[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-592426-105":59,"doc-detail-592426-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","bakhtins-carnival-and-pretend-role-play","Bakhtin’s Carnival and Pretend Role Play","","Bakhtin’s carnival theory and its discourses are used to reframe early-childhood pretend play, especially the hidden parent-child dynamics and children’s double-voiced discourse within play. The work argues that carnival-like mockery of hierarchy during festivals resonates with children’s role reversal and identity negotiation in preschool settings. Examples from culturally diverse three- and four-year-old preschoolers illustrate parallels between Bakhtin’s carnival and dramatic, pretend activities, suggesting educators should view play from a child-centered perspective.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/bakhtins-carnival-and-pretend-role-play/592426/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/bakhtins-carnival-and-pretend-role-play/592426.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"McGucket","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-01","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":44},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does Bakhtin’s carnival relate to children’s pretend role play?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The analysis argues that carnival’s discourses and laughter-style reworking of hierarchy map onto children’s pretend play, especially role reversal and double-voiced discourse.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What is the article’s main purpose for studying preschoolers’ play?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It investigates similarities between Bakhtin’s medieval carnival festivals and what children do in pretend play, using data from preschool classrooms to support an alternative view of social pretend play and language.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why does the article critique dominant early-childhood approaches to play?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It challenges developmental psychology-based frameworks and regimes of truth promoted through DAP, which privilege officially sanctioned play and overlook “illicit” or festive forms of play described as disruptive.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},592426,1792170925,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":44,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},1236954412713,"https://us-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Bakhtin’s Carnival and Pretend Role Play  \n! \\#OMPARISON OF 3OCIAL \\#ONTEXTS  \ns  \nLynn E. Cohen  \nTwentieth-century Russian literary critic and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin developed an epistemology that linked carnival, authority, and laughter. Drawing on his work, the author investigates hidden parent-child interactions and children’s discourse in early-childhood play. She argues that Bakhtin’s ideas of carnival and its discourses apply to young children’s pretend play. Early-childhood play, she holds, bridges the gap between authoritative and internally persuasive discourse, much as does the mockery of hierarchical order during the carnival festivals described by  \nBakhtin. The author uses examples from her study of culturally diverse three-and four-year-old preschoolers to illustrate the similarities between Bakhtin’s carnival and pretend play. She discusses such play in the context of children exploring their identities and negotiating their relationships with the adult world. She suggests that early-childhood educators could benefit by viewing play from a child’s perspective, as something not unlike carnival, rather than by forcing play always to fit more traditional developmental models. Key words: carnival; double-voiced discourse; dramatic play; grotesque realism; humor; Mikhail Bakhtin; pretend play; profanity; role reversal  \nSome early-childhood educators lament their field’s reliance on developmental psychology (Cannella 1997; Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999; Grieshaber and McArdle 2010; MacNaughton 2005; Rogers 2011) . These scholars call for theoretical perspectives outside the discipline, perspectives that reflecta diverse approach to research and teaching in early childhood. Brian SuttonSmith claims that the “progress rhetoric, the view that children’s play is about children’s growth and progress, has not been strongly supported by scientificevidence”(2001, 123) .  \nFor the past two decades, Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) (Bredekamp 1987; Bredekamp and Copple 1997; Bredekamp and Copple 2009), published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), has served what Michel Foucault (1980) might have called a “regime of truth” in early-childhood classrooms, a regime that perpetuates a narrow view  \n176  \nAmerican Journal of Play, volume 4, number 2. © The Strong.  \nContact Lynn E. Cohen at [lynn.cohen@liu.edu](lynn.cohen@liu.edu)  \nof play. NAEYC has used DAP to define what it considers normal and appropriate for all children (Cohen 2008) . Kuschner (2012) argues that the framers of the regime privilege mature, dramatic play as a category of play that supports children’s development and learning, one sanctioned by teachers. At the sametime, DAP states “virtually nothing about the type of play that falls into the category of illicit play”(Kuschner 2012, 201), the kind of play that Sutton-Smith described as festive play,“play that often has a tendency to sneak into the school and disrupt our lessons”(1998, 32) .  \nTo get beyond this officially sanctioned developmental view of play, I want to take a look at preschool play and language using Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas of carnival, specifically as he developed them in Rabelais and His World (1984b) and Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics (1984a) . Several researchers frame children’s discourse from a Bakhtinian perspective, a view that explores festive play in a preschool environment (Cohen 2009; Cohen and Uhry 2007, Dyson 1994, 1997; Edmiston 2008; Gillfn 2002; Matusov 2009; Sawyer 1997) . Some scholars have related Bakhtin’s concept of carnival and language play to English-language learners (DaSilva Iddings and McCafferty 2007), while others have related it toa writing workshop (Lensmire 1994; Swain 2002), and still others have tied it to video production (Grace and Tobin 1997) . Not many, however, have written about Bakhtin’s notions of carnival and discourse in pretend play, with the exception of Sutton-Smith in his brief discussion in Ambi","cbCait64g4awRhSC","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCait64g4awRhSC","pdf",327133,28,"English","# Comparison of Social Contexts\n## Carnival and Preschool Play","[{\"question\":\"How does Bakhtin’s carnival relate to children’s pretend role play?\",\"answer\":\"The analysis argues that carnival’s discourses and laughter-style reworking of hierarchy map onto children’s pretend play, especially role reversal and double-voiced discourse.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the article’s main purpose for studying preschoolers’ play?\",\"answer\":\"It investigates similarities between Bakhtin’s medieval carnival festivals and what children do in pretend play, using data from preschool classrooms to support an alternative view of social pretend play and language.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the article critique dominant early-childhood approaches to play?\",\"answer\":\"It challenges developmental psychology-based frameworks and regimes of truth promoted through DAP, which privilege officially sanctioned play and overlook “illicit” or festive forms of play described as disruptive.\"}]","Bakhtin’s Carnival and Pretend Role Play | PDF",1792074556,71]