Escalating Terror: Communicative Strategies in a Preschool Classroom Dispute

This paper describes the pragmatic and strategic communicative work of some young boys in a preschool classroom as they made themselves observable and hearable as owners of block area and members of specific activities. Using a transcript of a video-recorded episode of the boys engaged in a dispute about who could play in block area, analysis shows how the boys generated and escalated images of terror until the targeted child left the area or was evicted from the group by the other boys. In the course of escalating the terror, the boys used a range of communicative resources to construct group membership affiliation and, at the same time, to assert their individual identities. The work of the boys established and displayed credentials as to who was able to play in the block area, and who was able to determine and justify why others could or could not play. This detailed analysis of how the boys formed collaborations and strategic partnerships in the course of their dispute gives us a way of appreciating the communicative competencies that underpin membership in a local social order that is in a state of flux.