Two dialogical theorisations of children's encounters in more-than-human worlds involving metaphor

TY - JOUR

T1 - Two dialogical theorisations of children's encounters in more-than-human worlds involving metaphor

AU - Lawrence, Penny

PY - 2021/3/15

Y1 - 2021/3/15

N2 - This article generates two dialogical theorisations of young children’s encounters in more-than-human worlds involving metaphor. The first theorisation devises metaphor as an entry-point into the dialogues of more-than-humans and includes rare attention to metaphors as multi-modal intra-action. The second theorisation provides an alternative to Linell’s view that relation with non-humans would be merely a metaphorical extension of dialogue ‘as if’ they were human. Instead, a new model recognises the potential for dialogue as a relational engagement with otherness in a more-than-human-centric approach. The theorisations underpin the interpretations of a range of early childhood play episodes with protagonists: sand; paper; tissue; and plastic. The materials are beyond any assumed instrumental interaction waiting to be acted upon by humans, rather, they can be in social and material worlds, meeting places, of more-than-humans intra-acting. Penny Lawrence has proposed attending to the quality of relation in dialogues. The significance of these theorisations is for more-than-human study of any encounter to take account of the potential for dialogue, and for studies of dialogue to take account of the more-than-human. In particular, the processes of blending in multimodal metaphorical co-constitutive processes offer notable insights into intra-actions within more-than-human dialogues.© 2021, The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

AB - This article generates two dialogical theorisations of young children’s encounters in more-than-human worlds involving metaphor. The first theorisation devises metaphor as an entry-point into the dialogues of more-than-humans and includes rare attention to metaphors as multi-modal intra-action. The second theorisation provides an alternative to Linell’s view that relation with non-humans would be merely a metaphorical extension of dialogue ‘as if’ they were human. Instead, a new model recognises the potential for dialogue as a relational engagement with otherness in a more-than-human-centric approach. The theorisations underpin the interpretations of a range of early childhood play episodes with protagonists: sand; paper; tissue; and plastic. The materials are beyond any assumed instrumental interaction waiting to be acted upon by humans, rather, they can be in social and material worlds, meeting places, of more-than-humans intra-acting. Penny Lawrence has proposed attending to the quality of relation in dialogues. The significance of these theorisations is for more-than-human study of any encounter to take account of the potential for dialogue, and for studies of dialogue to take account of the more-than-human. In particular, the processes of blending in multimodal metaphorical co-constitutive processes offer notable insights into intra-actions within more-than-human dialogues.© 2021, The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

KW - Dialogue model

KW - entry-point

KW - more-than-human

KW - new-materialism

KW - play

KW - multi-modal metaphor

KW - early childhood

U2 - 10.1177/1463949121995913

DO - 10.1177/1463949121995913

M3 - Article

SN - 1463-9491

JO - Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

JF - Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

ER -