aids education and social practice.doc

A Walk in the Park: Frames and Positioning in AIDS Prevention Outreach among Gay Men in China 1 Rodney H. Jones City University of Hong KongAbstract This paper explores the interactional negotiation of identity in the distribution of AIDS prevention materials to gay men in public parks in China and how this negotiation affects the way people respond to AID prevention messages. Data from the observation of an ‘unofficial’ AIDS educator distributing materials in Beijing parks in 1996 is analyzed using interactional sociolinguistic principles developed by Scollon (1997) in his study of handing in public places. The analysis reveals how complex the negotiation of identity in such situations is, requiring participants to take up multiple positions in multiple, overlapping frames of activity. The ways the AIDS educator and his targets manage the shifts in framing and positioning demanded by the situation plays an important role in determining how successfully the AIDS educator was is in delivering his message and making his targets believe it is relevant to them. AIDS Education and Social PracticeThe effectiveness of health prevention messages depends not just on the content of the messages, but also on how they are delivered and the identities that those who deliver them claim for themselves and impute onto their targets. This can be easily seen in the three pictures below which portray the delivery of information about HIV/AIDS on city streets in China. Fig. 1Fig.2Fig. 31 A earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics, March 8, 2001 (Jones 2001a). The same data is also discussed in my PhD. dissertation (Jones 2001b).2The first picture (fig.1), from the Beijing Review (Cui 1997) shows a doctor extending her hand, which contains a sheath of papers, over a row of exhibition boards. No other hand, however, is seen extending from the opposite side of the picture to accept her offer. Her identity as a ‘prevention expert’ is signaled by her dress which includes a white coat and surgical mask, and in many ways the practice of handing in which she is engaged is dependent on the identity she claims though her costume. The activity is framed as an exchange of medical information, not unlike a clinical consultation, and, as in most interaction of this kind, the boundary between ‘expert’ and ‘novice’ is clearly marked by the boundary of exhibition boards that separates the ‘hander’ from the (potential) receivers. The identity imputed onto passers-by is that of ‘patients’ (or prospective patients), which might be one reason why nobody is accepting the offer. The second picture (fig. 2) shows a more complete representation of the practice of handing: the ‘hander’, also bearing a conspicuous marker of her identity in the form of a sash that reads: ‘Spiritual Civilization Volunteer’ (精神文明义务), extending her hand to a recipient who looks at the papers it contains and, with some apparent difficulty, takes them into his hand which is already occupied by a suitcase. In this instance, the clothing and behavior of the participants place the activity of AIDS education within the frame of a political campaign, a frame which is reinforced by the identity of the receiver, a People’s Liberation Army soldier. The participants are positioned as ‘good citizens’, and receiving the materials more a matter of patriotic duty than good health. The third instance of handing (fig.3), taken from the Far Eastern Economic Review (Forney 1998), is not strictly handing but ‘taking’, the figure on the left rolling up a free poster on AIDS prevention designed with drawings by Chinese children. The 3outstretched hand of the previous pictures has been replaced by a table upon which the items to be taken are placed, and behind this prevention workers stand, much like shop assistants, identified in an interesting act of interdiscursivity by both doctor’s coats and baseball caps. In this instance, AIDS education is placed into a consumerist frame: the materials themselves have taken on the status of commodities and the ‘takers’ are positioned more as ‘costumers’ than ‘targets – perhaps one reason why recipients in this picture are noticeably more enthusiastic compared to those in the first two.The contrast in these three examples provides an important lesson not just in the act of handing but in the practice of HIV/AIDS prevention and health education in general. Most previous approaches to studying the discourse of HIV/AIDS prevention have focused on either analyzing health messages themselves or on analyzing the behavior of people after such messages have been ‘delivered’ to them. Among the most crucial determinants of how effective such texts are in preventing AIDS, however, is the moment when they are handed from one person to another and the kinds of identities which are opened up (or not opened up) in this action. Because of the stigma associated with HIV infection, claims a。