Table Of ContentYOUNG CHILDREN'S DYADIC PRETEND PLAY
Pragmatics & Beyond
New Series
Editors:
Jacob L. Mey
(Odense University)
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp)
Editorial Address:
Linguistics (GER)
University of Antwerp (UIA)
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk
Belgium
Editorial Board:
Norbert Dittmar (Free University of Berlin)
Bruce Fraser (Boston University)
John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds)
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2)
Beatriz Lavandera (University of Buenos Aires)
Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste)
Emanuel A. Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Paul O. Takahara (Kobe University)
Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Daniel Vanderveken (University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières)
Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam)
14
Ursula Verena Schwartz
Young Children s Dyadic Pretend Play
YOUNG CHILDREN'S
DYADIC PRETEND PLAY
A COMMUNICATION ANALYSIS OF
PLOT STRUCTURE AND
PLOT GENERATIVE STRATEGIES
URSULA VERENA SCHWARTZ
University of Pittsburgh
Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1991
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwartz, Ursula Verena, 1950-
Young children's dyadic pretend play : a communication analysis of plot structure and
plot generative strategies / Ursula Verena Schwartz.
p. cm. - (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 14)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 2. Interpersonal communication in children. 3. Play. 4.
Plots (Drama, novel etc.) I. Title. II. Series.
P302.7.S39 1991
302.2--dc20 91-6488
ISBN 90 272 5024 3 (Eur.)/l-55619-280-0 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1991 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Contents
Chapter 1
The investigation of propositional content in play: Initial research
formulation 1
Chapter 2
Theoretical framework for analysis: Play content as play plot 5
Chapter 3
Methodology of analysis 19
Chapter 4
Master Text I: Analysis of Text I 35
Chapter 5
Master Text II: Analysis of Text II 53
Chapter 6
Comparative analysis of Master Texts I and II 67
Chapter 7
Play plot structure and plot generative strategies: Integration of
results and further considerations 75
References 91
Appendix A
Transcription of videotape data base: Play session with Victor
and Aaron 101
Appendix
Transcription of videotape data base: Play session with Suzie and
Stephanie 121
Chapter 1
THE INVESTIGATION OF
PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT IN
PLAY: INITIAL RESEARCH
FORMULATION
Two little girls, one pretending to be the mother, the other the baby, are building
a crib. Mother does the actual work. Baby often interrupts to let mother know what is
needed and where things need to be placed. Baby has a pet that she cuddles and feeds
and finally puts to sleep. Shortly thereafter the the crib is completed. Mother stands
next to it and baby lies down and closes her eyes. Mother then sits down on the edge
and sings a lullaby: "Go to sleep baby, oh go to sleep, oh go to sleepy baby."
A little boy is standing in front of a tall cabinet on top of which is mounted a
camera. His friend is positioned a distance away and looks on. The boy picks up a toy
car and throws it at the wall near the camera, then picks it up again. His friend runs
in a corner, crouches down and wails: "Those are... those are guns."
Both of these descriptions trace the activities of preschool age children during
a brief excerpt of ongoing play. There is nothing unusual about their playing. In
fact, there is something quite ordinary and familiar about these activities: The girls
are playing house and mother-baby; the boys are involved in the pretense of fight
ing, attack, and defense.
Young children engage in social pretend play easily and with pleasure. Play
ing with one another constitutes a favorite early childhood activity at home and in
the preschool setting. One of the most salient features of this type of play is the ex
pression of ideas between the participants during the course of their playing.
Children's play is about something; their play activities have a shared focus. In
short, playing as a praxis revolves in part around the the expression of subject mat
ter by the players via actions or utterances. In the first example, the content of the
brief play segment deals with housekeeping and caregiving tasks; in the second,
with concerns related to danger, threat, defense, and attack. Of course, as is evi
dent even from these very cursory summaries of play episodes, the expression of a
particular play content is by no means the only feature of social pretend play. Both
pairs of children carefully synchronize their actions; they assume different roles;
we observe differences in status and the degree of participation. Yet, the hallmark
of early childhood pretend play, most salient to the casual onlooker, lies in the
players' joint generation of play content expressed by play actions, which encode
the players' ideas, and which ultimately constitute the play content as a whole.
2 YOUNG CHILDREN'S DYADIC PRETEND PLAY
The focus of the present investigation is on this very ordinary, but intriguing
phenomenon of the subject matter or content of social play in early childhood. The
expression of ideas in the form of content configurations enacted by the players
during the course of playing constitutes an integral part of early childhood play.
Young children's pretend play activities are motivated in the sense of being directed
towards a content related goal. They are organized in that they tend towards creat
ing a story-like scenario: actions are coordinated and joined in aplanful, regulated
fashion resulting in the enactment of drama or dramatic scenes. Upon reflection,
children's facility to spontaneously create lengthy and elaborate content configura
tions at an early age during the course of play appears indicative of sophisticated
communicative capabilities and cognitive processes. If play content is reduced to
cursory summaries or inventories that fail to capture the evolution of content over
the course of playing itself, the configurational richness and complex nature of play
content are lost and remain unappreciated. Content as the joint expression of play
ideas constitutes a focal point of playing as an experience and as a praxis and, there
fore, also as a topic of scientific inquiry.
Historically, social scientific studies of childhood play paid little attention to
the investigation of the content of child's play. Rather, emphasis was placed on the
investigation of social- interactive features of play and their relationship to
developing perceptual and cognitive processes (cf. Herron and Sutton-Smith 1971;
Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg 1983; Schwartz 1985; Schwartzman 1978). Similarly,
despite great interest in the content of play as the window to the child's mind and
psyche, psychoanalytic research over the past 60 years has largely ignored ques
tions pertaining to play content per se. In recent years a significant research trend
on social pretend play has emerged from a small number of discourse analytically
informed inquiries (cf. Corsaro 1983,1985a,b; Garvey 1977a; Garvey and Berndt
1975; Nelson and Gruendell981; Nelson and Seidman 1984). These investigations
present the first, detailed descriptions of play content configuration and genera
tion — often called schema, theme, or plot — as manifested during the play process.
Despite differences in details of analysis and methodology three points of conver
gence can be discerned. First, play content is conceptualized as structures repre
senting world knowledge in the form of organized, patterned wholes (Corsaro 1983,
1985a,b; Garvey 1977; Garvey and Berndt 1975; Nelson and Gruendel 1981; Nelson
and Seidman 1984). Second, the players' knowledge of discourse rules and their
relation to the expression of play content is emphasized. Knowledge structures as
plans for playing represent but blueprints for action and do not constitute action
itself. Knowledge structures underly the play process and come to life between the
players anew and slightly differently in each particular instance of play enactment.
Thus, we need to distinguish between strategies for substantive contributions (Cor
saro and Tomlinson 1980), and play themes as reflective of children's concerns
(Corsaro 1985a). Third, investigations of play in general, and play content in par
ticular, have been informed by considerations of semiotics and communication
theory. It is held that early childhood play arises in the context of social interaction
and, as such, constitutes a form of discourse indigenous to the child's world.
The initial sketch of early childhood play emerging from these recent studies
points to playing as a complex interactive enterprise, the social aspects of which
INVESTIGATION OF PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT 3
are currently better understood and have been more closely investigated than ques
tions related to play content.
The present study proposes to take an in-depth look at play content as it emer
ges during the process of play social interaction. While in lived reality social and
content aspects of playing are inextricably intertwined, for the purpose of analysis
it is not only possible but preferable to assign differential weights to these two major
components. In treating play content as primary for methodological and theoreti
cal reasons, social processes are necessarily relegated to a secondary position. This
implies that they are attended to only insofar as they pertinently relate to play con
tent. Emphasizing the content aspect of playing implies that, for analytic purposes,
play content is treated as the feature of prime interest while it is understood that
social features and processes are an integral aspect of playing and constantly inter
weave with the generation and expression of content. Play content is not a thing,
but an integral part of the play process. Generated by the players during the course
of play social interaction, play content is encoded and expressed in the actions that
constitute playing. As such, it constitutes a major aspect of the complex sign ex
change which is playing. Analogously, social processes and interactive strategies
constitute a major aspect of the play process. Thus, as an ever present and integral
aspect of playing, play content is not a static entity, but an ever changing, fluid fea
ture which is transformed as a function of the play communicative process. This
implies that an exhaustive description of play content requires analyses of the struc
ture of play in progress. It is, therefore, not sufficient to specify what constitutes
this process; rather, it is equally important to specify how this is accomplished.
Description does not solely pertain to questions regarding the form and patterns
of the content expressed in and constituting play process. On the contrary, for the
sake of completeness, it also includes questions regarding the factors inherent in
a given phenomenon and accounting for the patterns constituting a given
phenomenon under investigation, thus explaining it from within (How-question).
With respect to play description of content patterns without specification of
generative features is not sufficient, since it ignores the social interactive aspects
of this eminently social phenomenon (Corsaro 1983) and results in decontextual-
ized analyses (Schwartzman 1978). To sum, play content as an integral part of play
ing, comes to life in the activity itself. Therefore, the task of an analysis of play
content involves the specification of its structure as well as the generative aspects
associated with it as they emerge during the course of play social interaction. In the
act of playing, structure and process are inextricably intertwined. Structure does
not cause process; nor does process cause structure. Rather, they are mutually in
fluencing each other as aspects of one and the same praxis. Therefore, a complete
analysis of the nature of play content must simultaneously encompass both struc
ture and process questions. In sum, the present study focuses on the investigation
of content structure and major related content generative strategies during the
course of young children's play interactions. Two overarching questions are posed:
first, what is the structure of play content in social pretend' play during the early
years; and second, how do such young players generate content structure during
the process of play social interaction?
