ABSTRACT
Along with fast food, music, film and fashion, television is one of the most salient and abundant forms of American culture and, because of its popularity in many other parts of the world, such exports have been critically referred to as forms of cultural imperialism, a term proposed by Schiller in 1976, in order to explain the way in which the large multinational corporations, including the media, of developed countries, dominated developing countries. For example, Graddol (1996: 215) suggests that American gameshow formats, even when translated into other languages, still reproduce the behaviours and values associated with American society. Television therefore has the potential to transmit discourses far beyond the remit of a single nation.
