language in Teletubbies

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

out of curiosity, is the US version of Teletubbies using the British
voicing or has the voiceover been redone to a US accent?  I heard it in
French the other day and thought the language sounded more "adult-like"
than what I'd heard on British TV but this was just a quick impression of
course.
Annette K-S

At 17:56 +0100 18/5/99, Shelley L. Velleman wrote:
>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
>> *****************************************************