"Not for Real, Okay?" An Analysis of Young Children's Pretend Play in a Kindergarten Classroom

• In Event: 64.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 64.086-10 - Play as a Discursive Resource for Examining Membership, Power, and Friendship

Abstract

While much research examined young children’s language use during classroom instructional conversations, relatively little has explored young children’s linguistic practices among themselves and their language use during peer playtime (Ioannidou, 2017). The purpose of this study is to examine what children achieve through pretend play and ways of achieving it. Employing footing (Goffman, 1981) and deictics (Wortham, 1996), this ethnographic study analyzes peer interactions in pretend play events among a group of kindergarteners. Findings show that young children prominently employ various forms of deictics (e.g., pronouns, spatial and temporal deictics, eye gaze, etc.) to establish and reestablish their frames of play and friendship

Author

• Jungmin Lee, The Ohio State University - Columbus