GRAPHICS AND LANGUAGE: BRIDGES FOR TRANSFERRING GEOSCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC

Geoscience is transferred to the public mainly by graphics and language. However, science-related graphics and language are only weakly connected to graphics of daily life and common speech, and represent barriers rather than bridges. Scientific information can only reach laymen if it is presented on laymen's level ‒ not on the level of experts. Laymen's viewpoints and questions are not the viewpoints and questions of experts! In addition, transfer of geoscience to the public becomes even more difficult because scientific ways of thinking and types of perception may differ radically from those of normal life and are accordantly incomprehensible for normal persons.

If geoscience intends to reach the public comprehensively and effectively, subject and design of the messages have to be attuned to laymen. Far beyond the nevertheless important application of rules of good design, graphic representations have to be characterized by simplicity and clarity. They necessitate a compromise between pictogram-like simplifications and presentations close to reality, which concentrate on the essential aspects of geoscientific structures or processes. Important and typical forms of geoscientific representation, such as geological maps, diagrams or stratigraphic tables, are hardly understandable for laymen. They need to be fashioned intelligibly to all or changed to completely new forms of presentation. Above all, they should not be overloaded scientifically and should concentrate on one message or few messages. Reduced information is received in a much better way! The same is true for language. It should be pictorially simple. Simplifications of special terms and their avoidance to the greatest possible extent, painful for experts, make sure that scientific messages safely arrive at the layperson. Last but not least, graphical and linguistic representations have to be on the same level and should be harmonized.

In our contribution, based on examples from different areas of geoscience, we outline general possibilities of graphical and linguistic scientific presentations and approaches of systematization.