Defining Play: Ecology, Ethology, and Experiments

Abstract

It has recently become fashionable for researchers to bemoan the lack of an operational definition for play. For example, John Buettner-Janusch, in commenting on the published series of papers delivered at the 1973 American Anthropological Association meetings on the topic “The Anthropological Study of Human Play” (see Norbeck, 1974b) made the following statement:

I want to know several things which the participants, the authors, have not told us. First, I want to know if they are able to construct an operational definition of play. I do not see any such definition in the papers and I am convinced that such a definition is essential, (p. 94)

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There