I was drawn to play specifically because of these parallels with everyday
social life. Play researchers have drawn heavily on two notions that Jay
mentioned: (1) Goffman's "frame" theory; (2) Bateson's
metacommunication. Both play and everyday life have elements of
improvisation; but play worked better for me as an object of study
because it was more clearly improvisational, I think because there are
less constraints on a fantasy world than on our boring adult reality.
I've elaborated Bateson's metacommunication concept by drawing heavily on
Silverstein's theory of metapragmatics (my application is similar to
Stanton's participant example work). In both theories, interaction
proceeds at two levels simultaneously: (1) the in-frame interaction
itself, or Silverstein's "denotational text", and (2) the meta- or
regulatory level, Silverstein's metapragmatic or "interactional text."
Because children's play is so visibly framed, and this regulatory level
is more visible than among adults, I have found it a wonderful way to
explore these broader theoretical questions. I would even go so far as
to suggest that it's a
nice setting to empirically explore much of contemporary European social
theory, including Habermas, Bourdieu, and Foucault...
And all this is a heavy burden for something as innocent as play! As
Schiller wrote,
"But how can we speak of mere play, when we know that it is precisely
play and play alone, which of all man's states and conditions is the one
which makes him whole and unfolds both sides of his nature at once?"
Keith Sawyer
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064