Symbolic Frames Of Plwha

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Discussion The purpose of this study was to explore the symbolic frames that participants engaged to made meaning of their lived experience as PLWHA and how they subliminally interrogated mainstream symbolic representations that excecated stigmatizing attitudes towards them. The results of the study have theoretical and practical implications for future research. Theoretical Implications Symbolic frames are “terministic screens” (Burke, 1989) which PLWHA engage to make meaning of their lived experience of the HIV/AIDS-related stigma. Through these meaning making resources, PLWHA subliminally interrogate the systemic dismissal of (their) vernacular voices and, in so doing, “participate in social change” (Dutta-Bergman, 2005). The current study …show more content…

These suggested empowered potentials resonate with the “rhetoric of emancipation,” a means for PLWHA “to counter stigmatizing” attitudes and repossessing “control over their own” identities (Couser, 2001, pp. 79, 78). Additionally, the study unmasked the symbolic frames PLWHA engaged to make meaning of the stigma and how the “transformative capacities” (Giddens, 1984) therein allows for positive thinking through consubstantiation. For example, Mawusi explained how people see her “as that crooked branch of a tree, forgetting that people can stand on a crooked branch of the tree to reach the straight branch. I am a channel to goodness in society.” This symbolic frame—“crooked branch of a tree”—is an embodiment of consubstantiation that paves the way for transformative and empowering foci through PLWHA reframing, recalibrating, and refocusing of their identity (see Meisenbach, 2010). Understanding how PLWHA engage symbolic language to make meaning of HIV/AIDS-related stigma can be a useful resource for policy makers and healthcare providers to identify linkages between stigma discourse and transformative empowerment. From a communicative standpoint, symbolic frames are subliminal interactive forces that consubstantiate a status quo, opening spaces for …show more content…

This study has kinship with dialogue in marginalized contexts. Relevant to this study is the way in which symbolic language (especially frames), is constituted in the realms disempowerment and empowerment. This study therefore contributes to ongoing research examining the ways in which PLWHA make meaning of HIV/AIDS-related stigma and engage in stigma discourses that articulate the communicative dark side of HIV/AIDS stigmatizing attitudes, while celebrating its empowering and transforming possibilities. Indeed “We frame reality in order to comprehend it, negotiate it, manage it, and choose appropriate repertoires of cognition and action” (Gitlin, 1980, pp. 6-7). Burke (1973) explained that symbolic frames act as repertoires and thus function to “size up” exigencies (p. 1). Exploring the symbolic frames that PLWHA use to depict their experience of HIV/AIDS-related stigma serve as a rhetorical entrance for unmasking the feelings associated with the phenomenon as well pinpoint a “dialogical positioning” (Smith, 2008) that precipitate empowerment and social

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