A discourse analysis of educational radio programmes to farmers:adaptations in register

Abstract

This study is a discourse analysis of agriculture and health programmes to small-scale farmers. These farmers have formed Radio Listening Groups and educational programmes have been prepared for them in areas of their interest.

We compare scientific materials written in English that are used to develop radio programmes and the actual programmes in Kiswahili and Kikuyu. Analysis takes place on two levels: the lexical and stylistic.

At the lexical level, we investigate register - specific words and the methods of adaptation used to render them suitable for the audio medium and the audience in question. These include: borrowing, code-mixing and calquing, among others.

The stylistic level involves classification of written and radio materials into discourse genres, and a comparative study of how the written language has been adapted for use as spoken radio language using the Speech Act Theory.

At the stylistic level, we have looked at a second aspect that is present on radio but not in written scientific documents. These are involvement strategies. For these, we have focused on visual and audio mnemonic techniques as well as paralinguistic features.

At each of these levels, we have described the adaptive techniques and secondly sought input from farmers in order to establish whether these adaptations are successful in presenting science messages to the target audience.