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Title:Learning through play: an ethnographic study of children's riddling in Ethiopia
Author:Jirata, Tadesse JaletaISNI
Year:2012
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:82
Issue:2
Pages:272-286
Language:English
Geographic term:Ethiopia
Subjects:riddles
Guji
children
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/41485043
Abstract:Although the educational value of African oral traditions, particularly folktales, has been discussed widely in social studies of children, education and folklore, riddling is not commonly investigated as a part of children's everyday social practice. In this article, the author presents riddling as a part of children's expressive culture, through which they play together and learn about their local environment. The data were generated through ten months of ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji people in southern Ethiopia. Based on analyses of the times and locations of this activity, as well as the social interaction involved, the author argues that children perform riddling in order to entertain themselves and to learn from their immediate social and natural environment through discrete peer networks. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract]
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