language in Teletubbies

[Shanley E. M. Allen]

In my "Intro to Language Acquisition" class, I'm having the students do a
debate on the linguistic merits of the Teletubbies program, a TV program
designed for children aged 1-5 which airs on PBS in the USA, on BBC in the
UK, and in several other countries around the world.  The students must
take one of three positions: (1) the language in Teletubbies is helpful in
fostering language development in child viewers, (2) the language in
Teletubbies is detrimental for the language development of child viewers,
and (3) the language in Teletubbies has no positive or negative effect on
the language development of child viewers.

To prepare for the debate, I've given the students copies of BBC and PBS
press releases, interviews with the show's designers, interviews with the
PBS and BBC people responsible for children's programming (all of the
preceding from the BBC and PBS web sites), newspaper articles about the
show, and caregivers' comments about the show from a parenting web site.

However, I haven't been able to find any academic research about
Teletubbies using the usual sources (CHILDES-BIB, PsycLit, ERIC, LLBA, MLA
Bibliography, etc.).  Extensive web searches turn up only marketing sites,
chat room discussions, and articles on the sexual orientation of Tinky
Winky (apart from the BBC and PBS cites noted above).  Also, although the
press releases and interviews with the show's designers state that the show
is based on extensive language acquisition research, the source of this
research is not cited anywhere, so it's not clear to me what research they
used (other than of course their own piloting of the show with children in
various focus groups).

Thus, I would be very grateful if anyone could send me references to
research concerning the language used in the Teletubbies program, or help
point me in the right direction to find them myself.  I would be happy to
post a summary of results if there is sufficient interest.

Sincerely,
Shanley Allen.

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Shanley E. M. Allen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Boston University
Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics
Developmental Studies Department, School of Education
605 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A.
phone: +1-617-358-0354
fax: +1-617-353-3924
e-mail: shanley at bu.edu
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