[lg policy] Role of language in climate policy awareness

Mon Feb 15 15:35:06 UTC 2016

 Role of language in climate policy awareness
February 15, 2016 in Columnists
<https://www.newsday.co.zw/opinion/columnists/>

THE use of local language in local communities by speakers of that speech
community, for climate change awareness is essentially fundamental in
development work. Many NGOs, the government and implementing partners alike
always find their development programmes failing simply because they would
want to sound sophisticated and knowledgeable — to the detriment of
achieving results.

Our local communities cannot cope up with the vices of technically related
discourse of climate science yet they are expected to be important
stakeholders in this case.

For climate change awareness and adaptation to succeed, the language of
local people becomes critical, therefore it needs to be carefully harnessed
and utilised for effective climate change mainstreaming activities. Due to
the living fact that local communities are quite diverse, ethnically and
religiously, there is need to reach out to them in the medium they all
understand better. African communities are not a homogenous group like
their European counterparts but they are linguistically and culturally
diverse. As such, a linguistically-gifted polyglot may be introduced or
utilised to make the local people feel wanted, accommodated and accepted as
well as feeling at home. In the development literature crafted for them to
implement, there is need for it to be harmonised in terms of being
sustainably user-friendly.

[image: climate change]
<https://www.newsday.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/climate-change.jpg>

Cross-cultural linguistic competence is the current missing link as we
speak. Missing link in attempts to integrate the locals into meaningful
development work. This nature of competence is critical for successful
communication to take place between the development practitioners and the
often despised locals. Climate science discourse is not even a favourite
with the educated laypersons, who can hardly interpret it, what more, the
downtrodden and vulnerable local people who face the challenges of hunger,
discrimination, neglect and failure to read.

The local person is forced to exercise the split-personality syndrome
through reading or listening to the technical discourse, think in
vernacular whilst at the same time trying to translate as well as
struggling to make sense in English, without any marked form of success.
Usually, as is always the case, the local person, achieves none of the
above and as a result development work and adaptation initiatives suffer.

If language use consists of the expression and communication of thoughts,
then surely the mind-set of the local communities is already affected. For
they are forced to think in a particular way against the background that
climate change adaptation need the local voices for sustainable development
and resilience purposes.

It is also quite clear, that the constituency of language is an adaptation
phenomenon in that, it enables the acquisition of linguistic competence,
which translates to verbal communication techniques. As such, verbal
communication can be used in many ways possible, climate change adaptation
included.

Language use, especially vernacular is regarded as being in the great
interest of the local knowledge of knowing, which some people refer to as
indigenous knowledge systems or rather traditional or scientific knowledge
deeply rooted in culture. Therefore, for comprehension to take place, there
should be a recognition by the hearer- connected to the speaker’s frame of
reference and meaning. As such, listening is not just decoding, but an
essentially active process.
This would also act as sustainable evidence from which the audience can
make generalisations as well as inferences. To that effect, the local
language of knowing has such intrinsic and assertive illocutionary force of
reason that also contribute to unmasking ambiguities.

This indeed, is not about language acquisition but critical thought and
application. Through the role playing of life experiences, fellow members
of the communities will be able to relate that to climate change scenarios.
This kind of role-playing appeals to the values that communities cherish so
much and as a result this kind of communication becomes potentially
empowering. In this regard, everyone takes part in communication as
compared to passive and unproductive hearing, which can be safely described
as climate noise.

All in all, local languages afford people a chance to be involved in
dialogues which facilitate long lasting understanding. By conversing in the
language they all know and understand, we can the safely say people will
exhibit a permanent change of behaviour, otherwise known as
eco-consciousness.

lPeter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his own
capacity and can be contacted on: petrovmoyt at gmail.com

https://www.newsday.co.zw/2016/02/15/role-of-language-in-climate-policy-awareness/

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