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Stigma and ideological constructions of the foreign: Facing HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Steven P. Black
Steven P. Black*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3998, Atlanta, GA 30302-3998, [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article I discuss language ideologies and stigma, exploring how a group of South Africans living with HIV confronted the perceived language of HIV and engaged with international aid to live “positive lives” amid stigma. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a Zulu choir that functioned as an HIV support group and AIDS activist organization, I analyze talk about how others talked about HIV (metapragmatic discourse about HIV) to suggest a language-ideological component of stigma. I also explore how choir members' engagement with scientific medicine and international aid provided an alternative ideological framework in which the foreign was positively valued. I analyze how choir members creatively incorporated English medical terminology into isiZulu discourse as an alternative to the language of stigma. This analysis provides a model of the language-ideological constitution of stigma that suggests links to theorization of language and other types of marginality and abjection. (Language ideologies, stigma, HIV/AIDS, South Africa, Zulu, exclusion, markedness)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , November 2013 , pp. 481 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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