Language creativity and heteroglossia in the peer group: Children’s performative wordplay as humorous practice

The article explores children’s creative use of language in the classroom and the teacher’s subsequent response. The study draws from video-ethnographic research in two primary schools in Italy and adopts an ethnographic approach combined with the analytical instruments of Conversation Analysis. As the analysis illustrates, children publicly perform wordplay to co-construct a shared humorous sequence with their peers. This practice emerges both in the peer group and in whole-class interactions that involve the teacher. In the latter case, the teacher aptly exploits children’s wordplay to pursue specific social and didactic aims. It is argued that children’s creative use of language is germane to children’s negotiation of their peer relationships and potentially relevant to their gradual process of socialization into the classroom community.