256 Gitte Kristiansen
results out of 7 (48 % of the 50 subjects), 6 subjects had never been abroad,
9 had been to one or two countries and 9 were more widely travelled. The
children who obtained 5 correct answers out of 7 possible hits had been to
no foreign country in 15.4 percent of the cases, to one or two destinations
in 35 percent and only 17.6 had visited more than three countries. There
seems to be no significant correlation between travelling and receptive lec-
tal competence.
Table 28. Familiarity as a subjective distance: the effects of exposure to the media
on L1 dialect identification at the level of autonomous community
Correlation correct answers in experiment 1/
exposure to TV Total
Total hits
in test 0 1 2 3 4 5
TV - 2 0 0 2 0 1 3 6
% .0% .0% 33.3% .0% 16.7% 50.0% 100.0%
3-7 0 0 4 4 4 3 15
% .0% .0% 26.7% 26.7% 26.7% 20.0% 100.0%
8-14 0 3 3 1 3 2 12
% .0% 25.0% 25.0% 8.3% 25.0% 16.7% 100.0%
15 + 1 2 6 5 2 1 17
% 5.9% 11.8% 35.3% 29.4% 11.8% 5.9% 100.0%
Total nº 1 5 15 10 10 9 50
Total % 2.0% 10.0% 30.0% 20.0% 20.0% 18.0% 100.0%If competence does not stem from such direct and immersed exposure,
would indirect exposure through the media perhaps have a more persistent
bearing on the results? To what extent would TV influence lectal aware-
ness? Let us hypothesize that the more TV the children watch, the more
exposure to lectal and social variables (and more exposure > more aware-
ness > better identification). To test this possibility we correlated the self-
esteemed number of hours the 12-13 year-olds watch TV/week with the
results obtained in the tests. Table 28 shows the results for experiment 1 at
the level of autonomous community.
As the table shows, the fewer hours of TV/week the children watch, the
better the results are, and the more they spend, the worse the result become.
By way of example, none of the children who claimed that they hardly