Enregistering the voices of discursive figures of authority in Antonero children’s socio-dramatic play

This study examines how boys from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala develop their own perspective about what it means to be moral human beings in the world via discursive practices that contrast enregistered voices within an emergent performance genre simultaneously doubles as socio-dramatic play-frame. exhibits both mimesis and alterity; children have appropriated a popular adult genre, which participation, originally, was highly circumscribed. In productions, however, they occupy main character roles enact re-accented “voices” of king kin competitive, proselytizing discourse. The resulting is subversion social order where ‘the challenge’ good defeating evil undone, reflecting child-centric critical stance. To wit, refuse convinced by authority overly patriarchal-colonial order. I build upon Sawyers’ (1995) model play-as-improvisation synthetic framework analyzing indigenous children’s play childhood(s). approach espouse draws ethnographically informed studies peer talk-in-interaction, verbal art performance, semiotic functionalism examine “do heteroglossia” out-of-play frames interaction construct selves capable confronting