Abstract:
The main purpose of this contribution is to broaden the understanding of variables
surrounding the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS by analyzing a corpus of
Afrikaans-speaking teenagers' narratives on HIV/AIDS. Support is given for the hypothesis
that lay illness narratives are interdiscursive constructions, based on media discourses
about HIV/AIDS, and mapped against the mental schemas of the narrator's own life and
identity. Instances of convergence as well as dissonance between reported illness
narratives (media narratives) and lay illness narratives are highlighted, with specific
reference to the clustering of stereotypical features, constituting three archetypes of
people living with HIV/AIDS, namely the AIDS carrier, the AIDS victim and the AIDS
survivor.
