Adolescents creating cartoons: A developmental study of humor

PEDRAZZINI, ANA; BUGALLO, LUCÍA; ZINKGRÄF, CONSTANZA; SCHEUER, NORA

HUMOR

De Gruyter Mouton

Lugar: Berlín; Año: 2021 vol. 34 p. 41 - 68

0933-1719

Developmental studies on humor have historically approached a limited age range - from birth until early adolescence - and have mostly considered humor interpretation and the production of situational and verbal humor. Focusing on cartooning, a highly demanding cognitive and communication activity, in this paper we aim to provide empirical data drawn from a larger age span than usual - 10 to 18 years old - to better understand what adolescents find humorous and how they create humor. Our corpus comes from nine workshops of cartoon production and interpretation conducted between 2015 and 2018, in which a total of 63 girls and 72 boys participated. Based on a fine-grained cognitive and communication analysis, we distinguished six different profiles of texts depending on: whether and how a fictional situation (i.e. a humorous incongruity) was built, its relation to the referenced situation addressed (topic), and the author´s motivation. Simple Correspondence Analyses enabled us to identify that these texts varied according to the adolescents´ age and the cartoon´s format (single panel or strip). Greater cognitive sophistication was evidenced in single panel cartoons and among middle and late adolescents, who also showed a concern for social issues. Some gender variations were found.