DoubleTalk – What PhiVolcS And The New PH DA Need Today!


Sleepily this morning, when I stopped rewriting for the 12th time the original of this essay, the thought just came to me lying on my bed: DoubleTalk! This time, The Wizard Of Os is pointing to common Obstacles and common Opportunities of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology & Seismology, PhiVolcS, and Department of Agriculture, DA, both talking their science to the people – today especially PhiVolcS. 

Above: Main image from NKY[1]; superimposed are the faces of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie, and Ma Antonia V Bornas, Chief of the Volcano Monitoring & Eruption Prediction Division of PhiVolcS. They are both in troubled waters, so to speak, but more so Ms Bornas. On mass media such as the newspapers as well as social media such as Facebook, commonly people have been complaining that they do not understand volcanospeak (my term). Of course not! Even I, having been a very wide reader and now always an Internet hound, I cannot explain in plain language such terms as magma and phreatomagmatic explosions.

I am neither a consultant nor a staff of PhiVolcS, neither a friend, but as a science writer dedicated to communication for development, I am interested in the technical jargons of volcanology & seismology being laymanized, that is, stated in non-expert language, so that most people can understand what the experts are trying to communicate. Otherwise, they are only talking to themselves on the Internet, on print, radio or TV!

On Facebook, my once-FORI co-employee Jonathan A Nuñez says another lady has entered the picture, so to speak: “The current situation of Taal Volcano (is) being explained by a volcanologist from London. Ctto Mai Jardeleza.” Another Filipina.

Yet, this lady explainer is not enough. She is a volcanologist, not a popularizer, so there is that language gap I’m sure – I have been a science writer in the last 45 years not to know.

Like, how do you popularize “phreatic eruption”? I know of another kind of eruption and, privately, I could use it to explain the phreatic kind. But that’s getting ahead of my story.

We need DoubleTalk! I suggest PhiVolcS begin right now to construct a dictionary of technical terms, with thorough explanations, and several popular-language equivalent(s). I could show them the small Dictionary of Agriculture I prepared for the InangLupa Movement headed by Manong Willie – we need a very-much extended version of that, with abundant popular examples. Both for the common tao and journalists.

Organizationally, it must be not less than a new whole PhiVolcS division, VolcS Populi – populi means popular, and that exactly is the language PhiVolcS people need to talk to us. Their hourly or daily Advisory is too dense. Serve the people, talk to the people in their language, not yours!

Same with the DA – I am begging it to create a whole new division for popularizing technical terms. For one, the DA needs to explain those eight paradigms of Manong Willie in a million and one ways.

For both PhiVolcS and the DA, a social media division would be ideal.@517





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