“I'm Mommy and you're Natalie”: Role-reversal and embedded frames in mother-child discourse

Abstract

This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a young child (age 2 years 11 months) and her mother, wherein the participants reverse roles from real life and reenact shared prior experiences. Data consist of two tape-recorded naturally occurring pretend-play episodes and the real-life interactions on which they are based, all of which took place at home. Analysis of the role-play episodes illustrates how framing occurs from moment to moment in interaction in this context, showing that the participants use both play and non-play utterances collaboratively to evoke, maintain, and embed multiple play frames with increasingly specific, and at times blended, metamessages. By linking the role-play interactions back to their real-life counterparts, I explore the relationship between framing and “prior text.” This analysis adds to our understanding of framing by showing how frames are layered in discourse. Additionally, it links frames theory to the notion of intertextuality by illustrating how prior text can be used as a resource for framing.