Browsing by Author "Tuovinen, Heini"

The purpose of this study was to find out how humor is constructed in Finnish 21st century ABC books and what kind of meanings are given to these humorous discourses. The humor phenomena have long been studied and debated, but there has been no scientific research on humor in ABC books, even though humor is highly used in contemporary children literature. Studies have examined the pedagogical implications concerning the use of humor in teaching. Humor has been associated with a positive effect on learning, motivation, concentration, remembering and enhancing a positive classroom atmosphere. The research material consisted of four 21st century ABC books, published by Sanoma Pro Oy. The method of this study was discourse analysis, which entail a preference for a social constructionist epistemological perspective. Social constructivism stresses that knowledge is constructed via the interactions with the environment and the other people. The result of the study show that humor in contemporary ABC books is multileveled, using a wide variety of textual and narrative tools. The multileveled humor took place in three main humor discourse: language, narration and the narrated, typically absurd, world. Humor at the level of language arised mainly from the foregrounding of language and playing with words and meanings. Humor at the level of narration arised mainly from its coherency and incoherency. High forms of humor, for example irony and intertextual references, can be found, but they seem to demand more advanced reading skills, and therefore seem to be aimed for adult readers. Humor at the level of the narrated world based on its stereotyped and ambivalented characters and absurdities in its episodes. When it comes to certain themes, like bullying or illness, humor doesn’t seem to arise. Humor discourses of the studied ABC books amuse readers using a wide variety of textual and narrative tools, constructing different kinds of interpretational opportunities for different kinds of readers, not only for children and adult readers (primarily teachers), who adapt and understand humor to fit their own literary competence.