WHAT'S SO FUNNY? A COMPARATIVE LOOK AT THE HUMOROUS INTENTIONS OF THE TEXTBOOK AND THE STUDENT

Abstract

A section of a school textbook on literary reading “Jokingly and seriously” was compared with the written memories of 3rd-grade students of “Lyceum № 29” (Omsk) about the situations in which they laughed. The objects of comparison were such aspects of humorous discourse as the object of the ridicule, the tone of the comic, values and concepts; the presence/absence of humor in the linguistic component. General research approach is the discourse analysis. A positive correlation between age features of the humor, the humorous intentions of the textbook and interview data were revealed, which allows to ascertain the productivity of learning strategies. Spontaneous laughter communication is dominated by good-natured laughter over the animals, the concepts of causeless laughter, wit, intelligence, being-grown-up, etc., which corresponds to “student humor”. On the other hand, more efforts are needed to develop children's linguistic humor (language skill games) and the attention to situations in which laughter can produce conflict communication.

Keywords

• children's humor, tone
• values
• language game.