MISREPRESENTATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN: IMPLICATION FOR HUMOUR IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

In the amazing world of children, language plays a prominent role. As a communicative tool, language development is a gradual process consisting of stages/ phases through which the child passes. This study is, therefore, an investigation of these phases in under six- year old children when pragmatic performance is at its primary level. The use of a psycho-pragmatic model (Ijaiya 2007, 2012) as an analytic frame work established misrepresentation as a product of pragmatic failure arising from linguistic knowledge without contextual knowledge. The resultant effect of this gap is the humour created in the course of the children’s performance. The paper concludes that linguistic knowledge appears in children before pragmatic knowledge and there is a psychological apparatus (theory of mind) that is responsible for pragmatic performance in children.