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1. Introduction
Local festivities are Hispanic influence on Filipino culture, where patron saints, such as San Isidro de Labrador, are offered thanksgiving (Aguilar, 2008). As a form of agro-tourism, such festivities are intended for countryside and national development as expounded in the Tourism Act of 2009. Religious and agricultural festivals are thus widely researched in the Philippines because of their economic (e.g. Pagay, 2011; Briones et al., 2013; Coliat et al., 2014; Magpantay et al., 2014) and sociocultural impacts (e.g. Esquieres, 2005; Aguilar, 2008; Morales, 2011; Antolihao, 2014; Manongsong, 2015). However, very few festival studies in the Philippines looked at the potential of festivals to communicate developmental messages to the local and foreign tourists. Festivals, together with folk songs, dances and local theater, are examples of folk media that originate from the peoples’ rites and rituals which could be maximized for development communication (Coseteng and Nemenzo, 1975; Kumar, 2012).
Globally, the use of folk media in promoting developmental messages is nothing new. For instance, the African school of development communication used the creative art of community theater to promote adult literacy, health and agriculture in the 1960s (Manyoso, 2006). In India, participatory action research works have likewise used folk media, such as festivals, stage plays and traditional songs and dances, in communicating developmental messages (see Singhal et al., 2007; Daudu, 2009; Sharma and Mishra, 2009; Mohanti and Parhi, 2011; Naskar, 2011; Kumar, 2012). However, the potential of festivals as a folk media to communicate development in the Philippines remains unexplored.
Although development communication practitioners encourage the use of community newspapers and radio dramas, folk media appeals better to the rural folk. These are more familiar to the local people and could help them understand and appreciate the embedded development messages. Thus, this paper analyzed the potential of the San Isidro Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, Quezon, Philippines as a development communication medium. The said festival is famous for its display of colorful kiping (i.e. rice wafer) and agricultural produce in the exterior of the houses. Employing hermeneutic analysis guided by Barthes’ (1964) semiology which is rarely used in festival and folk media studies, developmental messages that could be interpreted in the displays were analyzed. Specifically, the study sought to:
narrate the historical...