense of group identity have to be posed against adults; groups of children often segregate themselves from one another, older against younger, team against team, boys against girls.
Within groups of children, on the other hand, folklore is frequently used to support a hierarchy by pointing out differences and ranking group members according to those differences. Sometimes the pecking order is quite explicit; for instance, a group may have a president or otherwise identified leader, or may rank individuals by ability, popularity, or both while choosing up sides for play. At other times, the hierarchy is more implicitly expressed, as when individual players assume such play roles as mother, father, child, boss, commander, soldier, teacher, or student. Such rankings tend to be somewhat fluid over time, and a particular child's position in the hierarchy may change as various skills or attributes become more or less important to the group.
Although many kinds of children's folklore define the individual, unite and rank group members, and separate the group from other groups, the verbal genres are among the most interesting. This is in part because the children who use them are learning language itself as well as the language of the lore. Because children's language skills and general knowledge change rapidly through the years, the folk genres they enjoy and participate in also develop as children grow older.
Traditional teasing
Ironically, one of the simplest forms of folklore - teasing - is also one of the most complex psychologically. Among children, both verbal and nonverbal teasing can be used to indicate either membership in the group or exclusion from it. Many names American children use to tease one another are derived from physical appearance, like "Four-eyes" for the child who wears glasses or "Carrot" for the red-haired child. Other names refer to the child's reputation: "Neal the Squeal" was our class tattletale.
Things aren't always what they appear to be, however. The meaning of a behavior, whether a gesture, a name, or a phrase poking fun, is determined not just by the behavior itself but by the context in which it occurs. Folklorists have learned to pay close attention to contextual factors, since they many profoundly affect the meaning of a gesture, a name a joke - of any behavior. Tone of voice and facial
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