Riddling and Enculturation A Glance at the Cerebral Child

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Published: Jul 27, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024

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John Holmes McDowell

Abstract

This paper attempts to illustrate with concrete data that riddles serve as a didactic device to sharpen the wits of young children. The riddle is described as a verbal routine which adapts the interrogative system of a speech community to purposes of play. Riddles concerning motion or locomotion of animals, machines, and toys were collected in a single riddling session, from three Chicano children aged 5-7. The output of these neophyte riddles is discussed in the context of the acquisition and refinement of cognitive categories, and a folk taxonomy focused on the semantic domain of locomotion is suggested. Riddling is viewed as a didactic mechanism conducive to experimentation with received notions of order, and elaboration of novel cognitive orders. In riddling, at various stages, children learn to formulate culturally acceptable classifications; to articulate classifications at variance with cultural conventions; and finally to assess language and classification as arbitrary instruments reflecting only partially the continuous texture of experience.

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Issue
Vol. 42 No. 1 (2024): Children's Folklore Review - Special Issue: The Texas Children's Folklore Project
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Author Biography

John Holmes McDowell

John Holmes McDowell, professor emeritus at Indiana University, works at the confluence of language and culture in US and Latin American settings. His research topics range from the verbal play of children, in Children’s Riddling (IU Press, 1979); to Mexico’s ballad tradition, the corrido, in Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (University of Illinois Press, 2000) and ¡Corrido! The Living Ballad of Mexico’s Western Coast (University of New Mexico Press, 2015); to the mythic consciousness of Andean peoples, in Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians (1989) and "So Wise Were Our Elders": Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (1994), both published by the University Press of Kentucky. Lately, he is collaborating with the Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT) to explore the concept of ecosovereignty, in Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change (University of Illinois Press, 2021, co-edited with Katey Borland, Rebecca Dirksen, and Sue Tuohy).

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