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TAGALOG
or Pilipino to deliver justice. This was more or less
the news coming from the country’s Supreme Court. The
highest court of the land has initiated an experiment
that will allow the courts to use the national language
with the assumption that those described generically as
the poor, and who belong to those with no access to
legal help, can now express themselves more as they seek
redress of grievances and as they fight for justice.
While
the experiment does not readily assure that justice,
indeed, will be delivered with the language roadblocks
removed (it is simplistic to assume so and the judges
know it), the awareness about the importance of language
in our society is a breath of fresh air.
I am not
being naïve with the congratulations. Language is not
the only source of conflicts in this country. There is
the structured inequality, the governance in whatever
form that seems to be missing, a sense of order that has
become abstracted to the point of loss, and many others.
There is even the problem about the language itself,
Tagalog. I am not a lover of this language as a national
language, although the demonstration in interviews where
people from as far as Mindanao are able to talk to the
media by using the language makes it is a better option.
Besides, in the absence of good news, the note of
awareness from our justices about language is worth
thinking about.
The news
comes at a point when our world appears to be spinning
out of its axis and rolling into nevermore. Look around
and listen. Our media have grown so insensitive that
people are passing around as joke a news item mentioning
Dyesebel as the savior of the sunken vessel. And now the
owner of the sunken vessel is suing the weatherman for
giving them the wrong information. If this be the case,
then Naga City should have long sued Pagasa and, with
it, the entire government. To digress, instead of
wallowing in self-pity, a man named David Michael V.
Padua decided to put up his own meteorological center
and typhoon center called Typhoon 2000.com, with the
entire city of Naga and its environs celebrating such
act of man. It also tells one great lesson: there is
life outside Manila and all Manila-based institutions.
In all
of these calamities, we can observe one thing: the
inadequacy of the media to cope with the nuances and the
details of the events. Language, which is the instrument
of the media, has become stunted. The so-called
broadcasters continue to rely on uninspired writings. If
there is a sign of life at all in the reporting, it is
when broadcasters opt to deliver lines that are
exaggerated or hyperbolic.
Do these
broadcasters ever notice that they are using the same
dull and trite words and phrases and resorting to the
same idiomatic expressions? Don’t they realize that
their descriptions have grown stale because their
modifiers and figures of speech have been modified to
flatness over time and disfigured because of misuse? I
have written about these issues already and if this
repletion makes me a crusader, then I shall be the
crusader with those consumers who still believe
broadcast news are our windows to the world, especially
that we now live in houses with no windows. Or, that the
instability of the times does not enable us anymore to
open our windows and look out and see what is happening
in our small community.
I issue
this appeal to newscasters and news directors and the
writers. Sit down and examine how the news items are
being relayed and written. How many times will you allow
the use of “nadismaya,” a literal translation of
“dismayed” as a generic modifier to describe when
someone is frustrated or saddened or shocked or
agitated? We hear the news that there are very few
survivors and we are dismayed. We are told that Sulpicio
Lines would not permit that the vessel be floated up
because they will lose a bigger insurance claim and we
are dismayed.
There is
a universe of modifiers and adverbs out there. There is
an ever-widening neighborhood of slang out there. Use
them. Explore and exploit the possibilities of language.
People will sit up and notice. Nagulumihanan.
Nanghilakbot. Nagulantang. Nagulat. Nanlumo. I am
not even a native English speaker. I was once a komiks
reader and I developed a respect, a fondness for those
words so special, they captured for me the moods of
actions, the feel of the crime, the devastation when
Nature went berserk. These words were hands that held my
perception out of the small world of limited vocabulary
into the open savannah of exploration and learning.
We
listen to the news but we also learn about how the news
is said. This is a function that Philippine television
at present seems to take for granted. But we cannot
learn from a TV program that exaggerates or is not able
to match the visual with the aural. When one describes a
distraught person as someone whose life is
“pinagsakluban ng langit at lupa,” it is the duty of
the media person to show a corresponding image. If the
image shows a person seated and holding his head with
both hands, that image, believe me, does not qualify for
the hyperbole. The rule then is not to use the words.
The rule then is to look for the appropriate phrases.
But please do not invoke divine forces. Most of the
time, broadcasters are eager to make it appear that they
had difficulty tracking an event that they had to call
the Devil to give them the details.
A piece
of news from the Internet media Space.com reveals that
the Earth emits sound. The sounds have been described as
ear-piercing. They are beamed out into space. We are
spared of the sounds, which are said to be 10,000 times
stronger than the strongest military signal, because
these sounds—called Auroral Kilometric Radiation—are
created above the Earth.
You can
listen to the sound and confirm if it is eerie as the
news claims it to be.
The
sounds are eerie. Hear Earth Scream, the news says.
The
broadcaster’s work is easier. Each day, the communities
around us give out sounds. They are not always screams
and wails. Sometimes, they come in form of muted pleas
or whispers. The broadcaster’s work is to capture and
delineate those arrays and ranges. |
