Towards Communicating Environmental Preservation through Vernacular Discourse in Toba Lake Area, Indonesia

Communications about preserving the environment are often presented by environmentalists to the people in the Toba Lake area, in Indonesia.These communications are conveyed through oral and written material presented at numerous places.Nevertheless, lately, a lot of natural damage and environmental pollution have occurred.Invariably, they cause natural disasters.It is noted that the communications of the environmentalists are not effective.In this context, this paper advocates that they must be expressed through folk discourse usually conveyed from generation to generation.This study examines the folk discourse of environmental preservation in the Toba Lake area, in Indonesia and their expressions.This research employs a qualitative approach: ethnography as a model.Data were collected through observations and interviews.Data analysis uses domain analysis, taxonomy analysis, and componential analysis.The findings show that this community uses five kinds of expressions in folk discourse: prohibitions and procedural, conditional, exclamatory, and request expressions.These are in the forms of imperative and declarative sentences.They use markers for each sentence.Prohibition expressions use negation markers.Procedural and conditional expressions use conjunction markers.Exclamatory expressions use markers E, O, wei.The requests use markers kinship greetings such as namboru (aunt) and ompung (grandfather).The paper concludes that the Batak Toba people preserve forests, rivers, rural environments, springs, fauna and flora through folk discourse.Folk discourse is studied based on its context.The context of folk discourse includes ideological, sociological and biological contexts.Based on the ideological contexts, the Batak Toba people preserve forests, rivers, springs, rural environments, flora, and fauna by their beliefs.In the sociological dimension, forests, rivers, springs, rural environments, and flora and fauna have a social impact on the local community.Furthermore, in the biological dimension, local communities utilize forests, rivers, springs, flora and fauna as clothing and food.