Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS

Jones, R. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9426-727X (1997) Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 1 (3). pp. 393-418. ISSN 1360-6441 doi: 10.1111/1467-9481.00022

Abstract/Summary

This paper explores the identities projected in advertisements directed towards HIV positive individuals and people with AIDS. Fifty such advertisements were collected from three popular American magazines for gay men over a period of seven months. Analysis of the ads reveals a paradoxical presentation of people with HIV/AIDS, which offers simultaneous conflicting images of hope and fear, power and weakness, innocence and guilt. An interactive sociolinguistic model through which this contradictory discourse might be understood is presented, drawing on Goffman’s insights on stigma management and the presentation of the self in social interaction. Advertisements directed towards people with HIV/AIDS, it is suggested, present a contradictory discourse in which the advertisers are positioned as ‘the wise’, offering to mediate the conflicting identities of the stigmatized. The identity values enacted in this contradictory discourse are further measured against American conceptions of communication and the self as observed by Carbaugh and others. The possible consequences of these positionings on the roles made available to people with HIV/AIDS in the wider social context are discussed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/58435
Identification Number/DOI	10.1111/1467-9481.00022
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
Publisher	Wiley
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