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Role Play and Language Development in the Preschool Years

University of Flensburg, Germany

The paper relies on Vygotsky's thesis that preschool children in role play are acting in the zone of proximal development (ZPD). One aim is to specify this thesis with respect to language development. The empirical investigations show that language is the central means of creating pretence. By explicit metacommunication, children collaboratively negotiate the plot, transform meanings and distinguish fiction from reality. Thus, metacommunication functions as a verbal frame, determining the meanings within play. Thereby children overcome sympraxic language use which is characteristic of toddlers. Another result is that role play changes during the preschool years. The paper argues that these changes can be subsumed under a general developmental phenomenon, namely the transition of interpsychic into intrapsychic processes. A point of special interest is why preschoolers, through role play, can act in the ZPD, although their ability to cooperate with other children is only at a nascent stage. To explain this, the paper discusses several aspects of psychosocial development.

Key Words: child–child-interaction • decontextualization of language • language development • metacommunication • role play • zone of proximal development

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