A new paper by Dr Apurv Chauhan, published in the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, examines how stigma operates through everyday communication. Based on an analysis of social-media posts about homelessness, the study shows that homelessness stigma is woven into ordinary talk that marks differences even in mundane conversations. In the context of homelessness, the paper identifies seven common ways people are othered, including through references to appearance, perceived deviance, or social undesirability.
The paper theorieses this process as a “communicative architecture of stigma”, referring to a shared structure of meanings that is built and sustained through language and communication practices. Two recurring patterns are highlighted: performative invocation, when stigmatising ideas are casually summoned in jokes or comparisons, and boundary policing, when communication reinforces who belongs and who does not.
This framework helps explain how language and communication shape and maintain representations, separation, and coercive social boundaries.