Abstract
This case study explores how an emergent bilingual preschooler used transmodal practices to engage with objects and compose narratives in sociodramatic play. Video recordings and field notes were collected in a dual language preschool classroom in the United States to examine the actional, verbal, and visual modes used by the focal child during his engagement with objects. An action-oriented analysis using multimodal discourse and mediated action frameworks revealed how he transmodally engaged with play artifacts to embody imagined roles and extend objects’ functionality. The child engaged with objects in three particular ways by (a) resourcing objects to advertise play to peers, (b) extending objects’ meaning potential, and (c) recruiting physical and imagined objects to elaborate on storyline. His translanguaging served as an additional compositional resource to provide contextualization for play narratives; showcase personalized meanings and underscore his multimodal intent during play; and endorse and co-opt others’ play ideas. Findings have implications for ways that early childhood teachers can use objects to promote and augment multimodal sociodramatic play scenarios.
Introduction
Because meaning-making in sociodramatic play takes on fluid, creative forms, a transmodal approach broadens our understanding of how children engage with all semiotic resources—oral language, gaze, imagery, print, gestures, manipulation, actions, and body movement—in interactions with others and play objects. Children use play objects as an additional contextual support when enacting scripts and dramatizing ideas (Kendrick, 2005; Wohlwend, 2011b). Thus, children’s interactions with objects provide insight into how they create individual and shared meanings in sociodramatic play narratives. For emergent bilingual children, 1 their additional semiotic resource of translanguaging (i.e. flexibly embedding features of multiple languages or through parallel monolingual conversations; García et al., 2011), their multimodal interactions, and their use of objects mediate how they structure and extend their understanding of the world through play (Dyson, 2008).
Multimodal play-based research
Early play-based research heavily focused on monolinguals and characterized children’s play within a developmental continuum based on their social and cognitive behaviors (Howes and Matheson, 1992; Parten, 1932; Rubin et al., 1978; Smilansky, 1968; Westby, 1988). With the emergence of foundational research on children’s playful text explorations (e.g. Harste et al., 1984) and the recognition of “image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech, and sound-effect” (Kress and Jewitt, 2003: 1) as important communicative modes for young children, recent studies have galvanized inquiry into children’s multimodal meaning-making. Multimodal examinations have taken primacy in play because of the freedom this activity lends children to “explore, organize, and stretch their understandings about the world” (Dyson, 2008: 306) through their modes. Examinations of children’s play interactions have elucidated how children create meaning through embodied signs and action (Samuelson and Wohlwend, 2015), re-imagine power relations through pretend identities (Pahl, 2003; Wohlwend, 2008), orchestrate semiotic signs to enact a social agenda (Dyson, 1993), and even reproduce gendered discourses through movement and talk (Blaise, 2005).
Children also employ actional, verbal, and visual modes to illuminate their play intentions with objects and materials. Through their multimodal resources, children appropriate and extend objects’ meaning potential to convey messages (Bomer, 2003; Kress, 2003). For example, children utilize objects to attract peers into play (Wohlwend, 2008), to signify particular meanings (Bomer, 2003; Stein, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978), and to experiment with objects’ typical and repurposed functions and meanings (Samuelson and Wohlwend, 2015).
Emergent bilingual children at play
For emergent bilingual children, exposed to and learning multiple languages, play spaces provide rich opportunities for their language socialization, where children can be agentive in their languaging practices and in their choice to challenge and transform language separation norms (e.g. Paugh, 2005). Children are able to translanguage, utilizing their languages as an integrated communication system (Canagarajah, 2011) and flexibly embedding features of multiple languages (García et al., 2011). Studies have documented children’s process of “trying on” different voices, languages, and ways of speaking in play to explore pretend characters and the social significance of such communication patterns (Orellana, 1994; Paugh, 2005, 2019).
The intersection of bi/multilingual children’s play and multimodality represents a less researched area of inquiry to date. More studies have investigated bilingual children’s multimodal literacy-focused composing (e.g. Alvarez, 2018; Duran, 2016; Rowe and Miller, 2016) than their multimodal practices in sociodramatic play. The very few studies currently available on this topic have documented how children employ their multimodal resources to participate in and sustain play (Björk-Willén, 2007), to mediate social interactions with peers and teachers (Bengochea et al., 2018), and to scaffold and engender the learning of an additional language (Ledin and Samuelsson, 2016). In particular, Björk-Willén (2007) analyzed the shadowing behaviors, or a child’s imitation of a peer’s previous action, during play in a multilingual preschool program. Shadowing was an intentional and strategic action taken by a child to secure her participation in the play with peers. Ledin and Samuelsson (2016), examining several facets of preschoolers’ multimodality (bodily interaction, gaze, gesture, and object usage) found that children used bodily play interactions (e.g. imitation) and wielded objects in deliberate ways to scaffold their emerging bilingualism. Finally, Bengochea et al. (2018) analyzed the actional, visual, and verbal modes (inclusive of translanguaging) of a Spanish-English emergent bilingual child engaged in sociodramatic play in a US-based dual language program. The child recruited different modes and combination of modes with teachers than with peers and according to whether he authored his own play narrative or followed teacher’s suggested play narrative. The child was also found to translanguage more flexibly with his peers while adhering to one language with his teacher.
In an effort to deepen our understanding of emergent bilingual children’s multimodal sociodramatic play and with particular attention to objects’ role in supporting play, we investigate this research question:
How does an emergent bilingual child employ transmodal practices, including translanguaging, in response to object affordances in sociodramatic play contexts?
Theoretical framework
Our investigation is informed by theories that support an action-oriented multimodal analysis: multimodal discourse (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001) and mediated action (Scollon, 2001; Wertsch, 1991). From a multimodal perspective, individuals possess multiple communication channels, or resources (e.g. verbal, visual, actional) for construing meaning within a community. In sociodramatic play, children engage in mediated action (Wertsch, 1991) by recruiting actional (e.g. gesture, posture, manipulation of objects), visual (e.g. gaze, print, imagery), and verbal modes (e.g. oral language) to channel ideas with others and to enhance their messaging through available media or material objects (e.g. realia and other play props; play furniture). By adhering to communal social practices, children recognize not only the contributions of particular modes and media but also how their assemblages convey certain meanings over others for a specified community (Kress, 2003; Wohlwend, 2011a).
In contrast to previous perspectives that viewed bilinguals’ languages as separate and binary, translanguaging helps us to reframe bilinguals’ languages as represented through one linguistic repertoire (García and Wei, 2014). Translanguaging also serves as an additional and unique verbal resource in bilingual children’s communicative repertoire (Bengochea et al., 2018). Emergent bilingual children are able to enhance their messaging and learning by drawing on their transmodal repertoire, which includes translanguaging. The frameworks of multimodality, mediation, and translanguaging provide us with a lens for how emergent bilingual children (re)signify objects through transmodal resources in support of their play narratives.
Method
Setting
The current study emerges from a 2.5-year microethnography (summer 2009–spring 2012) of three preschool classrooms in a Spanish/English dual language early childhood program situated in the southeastern region of the United States. The surrounding community of the school and the larger city comprises 68.6 percent Latinx inhabitants (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) of whom 61 percent of children and 67 percent of adults speak Spanish at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). Spanish is commonly used by residents in the community (e.g. in grocery stores, public libraries, clothing shops, cafés, restaurants, banks, and local businesses) (Lynch, 2000).
Two preschool teachers, each serving as the language model for one of the program’s instructional languages (Spanish or English), co-taught in mixed-age preschool classrooms; children’s ages ranged between 3 and 6 years. The instructional language shifted on a weekly basis such that all whole group activities (e.g. morning circle, show-and-tell, storybook reading) were led in English one week and Spanish the next, and were guided by the teacher who was the respective model of that language. The partner teacher served in a supportive role, assisting individual children’s engagement and participation.
Sociodramatic play was one of the centers children could select during the daily 30- to 60-minute open-choice period, permitting a maximum of four participants. The sociodramatic play area was outfitted with home- and food-based items and clothing/costumes, designed by teachers and parents to include child-sized wooden furniture (e.g. stove, washing machine, cupboards, table) and props tied to the area’s theme (e.g. food containers, cooking utensils, plastic model food, plates, writing materials). Although the area mostly represented a kitchen or eating area, teachers periodically modified the sociodramatic play space and props to support curriculum-based topics (e.g. an airport, a shop, a restaurant). In sociodramatic play, children were free to use any language/s to interact with peers and teachers even though teachers maintained their designated instructional languages during interactions with children.
Participants
Data for this analysis emerged from the second year of the study (fall 2011–spring 2012) and from one preschool classroom serving 17 emergent bilingual children of Latinx heritage who were between the ages of 3;4 and 5;0. Approximately half of the families reported using only Spanish at home and the other half reported using English; a few families reported using both languages. Through purposeful sampling (Maxwell, 2012), we identified the focal participant, Mateo (pseudonym), a versatile bilingual child of Cuban heritage (age 4;2) from a Spanish/English bilingual home. Through teacher interviews, we learned that Mateo’s stepmother spoke with him in English and Spanish and read books to him in English, while Mateo’s father spoke to him in English. We selected Mateo because he engaged in dynamic English and Spanish languaging practices as reported at home and observed at school and regularly chose to participate in sociodramatic play activity. Mateo’s languaging practices sometimes reflected his monolingual-preferring bilingual peers languaging when he opted to solely engage in English or Spanish, but also fluidly drew on features from both languages, which reflected the practices of a more dynamic bilingual language user. As such, Mateo was the ideal choice to understand the multifaceted ways children with different bilingual preferences (e.g. Spanish- or English-preferring; fluid bilinguals) may engage with objects in play.
Data collection and analysis
During the 2011–2012 academic year, we captured weekly video recordings of the sociodramatic play activity and wrote field notes of our observations during each visit. We collected 25 videos over the year and identified a total of 11 videos in which Mateo participated in the sociodramatic play activity (ranging from approximately 23 to 68 minutes, averaging 45 minutes, and representing 5 hours, 11 minutes of video in total). We applied our transmodality framework (Bengochea et al., 2018) to document the actional, visual, and verbal modes used by Mateo during play. Definitions and examples of these codes are provided in Table 1.
Core categories, codes, definitions, and data examples.
Data for this research were analyzed thematically (Maxwell, 2012). Our unit of analysis represented the verbal and nonverbal interactions that reflected Mateo’s play purposes around objects. Through a moment-by-moment multimodal analysis within each unit of analysis, we coded how Mateo utilized modes to interact with objects and the manner in which these supported his sociodramatic play narratives. The first and second authors independently coded six videos and compared and discussed their coding thereafter as critical friends (Schuck and Russell, 2005). We identified emerging themes by recognizing the patterns in Mateo’s transmodal engagement with objects, and we selected excerpts, narrowed down from a total of 33 interactional units involving Mateo, to represent these patterns.
Findings
Mateo engaged with objects in three particular ways in support of his play: (a) resourcing objects to advertise play to peers, (b) extending objects’ meaning potential, and (c) recruiting physical and imagined objects to elaborate on his storyline.
Resourcing objects to advertise play to peers
We observed how Mateo resourced objects as a means of advertising play to peers and teachers by demonstrating objects while tacitly communicating events that might ensue through their participation. Objects played a supporting role in luring peers to a particular area, who at times would not fully subscribe to Mateo’s play scenario despite his appeals. Below, we provide an example of the multiple, transmodal ways Mateo resources objects (in this case, to advertise coffee-related events and products):
Excerpt 1. Mateo uses objects to advertise play [Mateo is hovering over a table with food and drink items and pretends to pour something from one small metal pitcher (pretend coffee maker) into a mug. Peers are across from him.] Mateo: Somebody want café (coffee)? [Mateo pretends pour coffee into a different cup] Mateo: (carrying the coffee maker in one hand, moving toward the cupboard) Do you want café? You want café? ¿Somebody quiere café? [He slams the “coffee maker” on the table.] Mateo: Anybody want café? ¿Alguien quiere café (Somebody want coffee?)? [He pretends to add items by cupping and pulling pretend contents from the first coffee mug to the second. Then, he begins to stir the second mug.] Mateo (to peers): Here. Can you take them? (referring to the mugs he filled with coffee) [No peers acknowledge Mateo’s request] Mateo (to teacher): Ms. Melanie, ¿tú quiere café (you want coffee)? [He pours coffee into the small cup from his coffee maker. He returns the coffee maker and cup to a shelf behind him.] Mateo: Sal (Salt). [He pretends to add content from what resembles a salt shaker, which rattles with every shake.] Mateo: Mira (Look). [Adds more shaker contents.] Mateo: Come on. Come on. Mateo: Hey, I put sal (salt). Mateo: Here. Mateo (to Adam): Wanna sleep? Mateo Look. Eat. [He again shakes a sound-making container resembling a pepper shaker.]
This excerpt exemplifies the long-enduring appeals Mateo often made to his peers to join his play, which were initiated by his continual advertising of objects. Notably, many of Mateo’s actions are repeated (e.g. shaking the objects representing a salt-and-pepper shaker, adding items to mugs, pouring coffee into cups) during his verbal calls for his peers’ and teacher’s engagement. Through his fluid translanguaging, he initially uses a command (“Look, café for you.”), which does not seem to effectively gain his peer’s participation, and subsequently uses a series of questions to try to attract others’ attention and announce the product he would potentially provide them, alternating between asking the group (e.g. Somebody want café?) and specific individuals (e.g. Do you want café? You want café?). When Mateo did not receive acknowledgment from others, he further advertised the object by slamming it on the table and continuing his line of questioning (“Anybody want cafe? ¿Alguien quiere café?”). His verbal advertisements were promulgated through actions (e.g. slamming the cup) that accompanied his verbal messaging. For instance, Mateo’s continual coffee stirring and salt-and-pepper shaking helped to visibly and audibly advertise the object while he interspersed his verbal offers. Mateo’s engagement of his complex transmodal repertoire—particularly his languaging practices [using English and Spanish rather fluidly], varying sentence types (e.g. commands, questioning), and actions and noise-making (e.g. stirring, pouring, obtaining more objects)— helped him to maximize the ways that he advertised his play.
Extending objects’ meaning potential
Mateo was also skillful in transmodally engaging with artifacts to broaden their qualities and functions across different play events and purposes. His transmodal moves enabled him to introduce an artifact and refashion it to enhance his play within an episode. Below, Mateo first independently engages with objects in conventional ways and then gradually repurposes them on his own and with a peer:
Excerpt 2. Mateo extends an object’s meaning potential. [Mateo enters the play area, removes a mop from a nearby closet, and wrings the mop to pretend to force liquid from it. He then places the mop on the floor.] Mateo: Me the witch. Eh-eh-eh-eh. Ah-ah-ah-ah. [Produces an evil laugh by vocalizing vowels in a staccato manner.] [Mateo places the mop between his legs and quickly walks forward and vocalizes a wind gust sound] Mateo: Shh. [He later picks up a broom before Fabricio approaches him and removes both the broom and the mop from Mateo’s hands.] Fabricio: Esto es para limpiar (This is to clean.) Mateo: No, me the bruja (No, me the witch). Mateo: Give me the broom. [displaying an angry facial expression and clenching fists, chases Fabricio who walks away with the broom and mop.] Mateo: Give me the witch. [Mateo produces an evil witch laugh.] Mateo: Give me that now. [Mateo grabs hold of the broom and again produces an evil witch laugh.] Mateo: Come on, witch. [talking to Fabricio.] Me the witch. My broom got powers. [Looking at Fabricio, Mateo makes a blasting sound as he slightly thrusts the broom back and forth in front of him in the direction of his peer as if discharging a firearm.]
Initially, Mateo used actional and visual modes (e.g. gaze toward the mop, wringing the mop fibers), focusing his attention on the mop’s conventional functions. Not yet engaging with his peers, Mateo used verbal modes—identifying his role (“Me the witch”) and producing an evil laugh. In combining actional and verbal modes, he then added nuance to his role as a witch by placing the mop between his legs, pretending to dart off with the mop as a witch, and making sounds of wind gusts in his travels.
Mateo then framed his peer’s play by establishing personalized, pretend-based norms for engaging with the mop and broom. When approached by his peer, Fabricio, who contradicted Mateo’s preferred function of these cleaning items, Mateo’s transmodal moves assigned a particular function to these artifacts, influencing the direction of play and the use of the artifact in question. Through his verbal mode (“No, me the bruja.”), he implicitly directed his peer to return the cleaning items. He engaged his verbal mode to more explicitly make this request (“Give me the broom.”) in tandem with his actional mode (i.e. showing anger, clenching fists). Through transmodal communication, which allowed Mateo to further personify his role as a witch (e.g. producing an evil laugh), he attempted to signify his ownership of the broom. Finally, Mateo extended the broom’s function by using his verbal mode (i.e. “My broom got powers”; producing blasting sounds), visual mode (i.e. eliciting Fabricio’s attention through gaze), and actional mode (i.e. holding and discharging the broom as a firearm). This strategic integration of modes was common in Mateo’s play and tended to support his play goals, sustain pretend play with peers, and extend the functionality of available play artifacts.
Recruiting objects incrementally to elaborate on storyline
Mateo also selected, utilized, and combined particular objects to build and enhance his play narrative. He initially engaged with objects that were present in the play area, choosing one initially and then picking up and combining others to elaborate on his play. Later on, Mateo integrated the use of imagined objects that were not physically present in the play space, recalling a memory of an object previously used and imagining it into his play narrative. Below, we discuss and describe these two ways that Mateo recruited objects in an incremental fashion to supplement his play.
Adhering to physical objects present
Mateo was drawn to using objects that were present in the play space to align, augment, and support his play. He selected specific artifacts in the dramatic play space and progressively paired these with others to support his imagined narrative. Below, Mateo progressively recruits more physical objects to sustain and extend his creation of a salad:
Excerpt 3. Mateo recruits and combines physical object to support play [Mateo is standing by the closet/kitchen area while the teacher is kneeling on the floor a few feet from him.] Teacher: ¿Y dónde está mi ensalada de vegetales y me ibas a dar nueces y chocolate y . . . (Where is my vegetable salad, and you were going to give me nuts and chocolate and . . . )? [Mateo looks back and forth from the floor to the teacher as he places his feet into a pair of high heels, pulled from the closet housing sociodramatic play-related clothing.] Mateo: Espérate. Espérate (Wait. Wait.). Que (That) I better make it. [He moves towards the kitchen cupboard where different objects are kept.] Teacher: ¿Ah, lo vas hacer ahora (Ah, you’re going to do it now)? ¿Lo vas a preparar (You’re going to prepare it)? ¿Qué ingredientes eran (Which ingredients were they)? ¿Nueces, helado, y manzana, verdad (Nuts, ice cream, and apple, right)? [Mateo looks in the cupboard, looking past different objects and grabbing a plastic slice of bread.] Mateo: Ensalada (Salad) . . . [says this to himself, as he looks through the cupboard] [Mateo continues to look in the cupboard, still holding on to the plastic slice of bread, and not finding what he is looking for, goes to another cupboard and opens the door to look inside.] Mateo: Where’s the food? The ensalada (salad)? Teacher: Mira, allá hay frutas pero . . . (Look, there are fruits over there but . . . ) [Teacher points to the general area of the cupboard where Mateo is standing and searching.] Mateo: Frutas (Fruits). [Holding on to the plastic slice of bread with one hand, Mateo grabs a small round container with his other hand from the cupboard, and moves towards a table in the middle of the kitchen area. He places the bread on the table, aims the round container downwards and shakes the imagined condiments onto the piece of bread, hitting the bread several times as he shakes, creating knocking sounds. Mateo then walks over to the stove area, places the bread in a pot, and shakes the container one more time into the pot. Mateo then takes out the piece of bread, places the shaker down and chooses a plastic spatula from the set of utensils sitting upright in a box next to the stove. Using short strokes, Mateo makes a scooping motion on one of the stoves, as if he were scooping a spreadable ingredient, and then spreads the ingredient on the bread, moving the spatula back and forth in small motions. Mateo moves over to the edge of the kitchen to where the teacher is standing—off camera—and looks at her as he speaks. He continues to hold the spatula and bread in hand.] Mateo: Hey, I make peanut butter! I make peanut butter. I make peanut butter. Peanut butter. Teacher: Peanut butter. [Mateo moves back over the cupboard, puts down the spatula, reaches in and grabs another plastic slice of bread. He carefully puts the two slices of bread together.] Mateo: Come on, Ms. Melanie. Better eat! [Mateo has moved over to the table in the center of the kitchen and looks at the teacher who is now positioned there.] Teacher: Prepárame la ensalada y mi peanut butter (Prepare the salad and my peanut butter). [The teacher walks out of the play area.] [Mateo looks around at the cupboard and pulls out a plastic plate, on top of which he places the two bread slices. Holding up the plate with the bread, Mateo walks out of the play area following the teacher.]
Mateo employs several objects in this excerpt of his play narrative. Placing high heels on, he responds to the teacher’s question about her salad (“¿Y dónde está mi ensalada de vegetales . . . ?”) by employing flexible bilingualism to state that he will take on this task: “Espérate. Espérate. I better make it.” From this point forward, Mateo carefully chooses specific objects to create the food—selecting a slice of bread, trying to find the next appropriate object, such as the shaker, and then combining these through manipulation and gesturing. He relies on his visual mode as he searches through the cupboard, using his hands to push past objects that do not match the specific item(s) that he is looking for. He also engages his verbal mode to state out loud his inability to encounter these specific objects (“Where’s the food? The ensalada?”). He progressively incorporates the use of a pot, a spatula, the stove, and finally a plate to present the final result, employing his actional and visual modes as he selects and manipulates the objects and studies his actions. Each of these objects are present in the play space, and as he recruits and combines each of them into his play, they each serve to elaborate his storyline. For example, while he may have started with the intention of creating salad, from the teacher’s question and his own labeling of the word “ensalada,” his use of the spatula indicated that his playful making of food had transformed to focus on another type of food, which he confirms later by stating, “I make peanut butter!” His addition of the plate to serve the slices of bread showcases how he enhances and extends the storyline of taking on a certain role (e.g. wearing high heels; stating what he is making) and enacting the idea (creating food).
Integrating absent or imagined objects
As Mateo progressed in his play narrative and recruited different physical objects to elaborate on his play, he also included objects from his imagination, which were not actually physically available in the space. He embedded these imagined artifacts into his play alongside the recruited physical objects and did so only once he had elaborated on his play with the physical objects around him. The imagined artifacts appeared to be objects that Mateo was familiar with, perhaps those with which he engaged outside of the classroom. The following excerpt showcases one of the many times that Mateo integrated imagined objects into his play:
Excerpt 4. Mateo incorporates an imagined object to support his play [Mateo moves a basket filled with toys to the side, making space for a peer to lie down on the floor. He comes back to the peer, looks at them as they arrange themselves on the floor, and grabs a blanket on the side.] Mateo: You are both tired. [Mateo holds up the blanket and then covers the peer on the floor.] Mateo: Beep! Beep! [As he vocalizes this sound, he extends his arm behind him, looks back and makes the motion with his hand as if he has a remote and is pushing a button.]
This excerpt occurs 10 minutes into Mateo’s play, during which he has been using the blanket in different ways, as well as creating spaces where he and peers could sleep on the floor. During this moment in the play, Mateo labels and describes his peer’s actions of lying on the floor (“You are both tired”) and then seems to use the remote in some way that is associated with the routine of sleeping. It is not clear from where the idea emerges or what particularly is the function of the remote (“Beep! Beep!), but it may be Mateo switching off the TV, switching on an air conditioning unit, or some other action related to creating an environment for sleep.
Translanguaging to enhance object-sourced storylines
As shown in previous examples, Mateo’s translanguaging—an added layer within his verbal mode—supported his depiction of the reality-based and imaginary stories heavily dependent on objects in play. His fluid bilingual languaging enabled him to contextualize the scene and put on display his personalized meanings. In excerpt 2, he uses the terms “bruja” and “witch” interchangeably to describe the role he enacts while using the broom. Mateo’s translanguaging also underscored the multimodal intent of his play narrative and extended his communication to a broader audience. We see this in excerpt 1, where Mateo advertises his play by using the same commands across his languages (e.g. “Mira,” “Look”), which are enhanced because of their repetition and translation across English and Spanish to heighten his advertisement. He also reformulated his questions across languages in flexible ways in excerpt 1 (e.g. “Somebody want cafe?”; “Anybody want cafe?”; “¿Alguien quiere café?”) to extend the reach of his requests to a broader audience. In all these cases, translanguaging was a critical, intentional resource within his verbal mode alongside objects to depict, advocate for, and advance his play ideas. Finally, Mateo endorsed and co-opted others’ play ideas through his translanguaging practices. When making food for his teacher in excerpt 3, Mateo signals his adoption of her play narrative when she asks “¿Y dónde está mi ensalada?” and he responds, moving across his languages, with “Espérate. Que I better make it.” Mateo also showcased other ways of co-opting the teacher’s play ideas by using specific terms (e.g. ensalada, frutas) introduced by the teacher.
Discussion and implications
Through the lenses of multimodality and mediation, our findings indicate that the presence of objects and the manner in which Mateo engaged his modal resources to interact with objects were influential in the direction and development of his play narratives. Children in play are motivated to determine objects’ significance while considering the objects’ physical properties (Samuelson and Wohlwend, 2015; Wohlwend, 2008). Such was the case with Mateo, who was propelled by the presence of objects in play to reference them using his actional (e.g. manipulation), verbal (e.g. labeling in English and Spanish, calling attention to through commands such as “look”), and visual (e.g. gaze) modes.
Notably, our findings revealed that the type and quality of the available objects may shift how goals are accomplished—selecting those that were in his physical environment versus those that were imagined and derived from lived experiences and multimodally integrating these into both prescribed and personal storylines. For instance, Mateo’s transmodal practices, object selection, and immediate play goals shifted when not discovering the items necessary for his teacher’s prescribed play (i.e. to make a fruit salad). Instead, he found other objects (i.e. a spatula, slice of bread) to meet the overarching goal of making a meal (i.e. a peanut butter sandwich). These findings extend upon developmental research on play by demonstrating that objects represent influential and contextual factors in play (Howes and Matheson, 1992; Xu, 2010) and that the iconicity of an object’s physical properties may influence children’s object selection or manipulation (Bomer, 2003). Although we did not take inventory of the objects and their respective affordances in the play area in the manner of Bomer (2003), our objective in this analysis was to describe the transmodal practices around objects associated with the purposes of children’s play narratives. This research adds to our understandings of the multiple functions that objects may serve in fostering children’s cognitive and language development. For instance, elaborating on the use of objects through their transmodal practices (e.g. extending objects’ meaning potential, resourcing objects to advertise play, integrating imagined objects), as observed in Mateo’s play, may help to expand their linguistic forms and the concepts that underlie them. Future investigations should thus consider characterizing the affordances of objects, how object characteristics impact children’s utilization of them, and the supportive role they play in advancing children’s conceptual and linguistic development.
In line with sociodramatic play research showing that emergent bilingual children use a variety of linguistic features to communicate play intentions to peers (Genishi, 1983; Orellana, 1994; Yun, 2008), we also observed how Mateo’s translanguaging, as a part of his transmodal practices, supported his object-sourced narratives. Since children make sense of their world using the totality of their linguistic resources (García and Wei, 2014), the impetus for communication that objects provided to Mateo and peers presented additional means around which they could interact and translanguage. Through referencing objects (e.g. “Give me the broom . . . give me that now”), naming objects (e.g. “Hey, I put sal.”) or shifting language, based on speaker, to discuss objects (e.g. “Ms. Melanie, ¿tú quiere café?”), these materials created opportunities for translanguaging and incited children’s peer communication. This study uniquely adds to the extant literature by revealing how emergent bilingual child’s languaging purposes and play practices were rooted in discussions about and through the use of objects. Future explorations around translanguaging and play should further consider how transmodal practices (including the use of children’s multiple languages) and objects may serve as peer-to-peer scaffolding and compositional resources for children who show varying language preferences or proficiencies.
As exhibited in Mateo’s improvised, transmodal representations of absent objects, conjuring imaginary objects necessitates helping others to access and comprehend what they represent and their role in play (Wertsch, 1991; Wohlwend, 2008). This was done by Mateo through his use of actional modes (e.g. pretending to hold a remote, holding out his arm horizontally as if directed toward an appliance, pressing his thumb down on a button), verbal modes (e.g. emitting the beeping sound), and visual modes (e.g. directing gaze at an imagined appliance), which helped to represent the sociocultural meanings he was indexing. Thus, objects are important features of children’s lived experiences, helping children to (re)construct versions of their world in play. Because objects index sociocultural meanings for children, through which they are able to (re)live and (re)create their social practices (Scollon, 2001; Wohlwend, 2011a), affording transmodal ways of engaging with physical objects or about imaginary objects (in early literacy activities beyond sociodramatic play) may help to bridge their home-school understandings while enhancing their narratives and communicative repertoire (e.g. transmodal and translingual fluency; Horner, 2011).
Mateo’s transmodal practices, which facilitated his embodied transformations of objects while assigning them new functions (e.g. broom transformed into a flying vehicle and later into a firearm), revealed his skill in constructing concrete to abstract forms of play (Bomer, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978). Similar to the findings of Ledin and Samuelsson (2016), both the semiotic meaning that was assigned to an object when labeled and Mateo’s imitative and bodily actions with that object created a supportive language learning situation for him and others. They were able to both receptively understand and appropriate these meanings through these modal combinations as well as practice producing the labels and language that they model for each other. As such, in dual language or even English-medium settings, the recognition of children’s transmodal practices may illuminate their actional, verbal, and visual choices and preferences when building meaning through these resources. Our findings thus inform the field on the importance of embracing a multimodal lens, analyzing children’s messages beyond language, to more wholly understand learning that takes place in child–teacher and child–peer interactions.
Conclusion
Sociodramatic play is a space in which to value children’s multiple ways of communicating and allow them to further experiment with ideas through actions, languages, and available environmental resources. Our investigation underscores the importance of acknowledging children’s transmodally constructed discourse to holistically account for the multiple compositional resources they use for meaning-making purposes. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, we observed how the transmodal use of objects in sociodramatic play extended children’s narratives (Ruckenstein, 2013), which may be imperceptible through a language-focused discourse analysis. Our analysis thus points to the need to account for children’s receptive and expressive understandings exhibited by all their modes of communication rather than privileging one particular modality, such as oral language. In so doing, early childhood educators may examine both children’s content and linguistic knowledge underlying their transmodal practices and further encourage fluid learning among children whose early language and literacy experiences may widely vary.
This study showcased how learning activities such as sociodramatic play afford opportunities for children to strategically identify environmental resources and (re)define the functions and attributes of selected objects for different communicative purposes (e.g. advertising play to peers, extending objects’ meaning potential, elaborating on a storyline). For emergent bilingual children, sociodramatic play presents rich opportunities for children to converse with peers about their social roles, narrative storylines, and plans for play (Gort and Bengochea, 2012). More specifically, their transmodal repertoire and using objects for added contextual support helps children leverage all available resources to engage in fluid communication regardless of their peers’ language preference or proficiency. The findings in this study thus draw attention to the importance of encouraging children’s dynamic modal (and languaging) practices. Rather than restricting children’s communicative practices to one modality and language, providing contextual supports in the way of objects and highlighting their varied functions reveal children’s holistic communicative competence and afford multiple avenues for scaffolding and democratizing school-based language and literacy understandings.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
