A pragmatic analysis of figurative language in HIV discourse in Kenya. A case study of English and Kiswahili messages

This study adopts a cognitivist perspective in the analysis of HIV discourse in Kenya, with specific reference to English and Kiswahili AIDS posters. The thesis advanced by our research problem is that the AIDS discourse has been underresearched and accorded limited attention by pragmatists, yet their scholarly insights could be relevant to behavior change communicators. More particularly, an investigation of the addressees' implicit assumptions on AIDS that could be rendering their messages irrelevant would provide insights into aspects related to miscomprehension of AIDS related messages in Kenya.

To systematically investigate our research problem, the research will be guided by the following objectives; first and foremost, to establish whether Kenyan AIDS messages are skewed towards implicitness or explicitness. Secondly, to analyze lexico-pragmatic process employed by communicators when coining AIDS messages. Thirdly, to investigate the comprehension patterns of Kenyan addressees, and fourthly, to study Kenyan mental representations of AIDS. To effectively achieve the outlined objectives, our conceptual framework espouses arguments drawn from three cognitive linguistics theories notably; The Relevance Theory, The Idealized Cognitive Models and The Blending Theory. In general, the study will undertake a comparative analysis of Kenyan addressees of different HIV status and from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, in an attempt to not only investigate the correlation between the stigmatization of AIDS and Kenyan mental representations of the Killer disease. But equally, identify, instances of miscomprehension of English and Kiswahili figurative messages amongst addressees of dissimilar ethno-linguistic communities will be relevant to our study.