ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the potential for play to be a great deal more than a source of cognition or received learning and the opportunities that are available to adults prepared to stand in awe of children's tremendous strategic capacity to alter their own and others worlds. In many parts of the Western world there appears to be a general consensus that play is the modus operandi for infants, toddlers and young children. From a dialogic standpoint, the experience of being excluded presents an opportunity, and challenge, for children to encounter boundaries through play, provided there is dialogue to support their experience. Ana Marjanovic-Shane identifies four distinct chronotopes in play that, she believes, are strategically employed in play as boundaries that exploit the relationships between imagination and reality. These are: The Reality Chronotope, The Imaginary Chronotope, and The Community of Players Chronotope. Genre can be thought of as a relationship between the language forms employed and their meaning.