Preschoolers' Self-Construction Through Narrative in Same-Sex Friendship Group Dramatic Play
Amy Kyratzis | Department of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara
Recently, researchers have been interested in narrative as a conversational point-making activity. Some of the features of narrative (e.g., its "objectivity", Benveniste, 1971) render it ideally suited for self-exploration and positioning of the self with respect to societal institutions (Polanyi, 1989), especially in the context of conversations within friendship groups (Coates, 1996). While past research has often focused on self-constructing and political uses of narratives of personal experience, the present study examines such uses with respect to narratives produced during preschoolers' dramatic play in friendship groups. An ethnographic-sociolinguistic study that followed friendship groups in two preschool classrooms of a California university children's center was conducted. Children were videotaped in their two most representative friendship groups each academic quarter. Narrative was coded when children used explicit proposals of irrealis in one of three forms: the marked subjunctive (past tense irrealis marking in English, e.g., "they were hiding"); the paraphrastic subjunctive (unmarked irrealis proposals such as "and I'm shy"); and pretend directives such as "pretend" ("pretend we're Shy Wizards"). Also, instances of character speech were counted as narrative. Children used con-trastive forms (subjunctive, coherence markers vs. absence of subjunctive; pitch variation) to mark different phases within narrative. Collaborative self-construction was seen in the linguistic forms they used (pretend statements; tag questions; "and-elaborations") and in the identities the children constructed for their protagonists. Girls' protagonists suggested they valued qualities of lovingness, graciousness, and attractiveness. The protagonists the boys constructed suggested they valued physical power. Girls had a greater reliance on story for self-construction than boys did. It is notable that the dramatic play narratives produced during children's play in friendship groups serve some of the same functions in positioning participants with respect to one another and exploring possible selves collaboratively with one another that personal experience narratives serve in adult intimate social groups.
2007. Narrative, Imaginary Play, Art, and Self: Intersecting Worlds. Early Childhood Education Journal 34:4 ► pp. 279 ff.
Bernstein, Katie A
2016. Post-structuralist potentialities for studies of subjectivity and second language learning in early childhood. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 17:2 ► pp. 174 ff.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana & Catherine E. Snow
2004. Introduction: The Potential of Peer Talk. Discourse Studies 6:3 ► pp. 291 ff.
Cook‐Gumperz, Jenny & Amy Kyratzis
2005. Child Discourse. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 590 ff.
Davidson, Alice J., Marsha D. Walton, Bhavna Kansal & Robert Cohen
2017. Narrative skills predict peer adjustment across elementary school years. Social Development 26:4 ► pp. 891 ff.
De Fina, Anna & Barbara Johnstone
2015. Discourse Analysis and Narrative. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 152 ff.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
2003. The Relevance of Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Children's Peer Negotiations. In The Handbook of Language and Gender, ► pp. 229 ff.
Hamo, Michal & Blum-Kulka Shoshana
2001. Apprenticeship in Conversation and Culture. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology, ► pp. 423 ff.
Hao, Yijun
2017. The dialectic between ideal and real forms of ‘sharing’: a cultural-historical study of story acting through imaginary play at home. Early Child Development and Care 187:1 ► pp. 99 ff.
Kyratzis, Amy
2004. Talk and Interaction Among Children and the Co-Construction of Peer Groups and Peer Culture. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:1 ► pp. 625 ff.
Kyratzis, Amy
2004. Talking to Adults: The Contribution of Multiparty Discourse to Language Acquisition. Journal of Pragmatics 36:4 ► pp. 807 ff.
Kyratzis, Amy
2017. Peer ecologies for learning how to read: Exhibiting reading, orchestrating participation, and learning over time in bilingual Mexican-American preschoolers’ play enactments of reading to a peer. Linguistics and Education 41 ► pp. 7 ff.
Kyratzis, Amy, Ya-Ting Tang & S. Bahar Koymen
2009. Codes, code-switching, and context: Style and footing in peer group bilingual play. Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 28:2-3 ► pp. 265 ff.
Küntay, Aylin C.
2009. Microgenesis of narrative competence during preschool interactions: Effects of the relational context. In Perspectives on Human Development, Family, and Culture, ► pp. 178 ff.
Küntay, Aylin C. & İbrahim Şenay
2003. Narratives beget narratives. Journal of Pragmatics 35:4 ► pp. 559 ff.
Packard, Becky Wai-Ling & Paul F. Conway
2006. Methodological Choice and Its Consequences for Possible Selves Research. Identity 6:3 ► pp. 251 ff.
Page, R.E.
2006. Narratology, Feminist. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 482 ff.
Power, Thomas G.
2010. Social Play. In The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development, ► pp. 455 ff.
2009. “Whow—when I was going to pretend drinking it tasted coke for real!” Second-language learners' out-of-frame talk in peer pretend play: A developmental study from preschool to first grade. European Journal of Developmental Psychology 6:2 ► pp. 190 ff.
Tryggvason, Marja-Terttu, Tiia Tulviste & Boel De Geer
2008. How do preschool children engage each other in dialogue in Finland, Estonia and Sweden?. MULT 27:4 ► pp. 389 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.