In arguing for the “felicity” of speech acts, J.L. Austin distinguished between serious and non-serious language use, with examples of non-seriousness including acting and poetry. The distinction, and Austin’s characterisation of non-serious utterance as “parasitical” upon “real life”, was savaged by Jacques Derrida. Derrida alerts us to the ways that literature, theatre and other forms of non-seriousness are part of the fabric of “real life”. This paper argues that our capacity to play, pretend, and imaginatively engage “non-seriously” with our world is not simply a phase of development but part of our continuing exploration and testing of what we know and think.

Austin, J.L. (1962) How To Do Things With Words, Urmson J.O. and Sbisà, M (eds), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Baldwin, P (2004) With Drama in Mind: Real Learning in imagined worlds, Continuum, London. Cavell, S. (1971) The World Viewed, The Viking Press, Inc., New York. Cavell, S. (1979) The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy, Oxford University Press. Cavell, S. (1996) Contesting Tears, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Cavell, S. (2002) Must We Mean What We Say, Cambridge University Press. Cavell, S (2005) Philosophy The Day After Tomorrow, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Culler, J. (1982), On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University. Derrida, (1977) Limited Inc., Northwestern University Press. Frege, G. (1956) ‘The Thought: A Logical Inquiry’, Mind, New Series, Vol. 65, No.259. (Jul., 1956), pp. 289 – 311. Gabriel, M (2015) Why The World Does Not Exist, Polity Press, Massachusetts. Glendinning, S (1998) On Being with others: Heidegger – Derrida – Wittgenstein, Routledge, London. Hand, M. (2015) in Hand, M. and Davies D. ed. Education, Ethics and Experience: Essays in Honour of Richard Pring, Routledge, London. O’Toole, J and Dunn, J (2015) Pretending to Learn: Teaching drama in the primary and middle years, DramaWeb Publishing, Brisbane, Australia, Kindle edition. Peters. R (1966) Ethics and Education, Allen and Unwin, London. Rowling, J.K. (2014) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bloomsbury, London. Rudrum D, (2013) Stanley Cavell and the Claim of Literature, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Wolfe, J (2013), ‘‘The Ordinary’ in Stanley Cavell and Jacques Derrida’, Minerva – An Online Journal of Philosophy 17 (2013): 250 – 268, (accessed 21/05/2016).