Children and their underworld: an exploration of young children’s humour as Bakhtinian carnivalesque

Jennings-Tallant, Laura (2018) Children and their underworld: an exploration of young children’s humour as Bakhtinian carnivalesque. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis presents findings from a small-scale qualitative study offering an alternative framing of children’s humour and laughter in an early childhood education setting. The study employs a Bakhtinian carnivalesque lens to explore the nature of children’s humour in an urban nursery and investigate the framing of children’s humour and laughter outside the popular paradigm of developmental psychology. In addition, it addresses the challenge that children’s humour can present for early childhood practitioners, turning to Bakhtin’s analysis of carnival to frame children’s humour as carnivalesque. This conception is then offered as a part of a potential explanation for practitioners not having an opportunity to understand children’s humour, proposing that dominating, authoritative discourses within early childhood education play a significant role in this. The thesis draws on several theorists, including Bakhtin more widely, via a Dialogic methodology, to address reasons why humour is not valued, pedagogically, within the English early childhood field. Finally, the suggestion that it is profitable to view young children’s humour in the context of Bakhtinian carnivalesque is offered, and a case for reframing young children’s humour in an ECEC context as ‘carnivality’ is made.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Users 9280 not found.
Date Deposited:	08 Apr 2019 11:33
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2019 11:33
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/70511
DOI:

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