The dissertation begins with a literature review that relates extant theory, research, and praxis to the study of language, discourse, and play. Then, participants’ perceptions of play, as articulated in the interviews, are presented. Because the study focuses upon children’s ability to make sense of their lived experience, their perceptions of play guide subsequent interpretations. Theory is reconsidered, and interpretative analysis is presented as dialogic response to the children’s ways of knowing, as points of contact between texts, as dialogue. Vignettes, drawn from videotapes of the participants’ social language in class, provide concrete examples of the role of play within the children’s local culture. Three key ideas emerge: children are able, dialogic interpreters of their lived experience and research participants in their own right; play discourse is agentive behaviour; and
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agentive play discourse is children’s response to problematic life experiences, for example, the world’s gendered texts. This study illustrates how children’s playful social talk places an imaginative distance between them and entrenched assumptions about what counts as knowledge. And, it challenges readers to distance themselves from the way things are, to redefine what is considered to be legitimate classroom conversation, and to reconsider how, together, children discursively make meaning and imagine themselves as social actors.