Brian Sutton-Smith, “The Ambiguity of Play”

“when it comes to making theoretical statements about what play is, we fall into silliness” (297)

Spariosu: play is “amphibolous” (297)

Turner: play is “liminal” (297)

Bateson: play is a “paradox” (297)

Schechner: play is “the sum of two negatives” (297)

Burke: play is a “dramatistic negative” (297)

Play involves “all of [Empson’s] seven types” of ambiguity (297): reference, referent, intent, sense, transition, contradiction, and meaning (298)

Gould: play is “just [a] side effect[] of more fundamental genetic functions” (298)

“Almost anything can allow play to occur within its boundaries” (298)

A list of “play forms or play experiences” (299): mind or subjective play, solitary play, playful behaviors, informal social play, vicarious audience play, performance play, celebrations and festivals, contests, risky or depe play (299-301)

“The ambiguity of play … owes some of its force to the parallel diversity of the players” (301)

“Then there is the diversity of multiple kinds of play equipment” (301)

“Play has temporal diversity as well as spatial diversity” (301)

“since about 1800 in Western society, intellectuals of various kinds have talked more or less systematically and more or less scientifically about play, and have discovered that they have immense problems in conceptualizing it” (301)

“Different academic disciplines also have quite different play interests … and they all use the word play for these quite different things” (301)

“some of the chaos” here is because of “popular cultural rhetorics that underlie the various play theories and play terms” (302)

“popular ideological rhetorics” (303)

“scientific or scholarly rhetorics” (303)

“disciplinary rhetorics” (303)

“personal rhetorics” (303)

“larger play rhetorics are part of the multiple broad symbolic systems—political, religious, social, and educational—through which we construct the meaning of the cultures in which we live” (303)

Seven rhetorics:

  1. The rhetoric of play as progress (304)
  2. The rhetoric of play as fate (304)
  3. The rhetoric of play as power (305)
  4. The rhetoric of play as identity (305)
  5. The rhetoric of play as the imaginary (305)
  6. The rhetoric of the self (305)
  7. The rhetoric of play as frivolous (305)


Game

  • Untitled Goose Game