Humour and the stretchy temporality of peer conflict in a group early childhood setting: An analysis of relational power

Abstract

While research on children’s humour is growing, few investigations have focused on how children use humour in conflict interactions, and specifically in group early childhood settings. Using data extracts from a project that investigated children’s naturally occurring conflict interactions in a multi-ethnic early childhood setting, we use interactional sociolinguistics to analyse how children used humour at unexpected moments during conflict situations. The analysis probes different meanings carried in the children’s use of humour, illustrating how humour intersected with personal and relational power to resolve or defuse conflict, or to coerce compliance with existing peer relational positions. The analysis broadens understandings of the significance of humour in children’s lives in early childhood settings, and particularly in the context of conflict interactions that have a ‘stretchy temporality’ connecting interactive moves to others in the past, and to existing power positions in peer relationships.