“I will send badass viruses.” Peer threats and the interplay of pretend frames in a classroom dispute

Abstract

This paper explores threats as they appear in children's everyday dispute interactions. The main purpose is to extend understandings of children's interactions and disputes in order to show how young boys construct threats in pretend frames within a classroom peer dispute by drawing upon the resources of the video game world and a verbally constructed fight. The conceptual and methodological frameworks underpinning the analysis are conversation analysis and Goffman's concept of frame. The analysis focuses on one episode that illustrates how the boys, in the absence of the teacher, invoke, share and switch frames within the dispute. Using pretence, they posit threats and build attack strategies in a video game and in mass fight frames, even though they are in a classroom and unable to complete the threats at that moment. The analysis points out that the pretend threats are different to other sorts of threats and escalate the dispute sequence. Threats in the pretend frame, as in the video game frame, are also opportunities to bring activities outside school into the classroom. Hence, this study also looks at how video game playing is used as a resource when not playing. The implications for broader educational practices exemplify how language and social interaction function in children's peer interactions by uncovering the multifaceted aspects of peer culture, friendship and children's agentive roles in maintaining and creating social and moral order in different realities.