Miss Suzy!

[idothattopeople]

I was just talking to some Californians about Miss Suzy. It's a fascinating topic: a song in American culture that has no true codification. We learned it in school in the 80s and early 90s, before the internet. So, there was no way to truly verify what the "official" version of the Ms Suzy song was. Thus, regional variation abounds

Comments

[gryphonavocatio]

You might be glad to know that people ::do:: study that sort of thing.

I had to read a paper for a sociolinguistics class at York that talked about various childhood schoolyard games, mostly songs and language games like Pig Latin. One of the more interesting points of the article is that, because of how isolated individual grade schools are as communities of practice, even schools within districts would have strikingly different versions of songs and games. The limited mobility of prepubescent children means that there is very little communication between different groups.

Of course, there is the opposite thing where kids report having heard things there friends made up that had been circulating for years (the little liars!).

If I could remember the sources for these things, I would share. I fear the syllabus and related materials are in boxes in California, though. Might be around here, too, so I will have to check in the morning.

[idothattopeople]

That is really cool. The explanation of limited mobility of young kids makes perfect sense to me. I changed schools between first and second grade (within the same district), but I don't remember if the two elementary schools had different versions of Ms Suzy...

Of course, now that half of these kids have internet-enabled cell phones, I would expect the isolation to be significantly lesser now.

If you happen upon the citation, then awesome. But don't go out of your way to find it. :-)