The Heteroglossic World of Preschoolers' Pretend Play

Abstract

This inquiry applied Bakhtin's dialogic process to the pretend play of preschool children using an interpretive approach. It used vignettes from videotaped data and Bakhtin's theories of dialogism and heteroglossia to provide an understanding of how children appropriate social roles and rules in pretend play and use a variety of 'voices' in role enactment. The study also demonstrates how role enactment contributes to the development of children's ideological self; and how the relation between the self and social/cultural contexts, a perennial issue in the social sciences, is evident within preschool children's pretend play. When applying Bakhtin's dialogic theory to pretend play, three facets became evident. First, children appropriated and assimilated others' words in play. Second, children engaged in a heteroglossic world as they employed different ways of talking to enact play roles. Third, children engaged in a struggle between an authoritative voice and internally persuasive discourse.

The White Worsted Thread: Third Space Encounters in English L2 Writing – A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Writing for Publication in English

“…This feature of learning through language is particularly relevant to understanding the experiences of incipient researchers and those beginning to grapple with publication in an additional language -in this case, English. The relevance of these terms to the present study can be illustrated through a study done by Cohen (2009) on the heteroglossic discourse of children's play.…”

“…The literature reviewed in Cohen's (2009) study examined the role of discourse in the development of children's social and cultural identities. Acknowledging the socio-constructivist nature of language and identity construction, Cohen challenges the typical theoretical frameworks of Vygotsky and Piaget, most commonly relied on to explain these phenomena.…”

“…This ideational becoming is an essential component that everyone engages in -consciously or not -in any developmental situation (Cohen 2009). Thus, it is clear that this concept has something to say about the ongoing developmental processes NNES writers (and all writers) go through as they seek entry into, become more immersed in, and maintain their membership in their international professional communities.…”

“…Bakhtin identifies two of those forces as being centripetal and centrifugal (Cohen 2009). The former describes forces which draw all language elements into one system in which there are clearly defined norms which all participants conform to -it is a monologic language.…”

Children’s Violently Themed Play and Adult Imaginaries of Childhood: A Bakhtinian Analysis

“…On another level, the argument returns to Bakhtin's hopeful assessment of the potentiality of heteroglossia and its creative, even transformative, possibilities. The focus in this paper has been on heteroglossia within responses to violently-themed play, but here the paper also points to the heteroglossic space of play itself (see also Cohen 2009). Rather than treating violently-themed play as a source or solution of society's problems, as it has been in much popular and professional literature, the suggestion here is that such play needs to be understood as a far more complex engagement with the world involving the "coauthoring [of] multiple dialogues" (Marjanovic-Shane and White 2014, p.120).…”