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Preferred term

play frames  

Definition

  • Gregory Bateson (1904–80), the British ethologist-anthropologist, introduced the notion of a play frame in “A Theory of Play and Fantasy,” first published in a conference report in 1955, but not gaining a wide readership until its inclusion in a collection of his works, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, in 1972. In a series of propositions, Bateson lays out a theory of play as a form of paradoxical communication, the emergence of which harkened a new stage in the evolutionary process, particularly for mammals. [Source: Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society; Play Frames]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/play_frames

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