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The Lore and Language of American Children
| Article
# : |
17984 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1990 |
3,755 Words |
| Author
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Sheila K. Webster
Sheila K. Webster, a folklorist and professional writer, lives
in Bloomington, Indiana. |
Children in the United States, like all people everywhere, use folklore to define and to express themselves. And, like all people, children define themselves not only in terms of their own groups but also in contrast with other groups - particularly adults. For a child, as for a grown-up what she is not may be as significant as what she is.
Most of us former children have at some time sung songs, played games, or told jokes and stories that we knew would bring frowns - or worse - from the adults around us. Sometimes we didn't even really understand what was "dirty" or wrong about our titillating childhood recreations; just knowing that some of our rhymes, songs, and games were forbidden was enough to make them attractive. Sharing them and the adventure of performing them with our peers created what anthropologist Victor Turner called communitas, the egalitarian sense of community that people often experience when they share a ritual or other activity that has significance for them. Nor does the sense of group identity have to be posed against adults; groups of children often segregate themselves from one another, older against younger, team against team, boys against girls.
Within groups of children, on the other hand, folklore is frequently used to support a hierarchy by pointing out differences and ranking group members according to those differences. Sometimes the pecking order is quite explicit; for instance, a group may have a president or otherwise identified leader, or may rank individuals by ability, popularity, or both while choosing up sides for play. At other times, the hierarchy is more implicitly expressed, as when individual players assume such play roles as mother, father, child, boss, commander, soldier, teacher,
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