No More Learning

NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN
1. For the purposes of this article, the terms "poem" and "rhyme" will be in-
terchangeable when used to refer to the rhymed and metered items in children's oral
folklore.
2. Elementary-school teachers are reporting a sharp drop in their students' fa-
miliarity with even the most commonly recited nursery rhymes. Collectors of children's
rhymes, and especially collectors of parodies, might begin to notice a decrease in the
amount of traditional nursery rhyme material they gather.
3. Examples of children's rhymes and songs, unless otherwise noted, are from
my own collections.
4. A similar group identification process takes place among elementary-school
children as they begin to become aware of the sexual group to which they belong. Boys
and girls each think that their group is the best, that members of the opposite group
are unpleasant and objectionable.
I60 SONGS, POEMS, AND RHYMES
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? ? 8 RIDDLES
Danielle M. Roemer
In this chapter, I survey four areas relevant to the study of children's verbal
and nonverbal riddling. The first of these sections involves situational and
interactional contexts. The second considers common rhetorical strategies
of English-language riddles. The third takes up developmental concerns, re-
viewing the literature on children's acquisition of productive competence.
The concluding section treats some of the interactional functions of children's
riddling. Because of the bias in the literature, the discussion throughout the
chapter necessarily emphasizes verbal riddling.
Riddles are a type of solicitational routine (Bauman 1977b, 24). As
such, they are characterized by a speech act that elicits a response; that is,
they are marked by an implied or stated question posed by the initiating
participant. The second participant answers the question. To be sure, types
of solicitational routine other than the riddle can be found in children's rep-
ertoires. Among these are directive catch routines and knock-knock routines.
Directive catch routines call forth a gestural or otherwise physical response,
rather than a verbal reply. For their part, knock-knock routines, though con-
taining questions, do not solicit solution-oriented responses. Instead, the
respondent replies to the speaker with formulaic utterances. For these rea-
sons, directive catch routines and knock-knock routines are omitted from
the discussion. '
CONTEXTS AND PROCEDURES OF RIDDLING
Questions of when, where, how, and with whom children's riddles have
been addressed in the folkloristic and anthropological literature, but they
have rarely been answered in depth. Prior to the 1960s or so, collecting
standards allowed considerable latitude in the recording of contextual and
interactional data. Many researchers simply ignored the information. Oth-
ers sketched out basic parameters, but too often their observations tended
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? ? toward the obvious and the dominant. For example, researchers have
tended to regard community members as a homogeneous group, thereby
assuming that whatever was true for adult riddling held equally well for
children's. Or, they viewed children themselves as undiversified, thereby
bypassing differences in riddling due to youngsters' ages, or, in urban ar-
eas, their ethnic heritage. Especially problematic has been information
about settings and interactional events that encourage or inhibit riddling.
Though fieldworkers' sensitivity to context and dynamics has increased
markedly in the past three decades, descriptions as specific as Manuel's of
Bagobo riddling in the Philippines are not yet commonplace: "Riddle mak-
ing . . . may start with younger folks or children, during some kind of ac-
tivity like playing house, chatting around the fireplace, waiting for a turn
to pound rice, fetching water, occupations of no strenuous nature, or while
people are at rest after lunch. After the impulse is set by young people, the
older folks may get stimulated to participate, depending on what they are
doing otherwise" (Manuel 1962, 125; McDowell 1979; also Glazer 1982,
91-115; Bronner 1988, 186-99).
Despite this unevenness in the literature, enough information is re-
trievable to at least hint at some cross-cultural trends. As the first of these,
we can identify two broadly different tracks that communities take with re-
gard to the appropriateness of distinct groups' engaging in riddling. First,
there are groups that treat riddling as an activity open to both adults and
children. Among the Anang of Nigeria, for instance, both adults and chil-
dren may pose and answer riddles (Messenger 1960; also Jette 1913 and
Manuel 1962). Secondly, and in contrast to groups like the Anang, commu-
nities may limit active involvement according to the age (or perhaps, the
social status) of the potential participants. In some cases, riddling is seen as
an adult prerogative. Though riddles may be posed occasionally to children
for specific purposes, such as testing the youngsters' intelligence, they are
not otherwise encouraged to participate (Bodding 1940; also Lindblom
1935). As an alternative to across-the-board restrictions based on age, other
communities require children to simply remain silent when riddling occurs
in adult social events. For instance, riddling at wakes may be appropriate
for adults but not children. Although they are permitted to observe, young-
sters are discouraged from joining in. Interestingly, though on such occasions
children can overhear riddles that they later share with their peers (Roberts
and Forman 1971, 195). Whereas the groups mentioned immediately above
restrict riddling to adults, others regard the activity as a pastime for chil-
dren. This appears to be the case in urban groups (for example, Basgoz 1965;
Roberts and Forman 1971; Virtanen 1978) as well as in some tribal and
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? ? preindustrialized societies (Hollis 1909; Doke 1927; Schapera 1932; Bascom
1949; Blacking 1961; D. Hart 1964; Fortes 1967; Upadhyaya 1970).
Within the literature, the most frequently reported occasions of adult-
child riddling are those involving pedagogy and leisure-time activity, respec-
tively. In pedagogic riddling, the adult takes on the role of teacher, the child
the role of student. The interactions can occur in the home as well as in the
school. To take the home environment first: Among the Chamula of Cen-
tral America (Gossen 1974, 115-16), mothers may use riddles in teaching
their children to talk. In the Ozark mountains of the United States in the
1930s (Randolph and Spradley 1934), some parents regarded "workin' out
riddles" as an intellectual discipline for children. They posed riddles to their
children in the hope of training the children's minds. Similar motives appear
to have been behind adult-child riddling in other areas of the United States
(Potter 1949, 939) and in Europe (Goldstein 1963). By far, the most frequent
reports of pedagogic riddling in the home come from Africa. There, riddling
is used to amuse children while testing their wit and competence in culture-
specific values (D. Hart 1964). With respect to pedagogic riddling in the
school environment, several curriculum reports (for example, Cazden 1982;
Scriven n. d. ) have suggested that riddling in the classroom can aid young-
sters' development of perceptual and descriptive skills. Although to my
knowledge we have no ethnographic reports of pedagogic riddling within
the mainstream classroom, there exists at least one report treating riddle use
in formal, non-English language instruction. Diane Roskies (cited in
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1978, 15) studied classroom activities in Kheyder, a
Jewish primary school. There, a variety of verbal art forms were applied in
the teaching of the Jewish alphabet. As one example of the pedagogic play,
the children were encouraged to tell riddles dealing with the shapes of the
letters.
In contrast to pedagogic riddling, leisure-time riddling is pursued as
an end in itself. Entertainment is the primary goal. Generally speaking, lei-
sure-time riddling between children and adults develops in the vicinity of the
home, when practical obligations are few (L. Roberts 1959; Barrick 1963;
Burns 1976, 145-47). Although parents and siblings appear to be children's
most frequent coparticipants (McCosh 1976, 57), youngsters confronted by
more distant relatives and other visitors may find that they can use riddling
to communicate across the "small-talk barrier" (Jansen 1968; Knapp and
Knapp 1976, 106). Of course, it is always possible that this arrangement
can backfire. Proud of their "funny, clever" children, parents have been
known to encourage the youngsters to "perform" riddles for the parents'
friends (McCosh 1976, 129). Trapped, visiting adults may serve not so much
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? ? as coparticipants but as spectators to the children's performances.
Though in-depth analysis is lacking, we have clues to the interactional
parameters of adult-child leisure-time riddling. In such contexts, it appears,
riddle subject matter can become problematic and speaking rights can be
unequally distributed. As to the first point: It seems that youngsters in both
Western and non-Western groups censor the riddles they tell adults. Among
the Venda of Africa (Blacking 1961, 2), children tell certain riddles only in
the company of their peers and never in the presence of their elders. Like-
wise, British and American youngsters delete sexual riddles from those they
share with adults (McCosh 1976, 57). Secondly, turns at talking can be un-
equally distributed during adult-child riddling. In adult-child, nonriddling
conversations, at least among American participants, children's speaking
rights are often limited (Sacks 1972). A similar arrangement appears to be
in effect during at least some adult-child riddling. David Evans's (1976) tran-
script of riddle interaction among four black men and two black boys pro-
vides a possible example. The interaction is dominated by the adults, par-
ticularly by the elderly man who poses most of the riddles. For their part,
the boys try to guess some of the riddles but do not offer any of their own.
On the whole, they are willing to watch and listen, allowing the adults to
take charge of the interaction.
In comparison to adult-child activity, leisure-time riddling in children's
peer groups has received even less documentation. Many of the reports
merely state that such riddling occurs. Those that do investigate the topics
tend to focus on formal riddle sessions. A riddle session (Burns 1976, 142)
consists of a series of riddle acts, possibly interspersed with other perfor-
mance material. The organization of a riddle session can be described in
terms of (1) role relationships among the participants, (2) the conjoining of
the interactional units that make up the sessions, and (3) restrictions or ex-
pectations influencing the selection of acts in one session relative to selec-
tion procedures in other sessions. To date, much of the research has adopted
the first of these foci, summarizing the riddle session as a contest in African
societies (Burns 1976, 147-53). One of the more detailed of these reports
has been published by John Blacking.
According to Blacking (1961), there are not set rules for the compo-
sition of riddling teams among the Venda of Africa. Depending on circum-
stances, teams can be made up of girls, boys, or a combination of both. Age
variables can be relevant, as when younger boys take on a team of older boys.
The most important factor, however, is riddling competence. Since the Venda
place a high positive value on the knowledge of words and on facility with
formal language, the child who knows many riddles is much in demand.
164 RIDDLES
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? ? Other youngsters may try to bribe their way onto the team of such a riddler,
offering him or her oranges or bits of sugar cane.
Riddle contests among the Venda typically begin with some variant
of the proposal A ri thaidze! ("Let's ask each other riddles! "). Once started,
the contest develops in one of two ways: as the event Thai dza u bulelana
("riddles that you reveal to each other") or as Thai dza u rengelana
("riddles that you buy from each other"). Though Venda children use both
types, they prefer the second. They explain that engaging in bartered riddles
is less competitive, easier to play, and lasts longer than the alternate
method. In addition, by being able to "buy" an answer with a riddle of
one's own, children decrease their embarrassment at not knowing the an-
swer to the opponents' question (pages 1-8). Blacking summarizes the or-
ganization of bartering contests as follows. The letters "A" and "B" refer
to the two riddling teams:
A asks B a riddle. B does not answer it; instead he "buys" A's answer
by posing another riddle. A answers his own first riddle and then
"buys" the answer to B's riddle by posing another riddle.
B then answers his own first riddle and "buys" the answer to A's sec-
ond riddle by posing another riddle.
The game continues in this fashion, with the burden of questioning
shifting regularly from A to B, until one side or the other is unable
to ask any more riddles. (page 3)
Blacking's report represents one of the more useful investigations of com-
petitive riddling among children. Though it would have been more informa-
tive if he had included excerpts from actual contests, the specifics he does
provide contribute significantly to the value of his study.
In contrast to the riddle contests of the Venda, leisure-time sessions
among Western urban children tend not to develop according to preset pat-
terns. Instead, their sessions are seemingly diffuse. To a considerable extent,
the apparent lack of organization derives from (as well as fosters) the occa-
sions in which the riddling occurs. Usual settings for this riddling include
(in the United States) the playground during recess, the cafeteria at lunch-
time, anywhere on the school grounds before and after classes, the school
bus, the street, the park, neighborhood backyards, and (in urban Finland)
the courtyards that lie behind blocks of flats (McCosh 1976, 57; Virtanen
1978; McDowell 1979, 122). Typically, adult supervision in these areas is
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? ? distant enough to permit peer group interests to hold sway. As a result, "con-
tentious riddling" (McDowell 1979, 122) can develop. In such riddling, par-
ticipants are verbally aggressive, take liberties with one another, and repeat-
edly test each other's social competence. The sessions seem to wander from
riddling per se to material such as knock-knock routines, narratives, songs,
name-calling, obscenity, and a variety of victimization procedures (McDowell
1979, 1980).
No doubt, the flexibility of contentious riddle sessions has discour-
aged their investigation. Until recent decades, fieldworkers have not had
widespread access to adequate recovery tools, such as audio and video re-
corders, for dealing with emergent interaction. In addition, investigators did
not have the analytic tools to cope adequately with conversation-like data.
Only within the past two decades or so have relevant perspectives become
available. One of these perspectives is known as the "ethnography of speak-
ing" (Bauman and Sherzer 1974; Bauman 1977b; Roemer 1983). Another
developed principally as a result of the work of ethnomethodologists. Pri-
marily sociologists, these researchers study the organization of everyday talk
(for example, Sudnow 1972; R. Turner 1974). One of their primary contri-
butions has been to resolve an apparent paradox: that casual exchange is
both structured and the result of the participants' active negotiation. In short,
ethnomethodologists argue, everyday encounters do not merely happen to
participants; they are achieved by them. For example, in everyday conver-
sation speakers tend to explore topics by using immediately prior talk as a
context for the shaping and understanding of subsequent talk. They estab-
lish the interconnectedness of their utterances and thereby give a sense of
order to their interactions. The relevance of this organizational technique
to children's leisure-time riddling follows.
In Children's Riddling (1979), John McDowell applies ethnometh-
odological perspectives to the study of children's riddle sessions. As members
of their own peer group culture, McDowell argues, children possess a basic
understanding of how to get things done in riddling.
Although they are not
self-consciously aware of the procedures employed, children nevertheless
manage to accomplish an underlying sense of order in their riddle sessions.
For example, they allow topically related riddles produced early in a session
to influence the production and interpretation of riddles offered later in the
same session. In other words, initial riddles establish a semantic field which
the children continue to investigate in subsequent riddles. McDowell (1979,
136) illustrates this process with riddles that, taken from a single session, con-
stitute a symposium on modes of locomotion. These riddles are given below
in the order in which McDowell's informants delivered them:
166 RIDDLES
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? ? 1. What has eight wheels and rolls? -roller skates.
2. What has two wheels and pedals? -a bicycle.
3. What has four wheels, no pedals, and a steering wheel? -a car.
4. What has four legs and can run? -a mustang.
5. What has three wheels and pedals? -a tricycle.
6. What has four legs and can't walk? -a chair.
7. What has two legs and it can walk? -a monkey.
8. What has long legs and it's hard to walk? -a seagull.
9. What has two seats, four wheels, and they can roll? -a car.
10. What has lots of windows and they can fly? -airplane.
11. What are those little clocks and it's in your car? -a dragger.
In addition to exploring the semantic field of locomotion, this riddle sequence
suggests a taxonomy, given below. The children supply the linguistic tokens
(for example, mustang, chair) and points of contrast among the taxa (the
major points of contrast are wheels, legs, and pedals; the minor points in-
clude wheels and legs, the effectiveness of legs, and so forth). The remain-
der of the taxonomic apparatus is implied. Nevertheless, McDowell (1979,
138) posits, the children put the concepts and tokens of locomotion in their
logical places:
class of objects
locomotives nonlocomotives
animals
run walk
wheels
mustang
monkey
dragger
toys machines furniture
walk hard 832 air ground legs
se agull skates bicycle plane car
tricycle clocks
chair
Focusing on what he terms the "cerebral child," McDowell argues for
children's unself-conscious pursuit of deep-structuring principles. Though his
analytic methods differ from theirs, McDowell's conclusions concerning
riddle sessions are compatible with those of other researchers who have ar-
gued that youngsters are intrigued by play with classificatory principles
(Sutton-Smith 1976b; Stewart 1978).
Elsewhere in Children's Riddling, McDowell considers a level of rid-
dling organization more specific than that of the riddle session. In his chap-
ter entitled "Negotiation," he examines the riddle act, the basic interactional
unit of riddling. A riddle act (Burns 1976, 142) consists of all the interac-
I67
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? ? tional moves involved in posing and responding to a single riddle question.
Riddle act organization can vary depending on the traditions of the culture
in which the riddling occurs, the accepted practices of the peer group, and
the situational conditions that impinge on the riddling during its course.
Following Tom Burns's survey (1976, 153-54) of the possibili-
ties of riddle act construction, McDowell (1979, 112) identifies the follow-
ing sequence as basic to the efforts of his informants. The children consis-
tently drew on this sequence in developing their riddle acts, thereby indi-
cating that it represented shared knowledge within the peer group:
1. riddle act invitation ("I've got one"; "I know one")
2. riddler's statement (the riddle proposition)2
3. riddlee's initial response (that is, a guess; declining to guess)
4. riddler-riddlee interaction in the contemplation period (requests for
and the supplying of hints)
5. riddle answer sequence
Each juncture in this basic sequence can be developed through one or more
elaborative moves. After the riddler initiates a riddle act and the riddlee of-
fers an initial response, McDowell (1979, 124-25) points out, certain elabo-
rative moves become available to the riddler:
1. clue
2. rejection of unacceptable solution
3. affirmation of correct solution
4. delivery of correct solution
Supplemental moves may be used to consolidate the riddler's authoritative
position:
1. encouraging the riddlee
2. refusing to supply requested information
For their part, respondents have access to at least the following basic moves:
1. request for clue
2. request for clarification
3. proposed solution
Supplemental moves available to respondents include:
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? ? 1. request for solution
2. surrender
3. challenge
According to McDowell, the children did not regard either the basic sequence
or its elaborative and supplemental moves as hard-and-fast conventions.
Rather, the actual deployment of the sequence was negotiable, depending
on the circumstances of the situation and the participants' individual and
combined goals.
The following transcript excerpt illustrates the basic sequence and its
elaborative moves. The excerpt is drawn from my own fieldwork, conducted
during 1974-75 with five- through eight-year-old Anglo children in Austin,
Texas. McDowell's study focuses on riddling among Mexican-American
youngsters of similar ages in the Austin barrio. Despite differences in the eth-
nic heritage of our respective informants, McDowell's perspective can be ap-
plied effectively to the Anglo material. Though lengthy, the excerpt below
represents a single riddle act. Each child's age is indicated in parentheses fol-
lowing the child's pseudonym. After presenting the excerpt, I consider the
dynamics and the organization of the interaction:
1. [Maggie stands; the other children are seated on the ground]
2. Maggie (8): What runs all the way around the block an' [pause]
yeah, what
3. runs all the way around the block?
4. : You!
5. Maggie: No.
6. : People?
7. Maggie: No.
8. Cassi (7): Clifford?
9. : ( ? )
10. Maggie: [shouts:] No [pause] nobody knew it. Nobody knew it.
11. [presumably in response to Cassi's guess:] Yeah. [pause]
12. Well, no.
13. : Clifford.
14. : Clifford.
15. Maggie: Raise your hand!
16. Susan (8): Oh! [raises her hand]
17. Maggie: Susan.
18. Susan: Sidewalk?
19. Maggie: No.
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? ? 20. : Clifford.
21. Maggie: No.
22. Lydia (5): Uh, a horse?
23. Maggie: No.
24. Cassi: Oh! I [pause] Clifford riding his tricycle.
25. Maggie: No.
26. Kathy (8): God [pause] I don't believe.
27. : A street?
28. Maggie: No. Give up?
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Cassi: Oh! A streaker?
Maggie: No!
: Um, Clifford ridin' his bike?
Maggie: No.
Sharon (5): Uh [pause] a goose! Ah [pause] a goosey gander!
34. : A doggie?
35.
36.
37.
Maggie: No!
: (? )
Maggie: Wha- [pause] um, no. Y'all get.
38. Kathy: [sarcastic tone:] A goosey gander!
39. Maggie: [shouting:] No, y'all are never going to guess it. Do
y'all
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.