13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

MOURITSEN, Flemming

Narrative Aspects of Child Culture and Children's Orality in Storytelling and Play

Narration and narrativity can be seen as central dimensions in the culture and lives of children, as well as discourses which manifest themselves in different situations and a spectrum of genres i.e. stories, tales, types of games, epic songs, role playing. But one can also see narrativity as a special aesthetic method, a special medium, a specific point of view or a distinct ‘framing’ through which children put themselves and their social life in a symbolic aesthetic form where they express their experience; a medium through which they actualise social and cognitive reality on the basis of a virtual stock of traditions and competences.

Through analysis of concrete examples of narrative genres and expressions and their context (such as storytelling, anecdote, reportage, role playing, chat etc) narrations and narrativity are described as a part of the broader oral culture of play. The narrative expressions are examined in relation to their interaction with the traditional oral culture and to other types of child culture and especially to the interaction between the oral culture and modern media products.

A framework of different cultural types is drawn up in the form of a model for understanding narrative expressions and children´s oral culture of games and play. Children´s oral culture and the interpretations of these symbolic-aesthetic expressions and the narrative discourse are described as an alternative source for knowledge about children and their lives.