Television and playground games as part of children's symbolic culture

Abstract

Using data from an ethnographic-style study of children aged 4?11, this paper considers the way that advertisements become absorbed and appropriated into broader and traditional forms of children's symbolic culture. The paper shows that children take on and relate to media imagery in much the same way as they relate to traditional playground culture of mythology, chants, games and jokes. The principle behind this is Halliday's (1978) observation that children communicate primarily with a desire to participate in social situations rather than for information. Children relate to television not so much in terms of the information value of what they see on it, but in relation to the way it allows them to join in, be party to common knowledge, to be in on the latest thing. This is an active process but, we argue, not in the way prescribed by the active audience trend in cultural studies. Television imagery and representations come to form part of a symbolic landscape of prestige, knowledge and points of reference of which children must have knowledge if they are not to be excluded from group membership, or at least lose prestige

Rewind and replay? Television and play in the 1950s/1960s and 2010s

“…This means that it is not certain that all children will share knowledge of the same programmes in order to inform their play. Griffiths and Machin (2003) argue that it is the shared aspect that is important and in the 'Playgrounds' study, children did report sharing information about media texts with each other in order to be inclusive in their play. Kathy Marsh (2006b) suggests that whilst one or more children may get content from television to inform their play, it is often transmitted and learnt by subsequent children in the same way as other play, e.g., by oral transmission and customary example.…”

“…Whilst there have been a number of studies of children's television-related play, these have tended to focus on a specific aspect of this play, such as the role of imagination (Palmer, 1986;Singer & Singer, 2006), the relationship between such play and early literacy (J. , the importance of television-related play for social relationships (Griffiths & Machin, 2003) and the influence of television (and other media) on playground games and rhymes (Grugeon, 2001(Grugeon, , 2004Marsh, 2008;Willett, Richards, Marsh, Burn, & Bishop, in press). In this paper, we adopt a historical perspective in order to identify the continuities and discontinuities in children's television-related play between the 1950s/1960s and the 2010s.…”

“Kahramanın Kim?”: Okul öncesi dönem çocuklarının kahramanlarının incelenmesi

“…Son katman olan kronosistem ise zaman içinde değişen sosyo-tarihsel olayların ve sosyal koşulların, çocukların gelişimlerini etkilediğini belirten katmandır (Berns, 2012;Doğan, 2000;Kostelnik, Gregory, & Whiren, 2011;Levine & Munsch, 2010 (Griffiths, & Machin, 2003;Hamlen, & Imbesi, 2019;Kampf, & Hamo, 2015;Power, & Smith, 2017…”

More than just a bracelet: the use of material symbolism to communicate love

“…Historically, this was often done in the clothing or music that engaged with. More recently, symbolic connection may also be evoked by the technologies being employed and the knowledge and skills connected to their use (Brooks, Chester, Smeeton &Spencer, 2016;Griffiths & Machin, 2003).…”