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The socio-cultural complexities that subsume the HIV/AIDS stigma are examined in relationship to the notions of illness and deviancy as explained in the “sick role model” theory. It is argued that in conversations with their physicians, patients use self-effacing arguments and conversational strategies with the communicative intention of redressing their human images, and as a way of resisting the stigma. The data comprise 46 interviews collected in Uruguay at a public hospital. Some of the self-effacing strategies include: violation of the quantitative maxim, reformulation, and pre-announcement strategy. While self-effacing strategies are the patients’ ways of resisting the stigma, the use of these strategies is seen as culturally linked to moral frames entrenched in the Uruguayan culture. It is observed that the patients’ arguments and strategies used to resist stigmatization might, paradoxically, perpetuate the HIV/AIDS-related stigma.
