Interpreting Children’s Talk About Television
In seeking to understand what children think about television listening to
what they say is clearly an important source of data. However, such data does not
‘speak for itself’. A key problem facing researchers who are interested in what
children think, know or do is that what children say, even in ‘open-ended
discussions’, does not necessarily reflect their understanding, attitudes, beliefs or
practices. Language is not simply a neutral tool ‘reflecting’ and ‘transferring’ ideas
but a medium in which particular realities are constructed. And interaction is
social, so that constructing realities in language is a matter of negotiation.
Particularly in an educational or research context, what children say may be
influenced by a number of key factors:
- by the situation
- by the social setting within which the exchange takes place and its perceived formality (e.g. in a school classroom, in school but outside the classroom, at home);
- by the participants’ understanding of what is expected of them;
- by their inferences about the motivation and status of other participants;
- by how open or closed the agenda appears to be;
- by the perceived public status of the exchange (influenced by whether it is recorded and the perceived audience);
- by how such factors lead to a sense of what it is ‘appropriate’ to say;
- by the topic
- by their knowledge of the topic;
- by how controversial the topic may be;
- by the importance and perceived relevance of the topic to them;
- by what they know about the views of significant others on this topic;
- by their awareness of issues associated with the topic and of how these are conventionally framed;
- by a desire for their views to appear ‘grown-up’ or in tune with their peers;
- by the extent to which the topic may seem to constrain responses;
- by factors affecting their understanding of the topic (developmental factors, experience and so on);
- by other participants
- by the presence or absence of adults (researchers, teachers, parents) and of their peers;
- by the familiarity and congeniality of these others and their relationships to the child (including social differences and friendships and tensions pre-dating the current exchange);
- by the concerns and biases of interviewers;
- by group dynamics (including how competitive the group is and the collective ‘mood’ of the group);
- by individual factors
- by their personal agendas (which may have little to do with the topic);
- by a tendency to focus on aspects of the topic which the individual happens to find pleasurable (Buckingham 1993a: 65);
- by their personal preferences, pleasures and tastes (which may be inflected by gender);
- by their mood (e.g. playful, humorous, anxious), which may also characterize a whole group session;
- by their stance and persona (e.g. involved, cynical, critical, detached, ‘hard’), which may shift within a session or may be different from those adopted on other occasions;
- by their developing personal and social identity (including class, age, gender and ethnic identity);
- by conformism or resolute individuality in group discussions, though Buckingham (1993a: 86) found the latter to be uncommon;
- by factors limiting their performance: especially linguistic factors - grammatical competence (in Noam Chomsky’s terms, not limited to ‘grammar’) and communicative competence (in Dell Hymes’s terms); and problems of recall.
The influence of the researcher needs to be considered. The researcher is just as
much engaged in constructing reality as are those who researchers study. David
Buckingham suggests that all he can offer is ‘a reading of the children’s
talk’ (1993a, 61; my emphasis), but even that metaphor implies that that
whilst there may be many interpretations, they all relate to the same objective events.
Thus children’s remarks are highly dependent on social context: what they say in
classroom discussions in school, for instance, is likely to differ from what they say
in informal peer-group conversation in the street. This is largely a matter of power
(and peer-group solidarity). What is said relates to the power-relationships involved in
the communicative context, since the power relationship is markedly assymetrical in
relationships between children and adults, whether the latter are researchers, teachers or
parents.
References and suggested reading
- Buckingham, David (1987): Public Secrets: EastEnders and its Audience. London: BFI
- Buckingham, David (Ed.) (1990): Watching Media Learning. London: Falmer Press
- Buckingham, David (1991): ‘What are words worth? Interpreting children’s talk about television’, Cultural Studies 5: 228-45; a version is also available in Buckingham 1993a, op. cit., pp. 42-59
- Buckingham, David (1993a): Children Talking Television: The Making of Television Literacy. London: Falmer Press [a particularly useful source]
- Buckingham, David (1993b): Reading Audiences: Young People and the Media. Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Buckingham, David (1993c): ‘Introduction: young people and the media’. In Buckingham (Ed.) (1993b), op. cit.: pp. 1-23
- Buckingham, David (1993d): ‘Boys’ talk: television and the policing of masculinity’. In Buckingham (Ed.) (1993b), op. cit.: pp. 89-115
- Buckingham, David (1993e): ‘Conclusion: re-reading audiences’. In Buckingham (Ed.) (1993b), op. cit.: pp. 202-218
- Buckingham, David, Pete Fraser & Netia Mayman (1990): ‘Stepping into the void: beginning classroom research’. In Buckingham (Ed.), op. cit., pp. 19-59
- Hodge, Bob & David Tripp (1986): Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press
- Richards, Chris (1993): ‘Taking sides? What young girls do with television’. In Buckingham (Ed.), op. cit.: pp.24-47
Daniel Chandler
November 1997