ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on previous literature on how speakers’ own deservingness is discursively constructed in different research and interactional settings. In particular, this chapter illustrates how people who deal with stigma discursively present themselves as deserving subjects by addressing different deserving cues and resistance techniques in interview settings. Additionally, it shows different ways in which speakers can both participate in the creation of stigma and avoid it. For example, they can do this by discursively framing their situations as resulting from ‘external’ reasons. Empirical illustrations include cases where long-term unemployed Finnish people in their interview talk disidentify themselves from the ‘other’, negotiate a sick role and resist cultural stereotypes. In this chapter, all these discursive acts are perceived as ways that indicate the speaker’s moral ‘blamelessness’ in order to free them from the stigma that is implicitly embedded in the interview.
