Abstract:
To address the uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of traffic safety slogans in enhancing public awareness of traffic safety, a quantitative analysis of Chinese traffic safety slogans for preventing drunk driving and their effectiveness is conducted, aiming to analyze the linguistic characteristics and their effectiveness. Using Python 3.7 software, a total of 1 828 traffic safety slogans about drunk driving prevention, collected from the Baidu search engine between September 2019 to September 2020, are analyzed. The linguistic characteristics of these slogans were categorized and analyzed from six aspects, including person expression, emotion, rhetoric, rhyme, context, and length. The primary linguistic characteristics found in these slogans include the use of the other person expression (87.7%), negative emotion (45.4%), lack of rhetoric (49.9%), presupposed states (52.4%), and medium length (65.2%). Through an online questionnaire survey, the effectiveness of slogans with different linguistic characteristics is evaluated in terms of public attention, understanding, and acceptance. By employing the Chi-square test, the differences in linguistic characteristics of the slogans are analyzed and a generalized linear regression model is developed to identify significant linguistic factors affecting public attention, understanding, and acceptance. The results of generalized linear regression show as follow. ①Public attention to slogans is primarily influenced by the person expression and length of the slogans. Specifically, the slogans using the first- and other-person expression attract greater public attention compared to slogans using the second person expression (b =0.24, 0.49). Longer slogans (18 words or more) aroused more public attention compared to shorter slogans (less than 12 words) (b =0.26). ② Public acceptance of slogans is mainly influenced by the use of person expression. Slogans using the first-person expression receive higher public acceptance than those using the second person expression (b =0.31). ③There is no statistically significant relationship between public understanding of slogans and six linguistic characteristics of slogans. The results indicate that Chinese traffic safety slogans designed to prevent drunk driving exhibit diverse linguistic characteristics. The different linguistic characteristics affects the public attention and acceptance of the slogans. In the future, when designing traffic safety slogans, it is recommended to use the first person or other person expression and to consider increasing the length of the slogans to enhance the effectiveness of slogans in enhancing public awareness of traffic safety.