1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Pragmatics
  4. Volume 20, Issue 4
  5. Article
Heteroglossia and language ideologies in children’s peer play interactions
  • ISSN 1018-2101
  • E-ISSN: 2406-4238
PDF

Abstract

This study examines how boys from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala develop their own perspective about what it means to be moral human beings in the world via discursive practices that contrast enregistered voices within an emergent performance genre that simultaneously doubles as socio-dramatic play-frame. This emergent genre exhibits both mimesis and alterity; children have appropriated a popular adult genre, within which their participation, originally, was highly circumscribed. In their own productions, however, they occupy the main character roles and enact re-accented “voices” of king and kin in highly competitive, proselytizing discourse. The resulting performance is a subversion of the social order where ‘the challenge’ of good defeating evil is undone, reflecting a child-centric critical stance. To wit, the boys refuse to be convinced by the authority of an overly patriarchal-colonial moral order. I build upon Sawyers’ (1995) model of play-as-improvisation to develop a synthetic framework in analyzing indigenous children’s play and childhood(s). The approach I espouse draws upon ethnographically informed studies of peer talk-in-interaction, verbal art as performance, and semiotic functionalism to examine how children “do heteroglossia” in and out-of-play frames of interaction as they construct selves capable of confronting the social order.

© 2010 International Pragmatics Association
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/prag.20.4.01rey
2010-01-01
2023-09-29

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/prag.20.4.01rey
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Annis, Sheldon
    (1987) God and production in a Guatemalan town. Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Agha, Asif
    (2003) The social life of cultural value. Language and communication23: 231-273. doi: 10.1016/S0271‑5309(03)00012‑0
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00012-0 [Google Scholar]
  3. (2005) Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of linguistic anthropology15: 38-59. doi: 10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38
     https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38 [Google Scholar]
  4. Bakhtin, Mikhail M
    (1981) The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. (1984) Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Bateson, Gregory
    (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bauman, Richard
    (1982) Ethnography of children’s folklore. In Perry Gilmore and Allan A. Glatthorn (eds.), Children in and out of school: Ethnography and education. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, pp. 172-186.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. (1984) Verbal art as performance. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. (1996) Transformations of the word in the production of Mexican festival drama. In Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (eds.), Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 301-327.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. (2001) The ethnography of genre in a Mexican market: Form, function, variation. In Penelope Eckert and John Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-77.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Bauman, Richard , and Charles L. Briggs
    (1990) Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual review of anthropology19: 59-88. doi: 10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.000423
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.000423 [Google Scholar]
  12. Bricker, Victoria Reifler
    (1973) Ritual humor in highland Chiapas. Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Brown, R. McKenna
    (1998) Case study two: San Antonio Aguas Calientes and Quinizilapa Valley. In Susan Garzon , R. McKenna Brown , Julia Becker Richards , and >Wuqu’ Ajpub’ (Arnulfo Simón) (eds.), The life of our language: Kaqchikel Maya maintenance, shift, and revitalization. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp.101-128.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Canclini, Néstor García
    (1995) Hybrid cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Castañeda, Quetzil E
    (1996) In the museum of Maya culture: Touring Chichén Itzá. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Casaus Arzú , Marta Elena
    (1992) Guatemala: Linaje y racismo. San José, Costa Rica: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Cook-Gumperz, Jenny
    (1995) Reproducing the discourse of mothering: How gendered talk makes gendered lives. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self. New York: Routledge, pp. 401-420.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Cook-Gumperz, Jenny , and John J. Gumperz
    (1978) Context in children’s speech. In Natalie Waterson and Catherine Snow (eds.), The Development of Communication. New York: Wiley, pp. 3-23.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Corsaro, William A
    (1985) Friendship and peer culture in the early years. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Corsaro, William , and Doug W. Maynard
    (1996) Format tying in discussion and argumentation among Italian and American children. In Dan I. Slobin , J. Gerhardt , Amy Kyratzis , and J. Guo (eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 157-74.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. de León, Lourdes
    (2006) Ritual, humor, fantasía y relato: Desarrollo de competencias comunicativas en niños tzotziles de Zinacantán. Plenary Lecture. VIII Jornadas Lingüísticas de la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. México, D. F.April 2006.
  22. (2007) Parallelism, metalinguistic play, and the interactive emergence of Zinacantec Mayan sibling’s culture. Research on language and social interaction 40.4: 405-436. doi: 10.1080/08351810701471401
     https://doi.org/10.1080/08351810701471401 [Google Scholar]
  23. Ervin-Tripp, Susan
    (1977) Wait for me, roller skate!In Susan Ervin-Tripp and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan (eds.), Child discourse. New York: Academic Press, pp. 165-188. doi: 10.1016/B978‑0‑12‑241950‑8.50015‑0
     https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-241950-8.50015-0 [Google Scholar]
  24. Evaldsson, Ann-Carita , and Asta Cekaite
    (this volume) “‘Schwedis’ he can’t say Swedish”: Subverting and reproducing institutionalized norms for language use in multilingual peer groups. Pragmatics20.4.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Fein, Greta
    (1987) Pretend play: Creativity and consciousness. In D. Gorlitz & J.F. Wohlwill (eds.), Curiosity, imagination, and play: On development of spontaneous cognitive and motivational processes. New York: Oxford, pp. 82-94.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Ferguson, Charles A
    (1994) Dialect, register, and genre: Working assumptions about conventionalization. In Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 15-30.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Flores, Richard R
    (1994) “Los pastores” and the gifting of performance. American ethnologist21.2: 270-285. doi: 10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00030
     https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00030 [Google Scholar]
  28. French, Brigittine
    (2010) Mayan ethnolinguistic identity: Violence, cultural rights, and modernity in highland Guatemala. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. García-Sánchez, Inmaculada M
    . (this volume) Series games: Code-switching and gendered identities in Moroccan immigrant girls’ pretend play. Pragmatics20.4.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Garrett, Paul B
    (2005) What a language is good for: Language socialization, language shift, and the persistence of code-specific genres in St. Lucia. Language in society34: 327-361. doi: 10.1017/S0047404505050128
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404505050128 [Google Scholar]
  31. Gaskins, Suzanne
    (2006) The cultural organization of Yucatec children’s social interactions. In X. Chen , D. French , and B. Schneider (eds.), Peer relations in cultural context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 283-309. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511499739.013
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499739.013 [Google Scholar]
  32. Glick Schiller, Nina
    (2003) The centrality of ethnography in the study of transnational migration: Seeing the wetlands instead of the swamp. In Nancy Foner (ed.), American arrivals: Anthropology engages the new immigration. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp. 99-128.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Goldman, L.R
    (1998) Child’s play: Myth, mimesis and make-believe. Oxford and New York: Berg.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Goldstein, Daniel M
    (2004) The spectacular city: Violence and performance in urban Bolivia. Durham: Duke University Press. doi: 10.1215/9780822386018
     https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386018 [Google Scholar]
  35. Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
    (1990) He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among Black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Gossen, Gary
    (1976) Verbal dueling in Chamula. In Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (ed.), Speech play: Research and resources for studying linguistic creativity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 121-146.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Harris, Max
    (2000) Aztecs, Moors and Christians: Festivals of reconquest in Mexico and Spain. Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Hill, Jane
    (1998) “Today there is no respect”: Nostalgia, “respect”, and oppositional discourse in Mexicano (Nahuatl) language ideology. In Bambi B. Schieffelin , Kathryn A. Woolard , and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.68-86.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Hobsbawm, Eric , and Terence Ranger
    (1992) The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Hoyle, Susan M
    (1993) Participation frameworks in sportscasting play: Imaginary and literal footings. In Deborah Tannen (ed.), Framing in discourse. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 114-145.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. (1998) Register and footing in role play. In Susan M. Hoyle and Carolyn Temple Adger (eds.), Kids talk: Strategic language use in later childhood. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 47-67.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Inoue, Miyako
    (2006) Vicarious language: Gender and linguistic modernity in Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Irvine, Judith T. , and Susan Gal
    (2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp. 35-83.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Iwamura, Susan G
    (1980) The verbal games of preschool children. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Jakobson, Roman
    (1960) Closing statement, linguistics and poetics. In T. Sebeok (ed.), Style in language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 398-429.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Kearney, Michael
    (2000) Class and identity: The jujitsu of domination and resistance in Oaxacalifornia. In Dorothy Holland and Jean Lave (eds.), History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities. Santa Fé, NM: School of American Research Press, pp. 247-280.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Kroskrity, Paul V
    (2000) Regimenting languages: Language ideological perspectives. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp. 1-34.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Kyratzis, Amy
    (1999) Narrative identity in preschool same-sex friendship groups: Fluidity over time and context. Narrative inquiry9: 427-455. doi: 10.1075/ni.9.2.10kyr
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.9.2.10kyr [Google Scholar]
  49. (2007) Using the social organizational affordances of role playing in American preschool girls’ interactions. Research on language and social interaction40: 321-352. doi: 10.1080/08351810701471310
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08351810701471310 [Google Scholar]
  50. (this volume) Latino girls’ peer play interactions in a bilingual Spanish-English US preschool: Heteroglossia, frame-shifting, and language ideology. Pragmatics20.4.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Kyratzis, Amy , T. Marx , and E.R. Wade
    (2001) Preschoolers’ communicative competence: Register shift in the marking of power in different contexts of friendship group talk. In H. Marcos (ed.), Early pragmatic development (spec. issue).First language21: 387-431. doi: 10.1177/014272370102106308
     https://doi.org/10.1177/014272370102106308 [Google Scholar]
  52. Labov, William
    (1972) Rules for ritual insults. In David Sudnow (ed.), Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press, pp. 120-169.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Limón, José E
    (1983) Western Marxism and folklore: A critical introduction. The journal of American folklore 96.379: 34-52. doi: 10.2307/539833
     https://doi.org/10.2307/539833 [Google Scholar]
  54. Mendoza-Denton, Norma
    (2008) Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
     [Google Scholar]
  55. Minks, Amanda
    (2008) Performing gender in song games among Nicaraguan Miskitu children. Language and communication 23.1: 36-56. doi: 10.1016/j.langcom.2007.02.001
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2007.02.001 [Google Scholar]
  56. (this volume) Socializing heteroglossia among Miskitu children on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Pragmatics20.4.
     [Google Scholar]
  57. Nagengast, Carole , and Michael Kearney
    (1990) Mixtec ethnicity: Social identity, political consciousness, and political activism. Latin American research review25: 61-91.
     [Google Scholar]
  58. Nájera-Ramírez, Olga
    (1999) Of fieldwork, folklore, and festival: Personal encounters. The journal of American folklore 112.444: 183-199. doi: 10.2307/541948
     https://doi.org/10.2307/541948 [Google Scholar]
  59. Nash, June
    (1970) In the eyes of the ancestors. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group.
     [Google Scholar]
  60. Ochs, Elinor
    (1992) Indexing gender. In Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 335-358.
     [Google Scholar]
  61. Offit, Thomas A. , and Garrett Cook
    (2010) The death of don Pedro: Insecurity and cultural continuity in peacetime Guatemala. The journal of Latin American and Caribbean anthropology 15.1: 42-65. doi: 10.1111/j.1935‑4940.2010.01062.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1935-4940.2010.01062.x [Google Scholar]
  62. Paugh, Amy L
    (2005) Multilingual play: Children’s codeswitching, role play, and agency in Dominica, West Indies. Language in society 34.1: 63-86. doi: 10.1017/S0047404505050037
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404505050037 [Google Scholar]
  63. Porrúa, Miguel Angel
    (ed.) (1994) Los doce pares de Francia: Historia para teatro campesino en tres noches. Morelos: Gobierno del Estado.
     [Google Scholar]
  64. Pujolar, Joan
    (2000) Gender, heteroglossia and power: A sociolinguistic study of youth culture. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
     [Google Scholar]
  65. Reynolds, Jennifer F
    (2002) Maya children’s practices of the imagination: (Dis)Playing childhood and politics in Guatemala. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
     [Google Scholar]
  66. (2008) Socializing puros pericos (little parrots): The negotiation of respect and responsibility in Antonero sibling and peer networks. Journal of linguistic anthropology 18.1: 82-107. doi: 10.1111/j.1548‑1395.2008.00005.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1395.2008.00005.x [Google Scholar]
  67. (2009) Shaming the shift generation: Intersecting ideologies of family and linguistic revitalization in Guatemala. In Paul V. Kroskrity and Margaret C. Field (eds.), Revealing Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, pp. 213-308.
     [Google Scholar]
  68. (2010) La socialización del lenguaje entre grupos de pares: La elicitación de contribuciones en el juego de el Rey Moro . In Lourdes de León , (ed.), Lenguajes y culturas infantiles: Estudios transculturales sobre socialización y aprendizaje. México: CIESAS, pp. 355-387.
     [Google Scholar]
  69. Rogers, Mark
    (1999) Spectacular bodies: Folklorization and the politics of identity in Ecuadorian beauty pagents. Journal of Latin American anthropology3: 54-85. doi: 10.1525/jlca.1998.3.2.54
     https://doi.org/10.1525/jlca.1998.3.2.54 [Google Scholar]
  70. Rogoff, Barbara
    (1981) Adults and peers as agents of socialization: A highland Guatemalan profile. Ethos 9.1: 18-36. doi: 10.1525/eth.1981.9.1.02a00030
     https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1981.9.1.02a00030 [Google Scholar]
  71. (2003) The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  72. Rouse, Roger
    (1991) Mexican migration and the social space of postmodernism. Diaspora1: 8-23. doi: 10.1353/dsp.1991.0011
     https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.1991.0011 [Google Scholar]
  73. Sawyer, R. Keith
    (1995) A developmental model of heteroglossic improvisation in children’s fantasy play. Sociological studies of children7: 127-153.
     [Google Scholar]
  74. (2001) Play as improvisational rehearsal: Multiple levels of analysis in children’s play. In Artin Göncü and Elisa Klein (eds.), Children in play, story and school. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 19-38.
     [Google Scholar]
  75. (2002) Improvisation and narrative. Narrative inquiry 12.2: 319-349. doi: 10.1075/ni.12.2.05saw
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.12.2.05saw [Google Scholar]
  76. (2003) Levels of analysis in pretend play discourse: Metacommunication in conversational routines. In Donald E. Lytle (ed.), Play and educational theory and practice. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, pp. 137-157.
     [Google Scholar]
  77. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. , and Harvey Sachs
    (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica8: 289-327.
     [Google Scholar]
  78. Silverstein, Michael
    (1993) Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In John A. Lucy (ed.), Reflexive Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33-58. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511621031.004
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621031.004 [Google Scholar]
  79. (2003) Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and communication23: 193-229. doi: 10.1016/S0271‑5309(03)00013‑2
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2 [Google Scholar]
  80. Steck, Francis Borgia
    (1951) Motolinia’s history of the Indians of New Spain. Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History.
     [Google Scholar]
  81. Sutton-Smith, Brian
    (1981) The folkstories of children. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. doi: 10.9783/9780812207392
     https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812207392 [Google Scholar]
  82. Tetreault, Chantal
    (2009) Mocking in mock French: Social uses of stylized voicing by Muslim French teenagers. Language in society38: 201-231. doi: 10.1017/S0047404509090332
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404509090332 [Google Scholar]
  83. Vygotsky, Lev S
    (1967) Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet PsychologyVol. V. No. 3: 6-18.
     [Google Scholar]
  84. Warren, Kay
    (1978) The symbolism of subordination: Indian identity in a Guatemalan town. Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  85. Warren, Kay B
    (1998) Indigenous movements and their critics: Pan-Maya activism in Guatemala. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  86. Williams, Raymond
    (1977) Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  87. Wolf, Dennie , and Deborah Hicks
    (1989) The voices within narratives: The development of intertextuality in young children’s stories. Discourse processes12: 329-351. doi: 10.1080/01638538909544734
     https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01638538909544734 [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/prag.20.4.01rey
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Enregisterment; Kaqchikel Maya children; Socio-dramatic play; Verbal art as performance; Voicing contrasts

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error