Kind and Unkind Communicative Behaviour of Cartoon Characters As a Source of Language Competence for Young Children

KIND AND UNKIND COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR OF CARTOON CHARACTERS AS A SOURCE OF LANGUAGE COMPETENCE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN MAGDALENA TRYSIŃSKA Institute of Polish Philology, Warsaw University Abstract The purpose of the article is to analyze kind and unkind communicative behaviour of characters in cartoons for children. The characters create a sort of community and they play certain social roles. For the purpose of this article I have chosen the animated films which present an equal or unequal system of roles. The analysis is limited to one communicative environment: school. I assume that the language of cartoon characters will matter greatly in the process of socialization and acquisition of communicative competence. The film characters often become the role-model for viewers, especially the young ones. Children willingly copy the behaviour seen in the cartoons, they play the roles of favourite characters and speak their language. The analysis shows that popular cartoons might create desirable or undesirable linguistic patterns. Therefore, analysing communicative behaviours of film characters should become a field of interest not only for psychologists but also for linguists. This knowledge may also help teachers of 1st and 2nd educational stage with planning their curriculum. Keywords: communicative behaviour, communicative competence, socialization, language of TV, cartoons for children 1 Trysińska, M. (2013). Kind and unkind communicative behaviour of cartoon characters as a source of language competence for young children. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 13, p. 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.17239/L1ESLL-2013.01.07 Corresponding author: Magdalena Trysińska, Institute of Polish Philology, Warsaw Universi- ty. Krakowskie Przdmieście 26/28. 00-927. Warszawa. Poland, email: [email protected] © 2013 International Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue Education. 2 MAGDALENA TRYSIŃSKA INTRODUCTION 1.1 The role of television and its impact on child development Television plays an important role in the lives of children, especially the younger ones (infants, toddlers and preschoolers) who have not yet turned to the mobile devices. In Poland after 1989 we have observed a fast expansion of cable and satel- lite TV channels. The development of a cable and digital television means that more and more children, regardless of their place of residence and social status, have got access to the same channels1. Systematic studies conducted since the 1990s show that the daily time spent in front of the TV continues to grow. In the second quarter of 2013 a statistical Pole watched TV for 5 hours and 33 minutes a day2. Children, in Poland and elsewhere, spend more time on various types of media than on any other single activity (except for sleeping). Preschoolers watch an average of 4 hours of television per day, older children and adolescents up to 7 hours (Anderson & Evans, 2001; Rideout, Vandewater & Wartella, 2003; Rideout, Foehr & Roberts, 20103). Improving economic conditions of many families, as well as falling prices of electronic equipment means that a lot of children (about 30 percent of older preschoolers and approximately 75 percent of teenagers) have a TV set in their room (Christakis, Ebel, Rivara, Zimmerman, 2004; Rideout, Foehr & Roberts, 2010; Rob- erts & Foehr, 20084). Such intensive exposure must have an impact on the development of the young generation. Television fulfills important functions: informative, educational, formational and ludic. Research on the psychological aspects of TV reception and content of media messages shows that television as a medium has as many supporters as opponents. All the while they are unanimous about the fact that television broadcasting has a significant impact on children’s development. The studies in developmental psychology show that during play interactions children willingly imitate the scenes from cartoons, impersonate their favorite characters and speak their language (Bandura, 2002; James & McCain, 1982; Barthelemes et al., 1991; Ogrodzka-Mazur, 2009; Desmurget, 2012). International scholars indicate a strong relationship between time spent on television viewing and the development of language skills. While in the case of children under two years old watching television does not influence their language acquisition, in the case of preschoolers who watch educational programs such as Sesame Street the researchers observe a faster process of vocabulary acquisition and a higher level of 1 The TV market in the 2nd quarter of 2013, The National Broadcasting Council, The Depart- ment of Monitoring; http://krrit.gov.pl [access 10.10.2013r] 2 ibidem 3 Quoted in: Kołodziejczyk (2013: 50). 4 ibidem KIND AND UNKIND COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR OF CARTOON CHARACTERS 3 understanding new words (Naigles & Mayeux, 2001; Rice, 1983 Rice & Haight, 1986; Rice & Woodsmall, 1988; Lemish & Rice, 1986; Krcmar et al., 2004; Lemish, 2008). The researchers also point out that children who are high users of television often have a smaller range of vocabulary than children who prefer other activities (Close, 2004). Moreover, the level of understanding of television broadcasts, as well as their potential benefits depend on many factors, such as socio-economic status of a child, the presence of parents (co-viewing) and the vocabulary resource. Children with a larger vocabulary resource are more willing to choose educational programs which further develop their lexis, while children with smaller lexical resource prefer the popular cartoons (entertainment programs) (Wright, Huston, Scantlin, Koltler, 2001). Research on spoken language shows that younger children acquire vocabulary through imitation (Sénéchal, 2006). Rice (2004) draws attention to the fact that while learning to communicate, children have access to two types of situations: direct interactions in which they participate, and indirect interactions, in which they are observers. She asserts there are reasons to believe that the indirect obser- vational learning can play an important role in the assimilation of the child’s communication skills. By observation she means listening to the conversations of adults, as well as watching television (Rice, 1983; Rice & Woodsmall, 1988). The purpose of this article is to answer the question whether popular cartoons targeted at young children differ in terms of promoted communicative behaviour, and, if so, to what extent. The analysis of the characters’ language behaviour will help to determine the direction of communicative competence development of the young audience. 2. RESEARCH SAMPLE (CORPUS OF FILMS), METHODOLOGY The article examines kind and unkind communicative behaviour of the characters from the selected cartoons for children. Cartoons are the most popular type of TV programs among preschoolers. In Polish networks cartoons are predominantly dubbed, therefore for the purpose of this article all the quotes and references to the language of cartoons and cartoon characters relate to the dubbed format, which is tailored to the preferences of Polish viewers. From a wide range of children’s programs I have chosen cartoons aired in two thematic channels: Mini Mini (MM) and Cartoon Network (CN). In terms of viewership, both channels occupy high positions in the TV ratings5. The juxtaposition of the two channels is purpose- ful because cartoons they broadcast differ in terms of their cultural functions and target audience. MM is primarily aimed at children up to 7 years old whereas CN targets older children in preschool and school age. Without parental control children are more likely to choose the CN cartoons. Research also shows that older preschoolers are no longer interested in shows with educational elements. When 5 Quoted after Media2.pl – research: http://media2.pl/badania/ [access: 26.11.2013r.] 4 MAGDALENA TRYSIŃSKA given the opportunity, they select dynamic movies with fast-paced action and loud music, as well as programs for adults. From the point of view of a child, the ludic function takes precedence over the educational value (Kubicka & Kołodziejczyk, 2007; Lemish, 2008). The corpus for the analysis was collected between 2010 and 2013. The cartoons were recorded and then transcribed. The conclusions are based on my analysis of 60 hours of recordings. For the purposes of this study the detailed analysis was limited to 20 ten-minute episodes which are located in a school setting. To study the content of television broadcasts, I use qualitative and interpreta- tive methods (Berger, 2000). The theoretical framework of pragmatics and the speech acts theory allows me to distinguish the basic element of study - a minimal unit of the conversation. This may be a single speech act or a pair of adjacent speech acts (e.g. question and answer). To be able to make a comprehensive analysis of the communication behaviour of the cartoon characters, it is necessary to take into account two planes: sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic. They allow for a complete description of the interaction, taking into consideration three main factors: the situation of communication (in this case it will be a school), the hierarchy of roles: equal (peer to peer) vs. subordinate (teacher to student) and the function (intention) of speech communication. In the cartoons the characters take part in social interactions which reflect the real situations in a

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