Multimodal Communication During Play in Rural Northern Canadian Kindergarten Classrooms
Submitted by:
Shelley Stagg Peterson
Abstract:
Key words: multimodal communication, play contexts, kindergarten contexts
Language is an important semiotic tool, as shown by many researchers and theorists (Mercer & Littleton, 2008), yet, to fully understand how children construct and communicate meaning in their classroom interactions, it is important to consider other modes, such as gesture, facial expressions, postures, positions and body movements (Kendon, 2004). This involves offering counter arguments to the “increasing focus on orality and a tendency to ‘pathologise’ the absence of talk” (Flewitt, 2005, p. 208). Children’s multimodal communication with others is motivated by a need to get something done. Through their participation in everyday activities, whether in school, or beyond, children learn language and the cultural expectations for using language and other modes of communication to achieve specific social intentions, including positioning themselves in desired ways within their social worlds.
Our research is conducted in kindergarten (children are five years of age at entry) and grade one classrooms in rural northern communities in two Canadian provinces. We examine language and other semiotic modalities in these young children’s play interactions, guided by two research questions:
(1) How do participating children use multimodal communication to achieve their social intentions in dramatic and construction play contexts?
(2) How do children use multimodal communication to enact gender and other social roles in their play?
Data sources are participating teachers’ video-recordings of their students’ interactions while involved in play. Inductive analysis of the social functions that children achieve using language and other modes of communication (Halliday, 1975) shows that children used blocks and dramatic play objects to enact gender stereotypes (e.g., girls gesturing the act of applying make-up using blocks and boys gesturing and using language to invite peers to add blocks in the building of a tower). Preliminary analysis shows that children used nonverbal modes primarily for the purposes of expressing emotion and interest in each other’s play and for collaborating. Those verbalized during their play tended to use language to direct others’ behaviour, to ask questions and to explain what they were doing and to make sound effects that accompanied their actions.
References
Flewitt, R. (2005). Is every child’s voice heard? Researching the different ways 3-year-old children communicate and make meaning at home and in a pre-school playgroup. Early Years, 25(3), 207-222.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1975). Learning how to mean. London: Edward Arnold.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mercer, N. & Littleton, K. (2007) Dialogue and the development of children's thinking: a sociocultural approach. London: Routledge.