Respecifying Stigma and the Language of Relationships: Attributes and Categories as Contexturally‐Achieved Phenomena in the Search for Help

Abstract

This article revisits Goffman's original formulations of stigma. In doing so, the discussion focuses, specifically, upon his emphasis that a “language of relationships, not attributes is needed.” The analysis is intended to demonstrate how Goffman's observations offer a starting point for an inquiry in to just how members produce and orient to “spoiled identities” in specific courses of action. While much recent work has sought to “move beyond” or “resituate” Goffman's observations by invoking structure and dualisms of micro and macro, such moves miss or obscure the practical actions that, in the first instance, provide the interactional grounds of what comes to be called “stigma.” The article makes this argument in two ways: first, it demonstrates that Goffman's call for a “language of relationships” can be radically respecified by treating it as members' language; second, it shows how “stigmatizing conditions” are produced and oriented to through categorization practices in naturally‐occurring interaction and self‐organizing settings. The argument is made via a re‐analysis of Harvey Sacks' (1967) corpus of calls to a suicide prevention center. In attending to actual practices involved in potentially stigmatizing contextures, an alternative approach to understanding stigma as a contextured phenomenon—occasioned, contingent, and achieved through members' practices—is proposed, offering new directions for a praxeological interactionism and studies of moral order.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Symbolic Interaction, 2026 · DOI ↗