We live, rather, in a world of
multiple
childhoods and multiple ways in which
these can be studied, to the credit of all parties.
these can be studied, to the credit of all parties.
Childens - Folklore
Traditionally, play
has been seen as largely a mimetic phenomenon, an interpretation which
privileges the adult world as the model. What is apparent, however, is that
much of play is a mockery of that adult world at the same time as it is a
mimicry. So what we wish to sketch in the rest of this conclusion is not only
the way in which play models and manifests power relationships, but also
the way in which play expresses power and powerlessness by being sub-
versive of the normative culture of which it is a part. But it is important to
stress here that the play is generally both dialectically normative and sub-
versive at the same time in varying degrees (Sutton-Smith 1978a). By sub-
versive we mean all those multifaceted expressions of the child groups that
undermine the authority of the dominant culture, well illustrated in this vol-
ume in the chapters by Jorgensen, McDowell, Mechling, Sullivan, and
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? ? Zumwalt. It is at the privileged site of clandestine folklore that the subver-
sive thrives. Scott (1990) has argued that a partly sanitized, ambiguous and
coded version of this subversive "hidden transcript" is always present some-
where in the public discourse of subordinate groups, and further: "The dia-
lectic of disguise and surveillance that pervades relations between the weak
and the strong will help us, I think, to understand the cultural patterns of
domination and subordination. The theatrical imperatives that normally
prevail in situations of domination produce a public transcript in close con-
formity with how the dominant group would work to have things appear.
The dominant never control the stage absolutely, but their wishes normally
prevail. In the short run, it is in the interest of the subordinate to produce a
more or less credible performance" (1990, 40).
Most of the research to this point has been done on the way in which
subordinate colonial, racial, ethnic, or gender groups use their own folklore.
McMahon has shown, for example, the daring ways that women undermine
their more powerful spouses while in their very presence using coded and
apparently joking statements that the women know will be incorrectly per-
ceived by their husbands. These "flaunted" hidden transcripts are clandes-
tinely and gleefully understood by the other women present (McMahon
1993). Likewise, as children compose the most powerless subaltern group,
we should expect them to have multiple and complex ways of subverting
authority-behaviors that must be taken into account by researchers.
Sutton-Smith (1990a) has presented a typology for identifying the stra-
tegic ways that children create the folklore that subverts adults and em-
powers children. His provisional schemata consists of disorder, failure, and
antithesis. We can rephrase these categories and further develop them in terms
of the literature in the adult field of resistance as follows: Disorder and fail-
ure are similar to Radner's and Lanser's "appropriation" and "incompetence,"
which are categories in their typology for the identification of women's
strategic codes (1993). The latter, Sutton-Smith's antithesis, is like the logic
of opposition in Keesing's discussion of "contestation" (1992) because it is a
way that empowers and subverts under the noses of those who wield power.
To illustrate the material for a further analysis of children's folklore as a docu-
mentation of power relationships, consider the following details:
Disorder. Here we deal with the delight that children have in creat-
ing disorder out of order. On the child level this is reflected in unisons of
shoutings and noise-making, knocking down blocks and sand castles, laugh-
ing hysterically at deviations in adult behavior (as in cartoons, Charlie
Chaplin, Three Stooges, Batley) rolling about on the ground, falling down
on purpose, phonological and repetitive babble, telling stories full of mixed
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? ? disasters such as being lost, stolen, angry, dead, stepped on, hurt, burned,
killed, crashed, and so forth (Sutton-Smith 1981b). Remembering that adults
also take joy in carnivals, festivals, roller coasters, clowns, rock concerts,
and contact sports, where disorder is also a central characteristic, it is pos-
sible to argue that this impulse for disorderly play is a universal character-
istic, perhaps itself not unrelated to such human disorderly fatefulness as war,
catastrophe, hurricanes, death, and riots. Bakhtin's emphasis upon laugh-
ter as the basic and universal human reaction against fate through its disor-
dering impact, further suggests a certain universality in the phenomenon. We
remember his accounts of the orgiastic peasant festivals described by Rabelais
as such a deep and universal reaction to endless suppression. As a character
in Paul Willis's more modern Learning to Labour says about the battle that
some adolescent British boys put up against their schooling, "I think that
fuckin laffing is the most important thing in fuckin everything. Nothing ever
stops me laffing . . . I don't know why I want to laff, I dunno why it's so
fuckin important. It just is. . . . I think it's just a good gift, that's all, because
you can get out of any situation. If you can laff, if you can make yourself
laff, I mean really convincingly, it can get you out of millions of things. . . .
You'd go fuckin berserk if you didn't have a laff occasionally" (Willis 1977,
29). What this and some of the earlier examples show is that no matter what
dimensions of universality laughter and disorder may have, much of this
apparently irrational playfulness is in childhood directed against adult sup-
pression and interference and order. Other examples in this volume are the
pranks examined by Mechling and Jorgensen as well as Fine's mention of
his data on children's fartlore. What we have in this material on closer view
is a demystification of the structure of the dominant adult culture that dem-
onstrates its ephemeral control. Sluckin, for example, discusses what is called
a "taxi" ritual by some British schoolboys in which when one denies to the
teacher that he has passed wind, then the whole class passes wind (1981,
32). Many a schoolteacher has been unraveled simply by being laughed at
by the whole class either openly or surreptitiously. Such behavior is so com-
mon that "taunting the teacher" may actually constitute a genre in its own
right (Oxrieder 1976). As it has been explained elsewhere, however, much
of the disorder of children's play is an assertion of control within that play
itself, rather than being directed at the adult culture (Sutton-Smith 1977).
Apparently life as well as adults generate this response in us all.
Failure. Modern childen grow up in an achievement society where
they are graded endlessly on their accomplishments. A kind of disorder, there-
fore, which they especially seem to cherish is the disorder of failure, though
unlike many of the earlier physical disorders this one apparently doesn't
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? ? make its appearance until school days. Perhaps the most spectacular ex-
amples are the moron jokes, where stupidity is most celebrated. But folly
and stupidity is revered also in riddles (You go to the bathroom American.
You come out of the bathroom American. What are you in the bathroom?
European). There are Mary Jane jokes (Mary Jane went to the doctor and
he told her she was going to have twins. She laughed and laughed because
she knew she hadn't done it twice), cruel mummy jokes, elephant jokes, dead
baby jokes, Helen Keller jokes, Dolly Parton jokes, Christa McCauliffe jokes,
grosser than gross jokes, and so forth. In many of these there is fictional-
ized failure at the expense of some conventional attitude or authority or
nicety or decency. The teller achieves a magical distance in telling the tale
of the failures of life-not in some way unlike the adult gambler whose
mastery is in choosing how and where to lose, or a golf player whose mas-
tery is much of the time in choosing to play badly for the rest of his or her
life, but at least to keep playing. It is not hard to see much of the folklore
of childhood, or adulthood for that matter, as a lore of empowerment, of
fictional mastery over the presented fates.
The general undercurrent of an interest in playful disorder or failures
becomes public on those occasions when it is suddenly used directly against
authority, as when a class clown is applauded by his or her peers for sabo-
taging a teacher's efforts in the classroom with his or her nonsense or "tra-
ditional" inappropriate answers. These particular occasions justify us in say-
ing that much of children's folklore exists in an interstitial world between
fantasy and reality. This is like most of the subcultures that Scott discusses,
where there are multiple traditions of antagonism but these are muted and
indirect and fantasied until a moment when particular hostilities bring them
to the surface. But they do nevertheless exist as an ongoing culture of self-
regard and group confirmation. This is as true of the adult underclass as it
is of the child underclass.
Antithesis. Disorder is at base a fairly undirected primordial chaos.
Failure directs the blame at the persons who are stupid or without power.
The implication that more powerful persons are responsible is not directly
drawn. But with antithesis the fictional attack upon the mighty is rendered
more clearly. Antithesis is an expressive behavior that presupposes an op-
positional tension and demystifies the dominant culture through parody,
mirroring, or inversion. Sullivan cites the work of the Knapps, who recorded
the following song parody: "My Bonnie lies over the ocean; my Bonnie lies
over the sea. My daddy lies over my mommy, and that's how they got little
me (Knapp and Knapp 1976, 172, 185). So, too, Bronner recorded several
song parodies such as "Row, row row your boat; gently down the stream.
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? ? Throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream" (1988, 101).
Other kinds of antithesis suggested by the writings of Radner and
Lanser include such concepts as that of trivialization, in which subversive
expressions play off dominant culture expectations about what is trivial.
When Butler (1989, 94) asked a young Dutch girl to recite her favorite
jump-rope rhyme, the child responded with this verse (which rhymes in
Dutch): "A dog made a poopoo/Under a tree/A Frenchman came along/And
ate it. " Although the child's mother and grandmother were present, there
was little that could be said about the child responding to a request to re-
cite a "mere" jump-rope rhyme. Then there is indirection, which Radner and
Lanser (1993) define as hedging or leaving out key words that members of
the group know are also part of the text. Reinterpreting their category for
women's strategy coding, we include here what Dundes (1967) terms the
"evasive answer," which is one of his thirteen genres of children's folklore.
Indirection can also occur with tongue twisters that are disguised so as to ap-
pear innocent: "I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit. Upon this slitted sheet I sit" (Dundes
1967; Galvin 1990, 168). Also, adults may be familiar with only one ver-
sion of a text, such as: "Jeff and Mary sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First
comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes Jeff in the baby-
carriage. "Children, however, may actually know another version of the text
in which "F-U-C-K-I-N-G" replaces "kissing. " In the presence of disapprov-
ing adults, the words are just whispered or, as Zumwalt has illustrated in
this Sourcebook, just abbreviated: "Oh , you M-F, T-S, T-B-B! " Or there is
Radner's and Lanser's distraction, which is similar to indirection but involves
drowning out of a message, such as children's humming the tune of "Jack
and Jill" instead of reciting a version known to the group, such as "Jack and
Jill/Went up the hill/To get a pail of water/Jill came down with a five dollar
bill/Do you really think she went up for water? " And most adults would
choose to ignore a version of Jingle Bells, sung by a twelve-year-old boy in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: "Jingle bells, shotgun shells; Santa Claus is dead.
Someone stole my . 30-. 30 and shot him in the head" (Bronner 1988, 108).
Such examples demonstrate how challenging and socially relevant the
study of children's subversive folklore is, but beyond this what is the value
of developing such a typology? The broad goal is presumably to identify
forms of folklore that are hidden in order to understand the relation of
children's folklore to various forms of domination. Other related critical
questions to be explored include discovering under which conditions
children's folklore becomes subversive and by what processes children as well
as other oppressed groups create subversive folklore. How do the forms of
children's folklore relate to different forms of domination and dominant
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? ? cultural values?
In setting out these examples of various kinds of subversion, how-
ever, it is necessary to emphasize the methodological point that researchers
need to avoid the trap of "reading into" children's folklore what simply isn't
there. Subversion is more than a text; it is an event that must be systemati-
cally accounted for before determining whether a particular act is subver-
sive. A child could repeat some of these rhymes above with no sense what-
soever of such implication. This is the point implied by Winslow in an early
work on children's derogatory epithets. As Winslow demonstrated, there are
levels of meaning and contexts that exist in the ethnography of speaking.
Researchers must be careful before assuming that the expression is always
used in the same manner. For example, "A child may good-naturedly accept
his nickname in the course of normal social interaction, but the same name
may be used derogatorily in other contexts, especially if it is repeated
enough" (1969, 256). This means close examination of the context-both
historical and situational. Determinations can never simply be made by read-
ing textual surfaces in abstraction from the specific event. For example, in
Butler's Skipping Around the World: The Ritual Nature of Folk Rhymes
(1989) and Lurie's Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Litera-
ture (1990), each scholar has provided the reader with examples of children's
folklore that are only potentially subversive, with little contextual informa-
tion to support the researchers' interpretations. Therefore, we suggest pro-
ceeding cautiously in making such power interpretations, first recording or
noting the situation which is external to the folklore itself and then actually
identifying the taboos and values imposed on children.
Yet it is not our intent either to romanticize subversive aspects of
children's folklore as "playful" nor to divert attention from darker aspects
by ignoring instances of victimization of children by children. Some children's
advocates fall into the trap of not only celebrating children's folklore purely
for its didactic uses or viewing it as innocent diversion, but assuming the
"unity" or "inclusiveness" of children as a group. Diversity exists everywhere
and, as a result, uneven power relations also exist among children. Children
as well have multiple identities related to gender, class, religion, and race.
Works by scholars such as Fischer (1986) on ethnicity have even shown that
although some differences often deny inclusiveness, they can be fundamen-
tal in identity formation for the group itself. As Roemer in this volume notes,
researchers have generally ignored differences in, for example, children's rid-
dling styles resulting from varying ages as well as ethnic heritages. This di-
versity is most apparent, for example, in studies like that of Stoeltje (1978),
who noted subtle but important differences in hand-clapping games of Anglo
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? ? and African American girls.
Obviously, the ideal is neither to reject nor to romanticize whatever
there is in the children's world of powerlessness nor to make value judgments
about what is appropriate to record. In exploring the ingenious ways that
children create, regardless of their ethical flavor, we come to understand the
simultaneous processes of their accommodation to adult values and their
expressions of subversiveness. At times children's lore is an expression of
defiance, challenging controlling forces in a symbolic power struggle, but
sometimes this folklore is cruel, directed at members of the child's own group,
such as when tag becomes "cooties tag" because the targeted child is said
to have "cooties" because of race, religion, gender, or class. Such examples
include what Sullivan terms "rhymes of prejudice" and provide us with very
clear examples of children's folklore that adults have consistently avoided
including in scholarly folklore collections. Children quite naturally replicate
adult hierarchies in their own play and are as likely to generate cruel, dark,
or mean folklore as they are to generate kindlier forms. Modern idealiza-
tion of children's play as a part of childhood "innocence" often makes it
difficult to recognize or accept these phenomena.
Finally, these investigations of folklore as power show that there is a
real need to seriously reassess our fieldwork in relation to the voice and au-
thority we exercise, which is an ethical concern well articulated by Fine and
Mechling in this Source Book. For whether the author collects texts, or stud-
ies performance, or looks at power relationships in ethnographic ways, or
romanticizes play, or contrastingly emphasizes its cruelty; whether appreciat-
ing or depreciating the children's own power struggles; whether rationaliz-
ing childhood or glorying in its irrationality-all of these are as much a com-
mentary on the stance or rhetorics of the authority as on the condition of
childhood. Children's folklore and that of adults was once much used to
confer authenticity on the nationality or the ethnicity of the folk being stud-
ied, and also to claim authenticity for the discoveries of the scholar so in-
volved. The activity of the Brothers Grimm is perhaps the most famous case
in point (Briggs 1993). Postulating the authenticity of children's endeavors
has, however, hardly been a prestigious activity in our post-Enlightenment
culture, where adults are generally more interested in children's progress than
in their past. But there has always been a small minority of scholars, from
Newall to the Opies, who have hung in at their child-oriented posts and at-
tempted to make us realize there was something there in children's folklore
worth preserving or recording-whether they called it tradition, "natural"
childhood, or folk subculture.
We pay a tribute to these scholars, as well as to the contributors to
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? ? this Source Book, for their research of whatever kind and for the scholarly
merit they derive from the authenticity of their own research endeavors. It
is a scholarly "game" to engage one's fellows with a more adequate approach
to the scholarly subject matter than existed hitherto, as if there is only our
own new way of being authentic. But our editorial gamesmanship requires
that we suggest, on the contrary, that there are multiple ways of being au-
thentic about the authenticity of those we study. It is not a zero sum game.
We live, rather, in a world of multiple childhoods and multiple ways in which
these can be studied, to the credit of all parties. We say this despite our own
persistent rhetoric about child empowerment. We choose to finish, therefore,
selectively by asking the question how is it that our adult culture so typi-
cally suppresses the power-related aspects of children's lives so clearly rep-
resented in this present document? Is the "triviality barrier" (Sutton-Smith
1970a) in children's folklore only an adult reaction formation against the
dangers of recognizing that the world would be very different if we attended
to the neotony of children's struggles for power?
308 CONCLUSION: THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
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? ? GLOSSARY
AN AID FOR SOURCE BOOK READERS
This list of terms was created by Source Book contributors, who listed and
defined those words that they considered basic for readers' understanding
of their respective chapters. It is hoped that this glossary will be useful for
those who are new to the field of folklore and for students in the classroom.
analytical category: form of classification generated by analyst for the
purposes of comparison (see cultural category).
antithesis: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's typology for
children's subversive folklore that represents expressive behaviors that pre-
suppose an oppositional tension and demystify the dominant culture through
parody, mirroring, or inversion.
block element: one or more features of a riddle proposition that in-
terferes with the proposition's facile solution.
bounded (or closed) society: homogeneous social group marked by
isolation from other groups; members rely on one another for subsistence
and social functions. Usually used to describe aboriginal and peasant com-
munities (see open society).
catch riddle: a type of riddle in which the surprise or victimization
of the respondent is a necessary element in the proposition.
childhood underground: a term used to describe the subculture of
children that exists apart from the culture dominated and controlled by
adults. In their book One Potato, Two Potato: The Secret Education of
American Children (1976), Mary and Herbert Knapp explain this concept
in detail.
childlore: children's folklore.
children's folklore: shared expressive behaviors of children; more spe-
cifically, according to Bauman, ". . . the traditional formalized play activi-
ties of children, including forms of speech play and verbal art, that are en-
gaged in and maintained by the children themselves, within the peer group.
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? ? Familiar genres of children's folklore include riddles, games, jokes, taunts,
retorts, hand-claps, counting-out rhymes, catches, ring plays, and jump-rope
rhymes . . . distinguished on the one hand from nursery rhymes . . . It is
likewise distinguished from, though it may share items and genres and have
other continuities with, adult folklore" (1982, 172).
contentious fiddling: a type of riddling interaction during which par-
ticipants are verbally aggressive, take liberties with one another, and test each
other's social competence. See McDowell 1979, 122.
context: according to Duranti and Goodwin, the "notion of context
. . involves a fundamental juxtaposition of two entries: 1) a focal event;
and 2) a field of action within which that event is embedded" (1992, 3). The
relationship between focal event and context is "much like that between 'or-
ganism' and 'environment. '. . . 4) Contextual attributes most often attended
to in folkloristic and anthropological scholarship include: a) setting ("i. e. ,
the social and spatial framework within which encounters are situated"); b)
behavorial environment ("i. e. , the way that participants use their bodies and
behavior as a resource for framing and organizing their talk"); c) language
as context (the "way in which talk itself both invokes context and provides
context for other talk"); and d) extrasituational context (that is, the partici-
pants' "background knowledge") (pages 6-8).
cultural category: form of classification generated by members of a
cultural group to describe themselves (see analytical category).
descriptive routine: a madeup (that is, nontraditional) riddlelike rou-
tine depending solely or primarily on the technique of description. For an
alternate definition, see McDowell 1979.
dialogue riddle: a type of riddle in which the proposition contains a
quotation from characters in a fictitious interactional encounter. The riddle
answer identifies the speakers. See Abrahams and Dundes 1972, 135. For
an example, see riddle no. 14 in Roemer's chapter in this volume.
disorder and anarchy: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's ty-
pology for children's subversive folklore that represents expressive behav-
iors as types of appropriation that demystify the structure of the dominant
culture by demonstrating its ephemeral nature.
distraction: a category in Radner and Lanser's typology for women's
strategic coding, adapted by McMahon and Sutton-Smith to indicate the
forms of children's folklore that subvert authority by drowning out a mes-
sage.
double dutch: a style of children's jump rope utilizing two ropes or
one long rope doubled, turned egg beater fashion. Typically, two people turn,
one at each end, with a jumper performing specific rhythmic motions in the
310 GLOSSARY
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? ? middle while stepping over the cascading ropes.
emergence: the process whereby expressive forms take shape in the
crucible of social interaction.
ethnomethodology: a research perspective that studies the organiza-
tion and achievement of everyday life, including that of everyday talk. See
Sudnow 1972 and R. Turner 1974.
experiment: a research method for investigating cause and effect un-
der controlled conditions.
failure: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's typology for sub-
versive forms of staged incompetent behaviors that resist dominant group
expectations.
folktale: a form of folk narrative told primarily for entertainment,
with an emphasis on action and adventure within a fictional framework.
While the folktale as delineated in Aarne and Thompson's Types of the
Folktale (1961) has both simple and complex forms, the folktales discussed
in Tucker's chapter in this volume are all Miirchen, or fairytales in which a
single hero encounters supernatural influences and tries to succeed at a quest.
Generally, in magic tales, the hero and other deserving characters live "hap-
pily ever after" while villains are severely punished.
function: that which folklore "does" for the people who employ it.
funny-scary story: a folktale with a "catch" or humorous ending.
Children use this term to indicate that, while a story of this kind may seem
frightening, its climax has no truly fearful elements.
gesunkenes Kulturgut: the theory that folklore is directed downward
in social hierarchies.
imitative objects: things made by children that resemble larger arti-
facts in the adult world. An example is a model hydroplane abstractly made
from clip-type clothespins.
in-depth interview: a series of questions administered personally by
a researcher to respondents, allowing the respondent to reply in detail.
indirection: a category from Radner's and Lanser's typology for
women's strategic coding used to indicate expressive behaviors such as hedg-
ing or leaving out key words; similar to the genre of children's folklore that
Dundes identified as the "evasive answer" (1967). Indirection is another
category adapted by McMahon and Sutton-Smith in their refashioned ty-
pology for children's subversive folklore.
induced performances: folklore performances set up and encouraged
by a researcher in a not fully natural situation.
informed consent: describing to a research subject the nature and goals
of the research in which she or he is involved.
3''
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? ? interreference: the dynamic process that operates between two or
more cultures: central to the idea of "ethnicity," which Fischer (1986) views
as "a deeply rooted component of identity. "
interrogative ludic routine: small-scale verbal exchanges making play-
ful use of the interrogative system in a language.
intraconversational narrative: a narrative embedded in the natural
flow of conversation. Folklorists usually give careful consideration to the
entire conversation when considering the meanings of this kind of narrative.
inventive or manipulative object: things made from natural resources
into a new, more technical shape. An example is sand sculpture made by
children on a beach.
joking riddle: a type of riddle in which the proposition serves prima-
rily as a setup for the punch-line answer. For examples, see Roemer's riddle
examples nos. 36-37 in this volume.
kinesics: the study of body movement and human communication,
as pioneered by Ray L. Birdwhistell.
legend: less formally structured than the folktale, the legend features
realistic characters and may be told as a true story. Two popular subtypes
of this genre are the supernatural legend or "ghost story" and the horror
legend in which monsters, maniacs, and other nonsupernatural forces pre-
dominate.
Miirchen: the traditional European tale of wonder and magic; syn-
onymous with "fairy tale" and "conte des f6es. "
material folk culture: interconnection of mental concept and tradi-
tional design shared within a social group. Includes objects and environments
that characterize traditions of the group made by its members.
media narraform: a term coined by Sylvia Grider to classify the
children's stories based on movies or TV shows (see Grider 1981). These
stories, often diffuse and imprecise, may be told collaboratively in an effort
to create the best possible synopsis of the original show.
move: sociologist Erving Goffman has written of "the move": "Now
when an individual is engaged in talk, some of his utterances and
nonlinguistic behavior will be taken to have a special temporal relevance,
being directed to others present as something he wants assessed, appreciated,
understood, now. I have spoken here of a move. Now it seems that some-
times the speaker and his hearers will understand this move to be primarily
a comment on what has just been said, in that degree allowing us to speak
of a response; at other times the move will be primarily seen as something
to which a response is called for, in which degree it can be called a state-
ment" (1981, 71-71).
31i2 GLOSSARY
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? ? mutation: an expressive item that has been altered through perfor-
mance.
narrative: prose utterances with a sequential plot that may be fictional
or nonfictional. Folktales, legends, and media narraforms are among the
most popular narrative told by children.
oicotypification: the adaptation of an expressive item to fit a specific
social and cultural environment.
open (or complex) society: heterogeneous social group marked by high
degree of individuation. Usually associated with urban, industrialized na-
tions.
parodic riddle: a type of joking riddle that extends the humor of the
answer to the realm of the fantastic or the absurd. What the riddle as a whole
proposes is nonsensical, given a conventional understanding of the "real"
world. See examples in this volume by Roemer, nos. 38-44.
participant observation: a method in which researchers systematically
observe people while participating in their routine activities.
psychoanalytic method: analysis of folk narratives that relies upon the
precepts of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and others. Sexual
symbolism that comes from the unconscious is a major focus in this school
of interpretation.
riddle act: a unit of social interaction that consists of all the interac-
tional moves involved in posing and responding to a single riddle proposi-
tion. The riddle act is the basic interactional unit of riddling. See Burns 1976,
142.
riddle session: a unit of social interaction during which a series of
riddle acts is produced. The riddles may be interspersed with other perfor-
mance material or with conversation. See Burns 1976, 142.
routine: a set of sequentially produced discourse acts (utterances, ges-
tures, strategic use of silence) that is organized beyond the level of the indi-
vidual sentence. A riddle act is a routine that is characteristically produced
by more than one participant. See Hymes 1971.
semantic field: in discourse study, a domain of content or meaning.
solicitation: a type of speech act whose function is to elicit a verbal
or physical response. See Bauman 1977b, 24.
story: synonym for narrative, defined above.
structuralism: analysis of the sequence of plot elements, called "func-
tions" in Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1958). Propp attempted to
explain the structure of all Russian folktales, while Dundes further devel-
oped Propp's approach using the term "motifeme" in lieu of "function" in
his Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964a).
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? ? subversive folklore: mulifaceted expressions of a group that under-
mine the authority of the dominant culture; also, any folklore involving vic-
timization of others in the same group-such as children by more powerful
children-which in effect also subverts adult authority because it involves
taboo behavior.
survey research: a research method in which subjects respond to a
series of questions in a questionnaire or structured interview.
syndesis: term used by anthropologist Robert Plant Armstrong to
describe an object that grows from repetition of smaller units. Two examples
are an ordinary spot in the woods converted to a child's shrine and one's
fingers used to make a steeple (whose reverse is the people).
synthetic objects: things that are combined or built up from existing
objects. An example is a Halloween effigy.
taunt: a malicious verbal expressive activity involving a victim.
tease: a verbal expressive activity involving a minimal degree of vic-
timization, usually with "fun" rather than hurt as the motivation.
tenor: in a metaphoric construction, the subject word to which a meta-
phoric word (that is, the vehicle) is applied (M. Abrams 1957, 61).
transcription: the act of writing down verbatim actual interaction or
dialogue, usually recorded first on audio or videotape; can refer to the text,
conversation, or nonverbal communication or the written record of such
translation.
transformational objects: commercial or adult things altered to suit
children's needs and images. An example is a "half-ball" used for alley
stickball and made by slicing a whole rubber ball.
triangulation: a methodology for collecting folklore that does not rely
on any single method but instead is a combination of several techniques.
trick: a deceptive expressive activity with minimal victimization or
harm intended, with "fun" as the motivating force.
trivialization: a category in Radner's and Lanser's typology for
women's strategic coding, adapted here to indicate children's subversive ex-
pressions that play off dominant culture expectations about what is trivial.
true riddle: a type of riddle that involves "a comparison between the
unstated answer and something else that is described in the question"
(Brunvand 1986, 90). The answer to a true riddle can be reasoned out based
on information supplied in the riddle proposition and the respondent's ad-
equate experience with and recall of tropes, symbols, and other relevant con-
ventions shared within the particular culture. See Taylor 1951 and examples
by Roemer in this volume (riddle nos. 1, 2, 4-8, 32-35).
has been seen as largely a mimetic phenomenon, an interpretation which
privileges the adult world as the model. What is apparent, however, is that
much of play is a mockery of that adult world at the same time as it is a
mimicry. So what we wish to sketch in the rest of this conclusion is not only
the way in which play models and manifests power relationships, but also
the way in which play expresses power and powerlessness by being sub-
versive of the normative culture of which it is a part. But it is important to
stress here that the play is generally both dialectically normative and sub-
versive at the same time in varying degrees (Sutton-Smith 1978a). By sub-
versive we mean all those multifaceted expressions of the child groups that
undermine the authority of the dominant culture, well illustrated in this vol-
ume in the chapters by Jorgensen, McDowell, Mechling, Sullivan, and
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? ? Zumwalt. It is at the privileged site of clandestine folklore that the subver-
sive thrives. Scott (1990) has argued that a partly sanitized, ambiguous and
coded version of this subversive "hidden transcript" is always present some-
where in the public discourse of subordinate groups, and further: "The dia-
lectic of disguise and surveillance that pervades relations between the weak
and the strong will help us, I think, to understand the cultural patterns of
domination and subordination. The theatrical imperatives that normally
prevail in situations of domination produce a public transcript in close con-
formity with how the dominant group would work to have things appear.
The dominant never control the stage absolutely, but their wishes normally
prevail. In the short run, it is in the interest of the subordinate to produce a
more or less credible performance" (1990, 40).
Most of the research to this point has been done on the way in which
subordinate colonial, racial, ethnic, or gender groups use their own folklore.
McMahon has shown, for example, the daring ways that women undermine
their more powerful spouses while in their very presence using coded and
apparently joking statements that the women know will be incorrectly per-
ceived by their husbands. These "flaunted" hidden transcripts are clandes-
tinely and gleefully understood by the other women present (McMahon
1993). Likewise, as children compose the most powerless subaltern group,
we should expect them to have multiple and complex ways of subverting
authority-behaviors that must be taken into account by researchers.
Sutton-Smith (1990a) has presented a typology for identifying the stra-
tegic ways that children create the folklore that subverts adults and em-
powers children. His provisional schemata consists of disorder, failure, and
antithesis. We can rephrase these categories and further develop them in terms
of the literature in the adult field of resistance as follows: Disorder and fail-
ure are similar to Radner's and Lanser's "appropriation" and "incompetence,"
which are categories in their typology for the identification of women's
strategic codes (1993). The latter, Sutton-Smith's antithesis, is like the logic
of opposition in Keesing's discussion of "contestation" (1992) because it is a
way that empowers and subverts under the noses of those who wield power.
To illustrate the material for a further analysis of children's folklore as a docu-
mentation of power relationships, consider the following details:
Disorder. Here we deal with the delight that children have in creat-
ing disorder out of order. On the child level this is reflected in unisons of
shoutings and noise-making, knocking down blocks and sand castles, laugh-
ing hysterically at deviations in adult behavior (as in cartoons, Charlie
Chaplin, Three Stooges, Batley) rolling about on the ground, falling down
on purpose, phonological and repetitive babble, telling stories full of mixed
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? ? disasters such as being lost, stolen, angry, dead, stepped on, hurt, burned,
killed, crashed, and so forth (Sutton-Smith 1981b). Remembering that adults
also take joy in carnivals, festivals, roller coasters, clowns, rock concerts,
and contact sports, where disorder is also a central characteristic, it is pos-
sible to argue that this impulse for disorderly play is a universal character-
istic, perhaps itself not unrelated to such human disorderly fatefulness as war,
catastrophe, hurricanes, death, and riots. Bakhtin's emphasis upon laugh-
ter as the basic and universal human reaction against fate through its disor-
dering impact, further suggests a certain universality in the phenomenon. We
remember his accounts of the orgiastic peasant festivals described by Rabelais
as such a deep and universal reaction to endless suppression. As a character
in Paul Willis's more modern Learning to Labour says about the battle that
some adolescent British boys put up against their schooling, "I think that
fuckin laffing is the most important thing in fuckin everything. Nothing ever
stops me laffing . . . I don't know why I want to laff, I dunno why it's so
fuckin important. It just is. . . . I think it's just a good gift, that's all, because
you can get out of any situation. If you can laff, if you can make yourself
laff, I mean really convincingly, it can get you out of millions of things. . . .
You'd go fuckin berserk if you didn't have a laff occasionally" (Willis 1977,
29). What this and some of the earlier examples show is that no matter what
dimensions of universality laughter and disorder may have, much of this
apparently irrational playfulness is in childhood directed against adult sup-
pression and interference and order. Other examples in this volume are the
pranks examined by Mechling and Jorgensen as well as Fine's mention of
his data on children's fartlore. What we have in this material on closer view
is a demystification of the structure of the dominant adult culture that dem-
onstrates its ephemeral control. Sluckin, for example, discusses what is called
a "taxi" ritual by some British schoolboys in which when one denies to the
teacher that he has passed wind, then the whole class passes wind (1981,
32). Many a schoolteacher has been unraveled simply by being laughed at
by the whole class either openly or surreptitiously. Such behavior is so com-
mon that "taunting the teacher" may actually constitute a genre in its own
right (Oxrieder 1976). As it has been explained elsewhere, however, much
of the disorder of children's play is an assertion of control within that play
itself, rather than being directed at the adult culture (Sutton-Smith 1977).
Apparently life as well as adults generate this response in us all.
Failure. Modern childen grow up in an achievement society where
they are graded endlessly on their accomplishments. A kind of disorder, there-
fore, which they especially seem to cherish is the disorder of failure, though
unlike many of the earlier physical disorders this one apparently doesn't
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? ? make its appearance until school days. Perhaps the most spectacular ex-
amples are the moron jokes, where stupidity is most celebrated. But folly
and stupidity is revered also in riddles (You go to the bathroom American.
You come out of the bathroom American. What are you in the bathroom?
European). There are Mary Jane jokes (Mary Jane went to the doctor and
he told her she was going to have twins. She laughed and laughed because
she knew she hadn't done it twice), cruel mummy jokes, elephant jokes, dead
baby jokes, Helen Keller jokes, Dolly Parton jokes, Christa McCauliffe jokes,
grosser than gross jokes, and so forth. In many of these there is fictional-
ized failure at the expense of some conventional attitude or authority or
nicety or decency. The teller achieves a magical distance in telling the tale
of the failures of life-not in some way unlike the adult gambler whose
mastery is in choosing how and where to lose, or a golf player whose mas-
tery is much of the time in choosing to play badly for the rest of his or her
life, but at least to keep playing. It is not hard to see much of the folklore
of childhood, or adulthood for that matter, as a lore of empowerment, of
fictional mastery over the presented fates.
The general undercurrent of an interest in playful disorder or failures
becomes public on those occasions when it is suddenly used directly against
authority, as when a class clown is applauded by his or her peers for sabo-
taging a teacher's efforts in the classroom with his or her nonsense or "tra-
ditional" inappropriate answers. These particular occasions justify us in say-
ing that much of children's folklore exists in an interstitial world between
fantasy and reality. This is like most of the subcultures that Scott discusses,
where there are multiple traditions of antagonism but these are muted and
indirect and fantasied until a moment when particular hostilities bring them
to the surface. But they do nevertheless exist as an ongoing culture of self-
regard and group confirmation. This is as true of the adult underclass as it
is of the child underclass.
Antithesis. Disorder is at base a fairly undirected primordial chaos.
Failure directs the blame at the persons who are stupid or without power.
The implication that more powerful persons are responsible is not directly
drawn. But with antithesis the fictional attack upon the mighty is rendered
more clearly. Antithesis is an expressive behavior that presupposes an op-
positional tension and demystifies the dominant culture through parody,
mirroring, or inversion. Sullivan cites the work of the Knapps, who recorded
the following song parody: "My Bonnie lies over the ocean; my Bonnie lies
over the sea. My daddy lies over my mommy, and that's how they got little
me (Knapp and Knapp 1976, 172, 185). So, too, Bronner recorded several
song parodies such as "Row, row row your boat; gently down the stream.
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? ? Throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream" (1988, 101).
Other kinds of antithesis suggested by the writings of Radner and
Lanser include such concepts as that of trivialization, in which subversive
expressions play off dominant culture expectations about what is trivial.
When Butler (1989, 94) asked a young Dutch girl to recite her favorite
jump-rope rhyme, the child responded with this verse (which rhymes in
Dutch): "A dog made a poopoo/Under a tree/A Frenchman came along/And
ate it. " Although the child's mother and grandmother were present, there
was little that could be said about the child responding to a request to re-
cite a "mere" jump-rope rhyme. Then there is indirection, which Radner and
Lanser (1993) define as hedging or leaving out key words that members of
the group know are also part of the text. Reinterpreting their category for
women's strategy coding, we include here what Dundes (1967) terms the
"evasive answer," which is one of his thirteen genres of children's folklore.
Indirection can also occur with tongue twisters that are disguised so as to ap-
pear innocent: "I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit. Upon this slitted sheet I sit" (Dundes
1967; Galvin 1990, 168). Also, adults may be familiar with only one ver-
sion of a text, such as: "Jeff and Mary sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First
comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes Jeff in the baby-
carriage. "Children, however, may actually know another version of the text
in which "F-U-C-K-I-N-G" replaces "kissing. " In the presence of disapprov-
ing adults, the words are just whispered or, as Zumwalt has illustrated in
this Sourcebook, just abbreviated: "Oh , you M-F, T-S, T-B-B! " Or there is
Radner's and Lanser's distraction, which is similar to indirection but involves
drowning out of a message, such as children's humming the tune of "Jack
and Jill" instead of reciting a version known to the group, such as "Jack and
Jill/Went up the hill/To get a pail of water/Jill came down with a five dollar
bill/Do you really think she went up for water? " And most adults would
choose to ignore a version of Jingle Bells, sung by a twelve-year-old boy in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: "Jingle bells, shotgun shells; Santa Claus is dead.
Someone stole my . 30-. 30 and shot him in the head" (Bronner 1988, 108).
Such examples demonstrate how challenging and socially relevant the
study of children's subversive folklore is, but beyond this what is the value
of developing such a typology? The broad goal is presumably to identify
forms of folklore that are hidden in order to understand the relation of
children's folklore to various forms of domination. Other related critical
questions to be explored include discovering under which conditions
children's folklore becomes subversive and by what processes children as well
as other oppressed groups create subversive folklore. How do the forms of
children's folklore relate to different forms of domination and dominant
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? ? cultural values?
In setting out these examples of various kinds of subversion, how-
ever, it is necessary to emphasize the methodological point that researchers
need to avoid the trap of "reading into" children's folklore what simply isn't
there. Subversion is more than a text; it is an event that must be systemati-
cally accounted for before determining whether a particular act is subver-
sive. A child could repeat some of these rhymes above with no sense what-
soever of such implication. This is the point implied by Winslow in an early
work on children's derogatory epithets. As Winslow demonstrated, there are
levels of meaning and contexts that exist in the ethnography of speaking.
Researchers must be careful before assuming that the expression is always
used in the same manner. For example, "A child may good-naturedly accept
his nickname in the course of normal social interaction, but the same name
may be used derogatorily in other contexts, especially if it is repeated
enough" (1969, 256). This means close examination of the context-both
historical and situational. Determinations can never simply be made by read-
ing textual surfaces in abstraction from the specific event. For example, in
Butler's Skipping Around the World: The Ritual Nature of Folk Rhymes
(1989) and Lurie's Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Litera-
ture (1990), each scholar has provided the reader with examples of children's
folklore that are only potentially subversive, with little contextual informa-
tion to support the researchers' interpretations. Therefore, we suggest pro-
ceeding cautiously in making such power interpretations, first recording or
noting the situation which is external to the folklore itself and then actually
identifying the taboos and values imposed on children.
Yet it is not our intent either to romanticize subversive aspects of
children's folklore as "playful" nor to divert attention from darker aspects
by ignoring instances of victimization of children by children. Some children's
advocates fall into the trap of not only celebrating children's folklore purely
for its didactic uses or viewing it as innocent diversion, but assuming the
"unity" or "inclusiveness" of children as a group. Diversity exists everywhere
and, as a result, uneven power relations also exist among children. Children
as well have multiple identities related to gender, class, religion, and race.
Works by scholars such as Fischer (1986) on ethnicity have even shown that
although some differences often deny inclusiveness, they can be fundamen-
tal in identity formation for the group itself. As Roemer in this volume notes,
researchers have generally ignored differences in, for example, children's rid-
dling styles resulting from varying ages as well as ethnic heritages. This di-
versity is most apparent, for example, in studies like that of Stoeltje (1978),
who noted subtle but important differences in hand-clapping games of Anglo
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? ? and African American girls.
Obviously, the ideal is neither to reject nor to romanticize whatever
there is in the children's world of powerlessness nor to make value judgments
about what is appropriate to record. In exploring the ingenious ways that
children create, regardless of their ethical flavor, we come to understand the
simultaneous processes of their accommodation to adult values and their
expressions of subversiveness. At times children's lore is an expression of
defiance, challenging controlling forces in a symbolic power struggle, but
sometimes this folklore is cruel, directed at members of the child's own group,
such as when tag becomes "cooties tag" because the targeted child is said
to have "cooties" because of race, religion, gender, or class. Such examples
include what Sullivan terms "rhymes of prejudice" and provide us with very
clear examples of children's folklore that adults have consistently avoided
including in scholarly folklore collections. Children quite naturally replicate
adult hierarchies in their own play and are as likely to generate cruel, dark,
or mean folklore as they are to generate kindlier forms. Modern idealiza-
tion of children's play as a part of childhood "innocence" often makes it
difficult to recognize or accept these phenomena.
Finally, these investigations of folklore as power show that there is a
real need to seriously reassess our fieldwork in relation to the voice and au-
thority we exercise, which is an ethical concern well articulated by Fine and
Mechling in this Source Book. For whether the author collects texts, or stud-
ies performance, or looks at power relationships in ethnographic ways, or
romanticizes play, or contrastingly emphasizes its cruelty; whether appreciat-
ing or depreciating the children's own power struggles; whether rationaliz-
ing childhood or glorying in its irrationality-all of these are as much a com-
mentary on the stance or rhetorics of the authority as on the condition of
childhood. Children's folklore and that of adults was once much used to
confer authenticity on the nationality or the ethnicity of the folk being stud-
ied, and also to claim authenticity for the discoveries of the scholar so in-
volved. The activity of the Brothers Grimm is perhaps the most famous case
in point (Briggs 1993). Postulating the authenticity of children's endeavors
has, however, hardly been a prestigious activity in our post-Enlightenment
culture, where adults are generally more interested in children's progress than
in their past. But there has always been a small minority of scholars, from
Newall to the Opies, who have hung in at their child-oriented posts and at-
tempted to make us realize there was something there in children's folklore
worth preserving or recording-whether they called it tradition, "natural"
childhood, or folk subculture.
We pay a tribute to these scholars, as well as to the contributors to
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? ? this Source Book, for their research of whatever kind and for the scholarly
merit they derive from the authenticity of their own research endeavors. It
is a scholarly "game" to engage one's fellows with a more adequate approach
to the scholarly subject matter than existed hitherto, as if there is only our
own new way of being authentic. But our editorial gamesmanship requires
that we suggest, on the contrary, that there are multiple ways of being au-
thentic about the authenticity of those we study. It is not a zero sum game.
We live, rather, in a world of multiple childhoods and multiple ways in which
these can be studied, to the credit of all parties. We say this despite our own
persistent rhetoric about child empowerment. We choose to finish, therefore,
selectively by asking the question how is it that our adult culture so typi-
cally suppresses the power-related aspects of children's lives so clearly rep-
resented in this present document? Is the "triviality barrier" (Sutton-Smith
1970a) in children's folklore only an adult reaction formation against the
dangers of recognizing that the world would be very different if we attended
to the neotony of children's struggles for power?
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? ? GLOSSARY
AN AID FOR SOURCE BOOK READERS
This list of terms was created by Source Book contributors, who listed and
defined those words that they considered basic for readers' understanding
of their respective chapters. It is hoped that this glossary will be useful for
those who are new to the field of folklore and for students in the classroom.
analytical category: form of classification generated by analyst for the
purposes of comparison (see cultural category).
antithesis: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's typology for
children's subversive folklore that represents expressive behaviors that pre-
suppose an oppositional tension and demystify the dominant culture through
parody, mirroring, or inversion.
block element: one or more features of a riddle proposition that in-
terferes with the proposition's facile solution.
bounded (or closed) society: homogeneous social group marked by
isolation from other groups; members rely on one another for subsistence
and social functions. Usually used to describe aboriginal and peasant com-
munities (see open society).
catch riddle: a type of riddle in which the surprise or victimization
of the respondent is a necessary element in the proposition.
childhood underground: a term used to describe the subculture of
children that exists apart from the culture dominated and controlled by
adults. In their book One Potato, Two Potato: The Secret Education of
American Children (1976), Mary and Herbert Knapp explain this concept
in detail.
childlore: children's folklore.
children's folklore: shared expressive behaviors of children; more spe-
cifically, according to Bauman, ". . . the traditional formalized play activi-
ties of children, including forms of speech play and verbal art, that are en-
gaged in and maintained by the children themselves, within the peer group.
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? ? Familiar genres of children's folklore include riddles, games, jokes, taunts,
retorts, hand-claps, counting-out rhymes, catches, ring plays, and jump-rope
rhymes . . . distinguished on the one hand from nursery rhymes . . . It is
likewise distinguished from, though it may share items and genres and have
other continuities with, adult folklore" (1982, 172).
contentious fiddling: a type of riddling interaction during which par-
ticipants are verbally aggressive, take liberties with one another, and test each
other's social competence. See McDowell 1979, 122.
context: according to Duranti and Goodwin, the "notion of context
. . involves a fundamental juxtaposition of two entries: 1) a focal event;
and 2) a field of action within which that event is embedded" (1992, 3). The
relationship between focal event and context is "much like that between 'or-
ganism' and 'environment. '. . . 4) Contextual attributes most often attended
to in folkloristic and anthropological scholarship include: a) setting ("i. e. ,
the social and spatial framework within which encounters are situated"); b)
behavorial environment ("i. e. , the way that participants use their bodies and
behavior as a resource for framing and organizing their talk"); c) language
as context (the "way in which talk itself both invokes context and provides
context for other talk"); and d) extrasituational context (that is, the partici-
pants' "background knowledge") (pages 6-8).
cultural category: form of classification generated by members of a
cultural group to describe themselves (see analytical category).
descriptive routine: a madeup (that is, nontraditional) riddlelike rou-
tine depending solely or primarily on the technique of description. For an
alternate definition, see McDowell 1979.
dialogue riddle: a type of riddle in which the proposition contains a
quotation from characters in a fictitious interactional encounter. The riddle
answer identifies the speakers. See Abrahams and Dundes 1972, 135. For
an example, see riddle no. 14 in Roemer's chapter in this volume.
disorder and anarchy: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's ty-
pology for children's subversive folklore that represents expressive behav-
iors as types of appropriation that demystify the structure of the dominant
culture by demonstrating its ephemeral nature.
distraction: a category in Radner and Lanser's typology for women's
strategic coding, adapted by McMahon and Sutton-Smith to indicate the
forms of children's folklore that subvert authority by drowning out a mes-
sage.
double dutch: a style of children's jump rope utilizing two ropes or
one long rope doubled, turned egg beater fashion. Typically, two people turn,
one at each end, with a jumper performing specific rhythmic motions in the
310 GLOSSARY
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? ? middle while stepping over the cascading ropes.
emergence: the process whereby expressive forms take shape in the
crucible of social interaction.
ethnomethodology: a research perspective that studies the organiza-
tion and achievement of everyday life, including that of everyday talk. See
Sudnow 1972 and R. Turner 1974.
experiment: a research method for investigating cause and effect un-
der controlled conditions.
failure: a category in McMahon and Sutton-Smith's typology for sub-
versive forms of staged incompetent behaviors that resist dominant group
expectations.
folktale: a form of folk narrative told primarily for entertainment,
with an emphasis on action and adventure within a fictional framework.
While the folktale as delineated in Aarne and Thompson's Types of the
Folktale (1961) has both simple and complex forms, the folktales discussed
in Tucker's chapter in this volume are all Miirchen, or fairytales in which a
single hero encounters supernatural influences and tries to succeed at a quest.
Generally, in magic tales, the hero and other deserving characters live "hap-
pily ever after" while villains are severely punished.
function: that which folklore "does" for the people who employ it.
funny-scary story: a folktale with a "catch" or humorous ending.
Children use this term to indicate that, while a story of this kind may seem
frightening, its climax has no truly fearful elements.
gesunkenes Kulturgut: the theory that folklore is directed downward
in social hierarchies.
imitative objects: things made by children that resemble larger arti-
facts in the adult world. An example is a model hydroplane abstractly made
from clip-type clothespins.
in-depth interview: a series of questions administered personally by
a researcher to respondents, allowing the respondent to reply in detail.
indirection: a category from Radner's and Lanser's typology for
women's strategic coding used to indicate expressive behaviors such as hedg-
ing or leaving out key words; similar to the genre of children's folklore that
Dundes identified as the "evasive answer" (1967). Indirection is another
category adapted by McMahon and Sutton-Smith in their refashioned ty-
pology for children's subversive folklore.
induced performances: folklore performances set up and encouraged
by a researcher in a not fully natural situation.
informed consent: describing to a research subject the nature and goals
of the research in which she or he is involved.
3''
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? ? interreference: the dynamic process that operates between two or
more cultures: central to the idea of "ethnicity," which Fischer (1986) views
as "a deeply rooted component of identity. "
interrogative ludic routine: small-scale verbal exchanges making play-
ful use of the interrogative system in a language.
intraconversational narrative: a narrative embedded in the natural
flow of conversation. Folklorists usually give careful consideration to the
entire conversation when considering the meanings of this kind of narrative.
inventive or manipulative object: things made from natural resources
into a new, more technical shape. An example is sand sculpture made by
children on a beach.
joking riddle: a type of riddle in which the proposition serves prima-
rily as a setup for the punch-line answer. For examples, see Roemer's riddle
examples nos. 36-37 in this volume.
kinesics: the study of body movement and human communication,
as pioneered by Ray L. Birdwhistell.
legend: less formally structured than the folktale, the legend features
realistic characters and may be told as a true story. Two popular subtypes
of this genre are the supernatural legend or "ghost story" and the horror
legend in which monsters, maniacs, and other nonsupernatural forces pre-
dominate.
Miirchen: the traditional European tale of wonder and magic; syn-
onymous with "fairy tale" and "conte des f6es. "
material folk culture: interconnection of mental concept and tradi-
tional design shared within a social group. Includes objects and environments
that characterize traditions of the group made by its members.
media narraform: a term coined by Sylvia Grider to classify the
children's stories based on movies or TV shows (see Grider 1981). These
stories, often diffuse and imprecise, may be told collaboratively in an effort
to create the best possible synopsis of the original show.
move: sociologist Erving Goffman has written of "the move": "Now
when an individual is engaged in talk, some of his utterances and
nonlinguistic behavior will be taken to have a special temporal relevance,
being directed to others present as something he wants assessed, appreciated,
understood, now. I have spoken here of a move. Now it seems that some-
times the speaker and his hearers will understand this move to be primarily
a comment on what has just been said, in that degree allowing us to speak
of a response; at other times the move will be primarily seen as something
to which a response is called for, in which degree it can be called a state-
ment" (1981, 71-71).
31i2 GLOSSARY
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? ? mutation: an expressive item that has been altered through perfor-
mance.
narrative: prose utterances with a sequential plot that may be fictional
or nonfictional. Folktales, legends, and media narraforms are among the
most popular narrative told by children.
oicotypification: the adaptation of an expressive item to fit a specific
social and cultural environment.
open (or complex) society: heterogeneous social group marked by high
degree of individuation. Usually associated with urban, industrialized na-
tions.
parodic riddle: a type of joking riddle that extends the humor of the
answer to the realm of the fantastic or the absurd. What the riddle as a whole
proposes is nonsensical, given a conventional understanding of the "real"
world. See examples in this volume by Roemer, nos. 38-44.
participant observation: a method in which researchers systematically
observe people while participating in their routine activities.
psychoanalytic method: analysis of folk narratives that relies upon the
precepts of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and others. Sexual
symbolism that comes from the unconscious is a major focus in this school
of interpretation.
riddle act: a unit of social interaction that consists of all the interac-
tional moves involved in posing and responding to a single riddle proposi-
tion. The riddle act is the basic interactional unit of riddling. See Burns 1976,
142.
riddle session: a unit of social interaction during which a series of
riddle acts is produced. The riddles may be interspersed with other perfor-
mance material or with conversation. See Burns 1976, 142.
routine: a set of sequentially produced discourse acts (utterances, ges-
tures, strategic use of silence) that is organized beyond the level of the indi-
vidual sentence. A riddle act is a routine that is characteristically produced
by more than one participant. See Hymes 1971.
semantic field: in discourse study, a domain of content or meaning.
solicitation: a type of speech act whose function is to elicit a verbal
or physical response. See Bauman 1977b, 24.
story: synonym for narrative, defined above.
structuralism: analysis of the sequence of plot elements, called "func-
tions" in Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1958). Propp attempted to
explain the structure of all Russian folktales, while Dundes further devel-
oped Propp's approach using the term "motifeme" in lieu of "function" in
his Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964a).
313
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? ? subversive folklore: mulifaceted expressions of a group that under-
mine the authority of the dominant culture; also, any folklore involving vic-
timization of others in the same group-such as children by more powerful
children-which in effect also subverts adult authority because it involves
taboo behavior.
survey research: a research method in which subjects respond to a
series of questions in a questionnaire or structured interview.
syndesis: term used by anthropologist Robert Plant Armstrong to
describe an object that grows from repetition of smaller units. Two examples
are an ordinary spot in the woods converted to a child's shrine and one's
fingers used to make a steeple (whose reverse is the people).
synthetic objects: things that are combined or built up from existing
objects. An example is a Halloween effigy.
taunt: a malicious verbal expressive activity involving a victim.
tease: a verbal expressive activity involving a minimal degree of vic-
timization, usually with "fun" rather than hurt as the motivation.
tenor: in a metaphoric construction, the subject word to which a meta-
phoric word (that is, the vehicle) is applied (M. Abrams 1957, 61).
transcription: the act of writing down verbatim actual interaction or
dialogue, usually recorded first on audio or videotape; can refer to the text,
conversation, or nonverbal communication or the written record of such
translation.
transformational objects: commercial or adult things altered to suit
children's needs and images. An example is a "half-ball" used for alley
stickball and made by slicing a whole rubber ball.
triangulation: a methodology for collecting folklore that does not rely
on any single method but instead is a combination of several techniques.
trick: a deceptive expressive activity with minimal victimization or
harm intended, with "fun" as the motivating force.
trivialization: a category in Radner's and Lanser's typology for
women's strategic coding, adapted here to indicate children's subversive ex-
pressions that play off dominant culture expectations about what is trivial.
true riddle: a type of riddle that involves "a comparison between the
unstated answer and something else that is described in the question"
(Brunvand 1986, 90). The answer to a true riddle can be reasoned out based
on information supplied in the riddle proposition and the respondent's ad-
equate experience with and recall of tropes, symbols, and other relevant con-
ventions shared within the particular culture. See Taylor 1951 and examples
by Roemer in this volume (riddle nos. 1, 2, 4-8, 32-35).
