Drawing the curtain? Reflections and future directions in the study of children’s multilingual role play: Conclusion to the special issue.

This reflection article briefly summarizes the findings of the seven empirical studies on multilingual role play featured in this special issue. We first reflect on variation in role play types, theoretical orientations, and methodological choices, underscoring the conceptual diversity of current role play research. We then identify convergences across the three core themes: how children construct roles in play, how they contrast roles using their multilingual repertoires, and how these performances relate to real-world language use. The article further identifies three future research directions, including new approaches to study multilingual role play, refining protocols to distinguish role play contexts from out-of-play contexts and exploring the tension between imitation and hyperbole in children’s role performances. Together, the contributions in the special issue shed light on role play as a vital, if underexplored, domain of inquiry on the intersection of play and language studies.