Introduction

The purpose of my investigation is to find out if the current events of society reflects in the language used in children's television shows and why.  I decided to compare a popular television programme produced and broadcasted in the United Kingdom in the 70s with one of the same genre which is currently being regularly produced and broadcasted in the United Kingdom. 

The genre I chose to use for my investigation is stop motion animation as there is always a script as even the slightest movement means that the characters have to be re-positioned by the animators and in turn the same with speech.  In these animated programmes the characters tend to have still inexpressive faces with sometimes one or two expressive features, for example eyebrows or eyes, however the heads often move with the characters speech.  Due to the lengthy process of animation the words said by the characters are well thought out and never spontaneously produced and in turn the perfect genre to use for my investigation.

I expect to find that words we have today are used in the programme from 2011 and not in the one from the 1970's due to the fact that the things that the words describe could simply not be invented yet or phrases or jokes made common by other aspects of popular culture, for example, "Doh!" being made common by 'The Simpsons'. I also expect to find a contrast in the way that the different characters interact with eachother, for example, with general politeness, i.e. using 'please' and 'thank you' where necessary and political correctness.