language in Teletubbies

[Shelley L. Velleman]

I do agree (based on personal opinion) that, overall, the idea, pacing,
content etc. of the Teletubbies is appropriate for toddlers.

However, a student of mine at U. Mass. - Amherst, Sarah Schmidt,
has recently completed a small study of the phonological patterns of the
Teletubbies.  The basic reserch question was, "Are the Teletubbies'
phonologies similar to those of "real" two-year-olds?". The results can
be summarized as follows:

1. In some respects, they are, but see below.

2. In some respects, they are advanced, especially in production of
fricatives, liquids, and clusters.

3.  In some respects, their phonologies are deviant.  Of particular note
are:
	odd substitutions for liquids (e.g., [v] for /r/)
	odd substitutions of liquids, including liquid clusters (e.g., gr- for
initial singleton [p] and initial singleton [m]!)
	omissions of initial and medial consonants (as in [E?o] for "hello",
but also elsewhere), including consonants which are precociously
produced in other contexts (e.g., "clever" is pronounced correctly, but
"look" is pronounced as [Uk]).

Will this have any effect on the children who watch????  I don't know.

I heard recently from some of his students that Jim Scobbie at Queen
Margaret University College at Edinburgh had done some investigating re:
the Teletubbies, but haven't had a chance to ask him directly about it
yet.

We hope to present different aspects of these results at BU and/or ASHA
this fall.

Shelley Velleman


P.S. I have tried to get a "press pack" from the British "home" of the
Tubbies, "Ragdoll Productions", with no success.  How/where did you get
yours??



Shanley E. M. Allen wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> *****************************************************
> 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
> *****************************************************