Disseminating Scientific Information to Rural Communities: Communication Strategies Used to Support Peasants‟ Comprehension and Use of Written Information

Abstract

Agriculture has begun to accept communication as a strategy instrument to promote agricultural production. However, handful of research delved into the effectiveness of the ways of disseminating agricultural knowledge to farmers whose home language is different from the language used to present the information. This paper reports the findings of the analysis of the communication strategies used to disseminate scientific information to farmers from multilingual societies drawing from rural peasants in Tanzania. Informed by the Text Comprehension Theory, analysis was made on the leaflets distributed to peasants in Misungwi District of Tanzania. Communication strategies were extracted and analysed from eight agricultural leaflets collected from the peasants and TARI offices in the district. The study uncovered several strategies that are employed to support peasants‟ understanding of written scientific information. These include translanguaging, amplified statements, synonyms, reminders, examples, images, and definitions. However, the analysis uncovered a variation of communication strategies in some leaflets, which caused misinterpretation of the intended scientific information.

Keywords: Agriculture, peasants, scientific information, communication strategies, comprehension, agricultural production, language specialists