Abstract:
Health is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. As a result, it is important for
ministries of health and other relevant authorities to effectively communicate health
information to everyone in their nation in the local language. But the question is: How effective
is the use of local languages in communicating health issues such as AIDS? This study takes a
closer look at the use of Sesotho to communicate AIDS information to Basotho in Lesotho. The
focus of the study is the communicative strategies employed by this speech community. To
achieve this, a thematic content analysis of corpus collected from music, mass media, theatre
for development and others such as public speaking is done. An analysis of the Sesotho speech
community is made to find out communication patterns used in the coverage of the AIDS
pandemic. The study reveals that Sesotho speech community employs various communicative
strategies to conscientize Basotho on this pandemic. This study therefore, proposes a more
intense approach to fighting AIDS especially by using local languages to reach everyone.
