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

Abstract

AbstractIn 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 intoisiZuludiscourse 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)*