HIV/AIDS slogans and their impact on the campaign against the pandemic: a linguistic analysis.

This work examines the impact of the language used in the HIV/AIDS slogans in Tanzania. By studying and analyzing the language use in the slogans, the study establishes particularly the weaknesses in the language use and thus the non-delivery of the expected results. The problem that was intriguing was the fact that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is multifaceted in nature. It is both biomedical and cultural. The interest of the researcher was to find whether or not the linguistic aspects of the slogans make any change in the fight against the disease. The data were collected in urban and rural areas for the purpose of comparison. There were also other considerations on the age and level of education of the respondents. These data were analysed on the basis of Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP), Speech Act Theory and Presuppositions and direct assertion. It was found that some of the slogans were too short, some had irrelevant linguistic forms, while some were too indirect to present the intended message, therefore they need to be reworked.