Child-Directed Speech in Children’s Media: A Case Study on Bing’s Lexical and Syntactic Structures
Abstract
High-quality animated programs that offer age-appropriate linguistic content characterized by clear pronunciation, engaging narratives, and vocabulary and syntactic structures that are aligned with their developmental stage should be readily available for children. Unfortunately, the quality of linguistic input in these programs varies significantly. Examining the linguistic features of Bing cartoon, a popular children’s animated series on YouTube, and evaluating its potential contribution to children’s language acquisition is hence, necessary. The research aims to identify the lexical and syntactic features of Bing, focusing on vocabulary frequencies, vocabulary level, and utterance length. The study employs a content analysis approach to analyze 16 episodes of Bing using the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) word list. Findings of this study reveal that Bing exhibits a unique linguistic feature by having similarities as child-directed speech characteristics. Bing’s language utilizes high-frequency words, short utterances, and repetitions, which are conducive to language acquisition. The study also found that Bing employs a simplified vocabulary, with a focus on core vocabulary of each theme, which is a characteristic of child-directed speech. The results of this study contribute to language acquisition by providing a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic features of Bing and its potential contribution to children’s language development. The findings of this study have implications for parents and educators, who can utilize Bing as a valuable supplement for language acquisition. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of incorporating high-quality linguistic input, such as Bing, into language acquisition program to support children’s language development.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/gema-2025-2502-14
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