Stigma and narrative construction: the “we” and the “them” in the stories of a flood

Abstract

This article analyzes the issue of collective identity and stigma in narratives of victims of a historic flood in the city of Santa Fe, northern Argentina, which occurred in the year 2003. I explore how the category of “flooded”, used by the affected ones in their personal narratives (Kohler Riessman, 1993; Labov, 1997, 2006, 2013; Johnstone, 2000), is a new way to refer to themselves, and how this category defines new frontiers of belonging and exclusion, and a specific form of stigmatization (Goffman, 2010 [1963]). From a sociolinguistic perspective it has been emphasized that narratives put into play relationships among speech, language and identity: by telling stories storytellers are able not only to represent and evaluate social worlds, but also to establish themselves as members of groups, through rhetorical, stylistic, linguistic and interactional choices (De Fina, 2006). The narrative, considered a verbal technique to summarize the experience from its temporal sequence (Labov, 1997, 2006, 2013) allows the researcher to access the selfconstruction the narrator makes (Ochs, 1996; De Fina, 2006).