Humor in children's discourse: A case study of a bilingual child (Brazilian Portuguese and German)

Abstract

Based on a dialogic-discursive approach according to the ideas of Bakhtin and the Circle, this article aims to analyze the humour data of a bilingual child, L., 9 years old, Brazilian Portuguese and German-speaker, who was born in Germany, but moved to Brazil at the age of 1 year and 6 months. Our corpus consists of footage of the child in everyday situations, in which she interacts separately with interlocutors in both languages she can speak. Our goal is to unravel whether L. produces and understands humour in both languages and which language mechanisms lead to such understanding and production. In addition, we intend to verify the different situations that raise humour in the daily life of this child, identifying some common types of humour in her speech. The results show that L. has greater "security" and fluency in the language in which she has more "input": Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and this may influence her relationship with languages and her production of humorous discourses.