“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”: Intergenerational Dialogics in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Viewer Mail

Abstract

From the opening of each Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (MRN) program, Fred Rogers invites his viewers to converse with him. MRN viewer letters demonstrate the efficacy of this call in the familiar and conversational manner in which viewers address the program’s host. This article examines a sample of these letters from the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical theorization of the conversational moment—a moment that “provokes an answer, anticipates it, and structures itself in the answer’s direction.” Along with Bakhtin, the dialogical perspectives of Roger Burggraeve, Paulo Freire, and Martin Buber are examined and applied to further elucidate the communication ethics at work in the lettered correspondence and on the television program. MRN viewer letters reveal a remarkable consistency in their thematic quality and constitute a field of study about the dialogical relationship between Rogers and his audience.