Abstract
Young San children participate in multimodal communication by using various embodied semiotic resources (i.e., the actions, materials, and artifacts used for communicative purposes). Active and playful imitation provides the key to understanding these interactions. In this chapter, the author examines what it means for young children of the San and other societies to “act like others” in the natural course of their interactions, thereby broadening the theoretical scope of previous works on imitation. The author argues that active and playful imitation forms a basis from which San children collaboratively deploy the culturally and historically constructed meaning of their actions.
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Takada, A. (2020). Imitation in Playful Activities. In: The Ecology of Playful Childhood. Palgrave Studies on the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49439-1_8
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