Carnival in a mainstream kindergarten classroom: A Bakhtinian analysis of second language learners' off-task behaviors

This study explored Mikhail Bakhtin's conceptualization of carnival as it applies to 2 second language (L2) learners in an American kindergarten classroom. Unwilling to engage in two story retelling tasks, the children nevertheless invoked the imaginative, playful, and dialogic world of carnival, creating meaningful, contingent contexts for interaction in the L2. A third task, also originally thought to be representative of carnival, proved only to have carnival-like features and did not lead to the sense of renewal associated with Bakhtin's interpretation of the state of mind of the festivals.