Discourses on Death: Obituaries and the Management of Spoiled Identity

Abstract

What do obituaries disclose about the death of persons who die of AIDS or where AIDS-related death is indicated? Obituaries meeting pre-established criteria were collected from a major metropolitan newspaper for a sixteen-month period in 1992 and 1993. A total of 184 obituaries were collected, content analyzed, and broken into three disclosure categories based on: 1) AIDS-related complications as published cause of death, 2) same-sex partner named as survivor, and 3) association with the AIDS cause or with the gay community. All three categories are stigmatized in the context of today's social norms. Discourse analysis revealed similarities and differences in topical and in subtextual themes and in varying degrees of identity management for the three categories. Descriptive findings suggest areas for further research and reveal much about the public management of death to counter the social stigma of “spoiled identity.”