Playing house: A ‘sideways’ glance at literacy and identity in early childhood

Abstract

Drawing on theoretical perspectives related to play and identity, play as a literary and social text, and multimodality, I present an analysis of a play narrative centred on the theme of playing house. The narrative exemplifies the interconnections between literacy and identity in the social and cultural world of a young girl growing up in a multilingual, multi-literate household in an inner-city area of a western Canadian city. The example brings to the forefront how systematic examinations of children’s play narratives have the potential to contribute to current thought on literacy learning and self-construction in early childhood. Understanding the imagined identities children portray in play may be particularly revealing in terms of understanding how they position themselves in the world.