"While the stranger is present before us, evidence can arise of his possessing an attribute that makes him different from others... and of a less desirable kind – in the extreme, a person who is quite thoroughly bad, or dangerous, or weak. He is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one. Such an attribute is a stigma, especially when its discrediting effect is very extensive; sometimes it is also called a failing, a shortcoming, a handicap. It constitutes a special discrepancy between virtual and actual social identity. The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed."
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Ch.1 - p.12-13, 13
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erving_Goffman
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Erving Goffman
1922 – 1982
kanadisch-US-amerikanischer Soziologe
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