ABSTRACT
Introduction The broad aim of this chapter is to begin to examine the discourse of children’s television from a linguistic point of view, and more specifically, to analyse the structures of participation that are available for children when they take part in these programmes. Although there is a body of work within media studies which addresses the relationship between children and television (Brown, 1976; Cullingford, 1984; Hodge and Tripp, 1986) none of this work really deals with the language of children’s television, while work in the field of language, interaction and the media (see for example Heritage, 1985; Montgomery, 1986; Scannell, 1991; Hutchby, 1996) has mainly been concerned with the study of broadcast talk which is produced by adults for adult audiences. The discourse of children’s television, and the role that children themselves may play in the production of that discourse, has so far been relatively unexplored. My intention here is to look at children’s involvement and participation in those speaking practices which take place within the context of programmes made specifically for child audiences, and analyse their status as participants in this kind of talk.
