The rhetorics of play: visual analysis of children’s play across four generations of an Australian family

ABSTRACT Play is a place of diverse meaning-making for young children and often central to family life. This paper reports on a family study in which the authors analyse Author One’s family photos of young children’s play across four generations. The photo analysis shows continuity and transformations in the types of play activities the young children engaged with across the generations. A facet of this study is gaining insights into how these familial photos operate in the cultural sphere of family, community and broader socio-political contexts with the analysis set against the seven rhetorics of play espoused by play historian Sutton-Smith. The study explores how young children’s play lasts and transitions across four generations in line with early childhood education ideologies of the times.