ASp la revue du GERAS 71 | 2017 Anglais de spécialité et milieux professionnels A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Analyse diachronique du vocabulaire du SIDA dans les Chroniques de San Francisco d’Armistead Maupin Christelle Klein-Scholz Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/asp/4997 DOI: 10.4000/asp.4997 ISSN: 2108-6354 Publisher Groupe d'étude et de recherche en anglais de spécialité Printed version Date of publication: 1 March 2017 Number of pages: 179-171 ISSN: 1246-8185 Electronic reference Christelle Klein-Scholz, « A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City », ASp [Online], 71 | 2017, Online since 01 March 2018, connection on 01 November 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/asp/4997 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.4997 This text was automatically generated on 1 November 2020. Tous droits réservés A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of ... 1 A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Analyse diachronique du vocabulaire du SIDA dans les Chroniques de San Francisco d’Armistead Maupin Christelle Klein-Scholz 1 The paper focuses on Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, an American body of literature that was considered as “the first fiction […] to acknowledge AIDS.”1 This body of literature goes against Oscar Wilde’s statement that “all art is quite useless” (1890: 4); it can be termed “art” without the shadow of a doubt, and yet also has a specific purpose. This literature, which is often referred to as “AIDS literature,”2 consists of a number of novels that were written and published in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, i.e., the 1980s and early 1990s, and that are still being written and published, though the pace of publication has significantly declined. Those novels, of which Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series is one example among many, are mostly authored by gay men,3 and they stand at a crossroads between art and activism: they can be thought of as works of art and they also feature elements whose goal in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was to circulate knowledge about this new epidemic that was spreading among “disenfranchised” communities4 without the rest of the population taking full measure of the catastrophe. It is worth looking into the way the language of AIDS has evolved in those novels, because time is of the essence when it comes to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s: it took many years and many deaths for public authorities, mainstream media and the rest of the population to grasp what was at stake. It also took activism—several forms of activism, one of which was the publication of the novels in question. Another one was the creation of strong-willed activist associations, the best example being ACT UP, the “AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power whose motto is “SILENCE = DEATH” and one of whose goals was to empower people with AIDS, notably through language, as its motto indicates. This paper first gives some insights into the language of AIDS, then takes a closer look at the “before” ASp, 71 | 2017 A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of ... 2 picture and at the “after” picture, 1996 being the great divide, i.e., the year when antiretroviral therapies were developed, changing the very nature of HIV/AIDS. 1. Do you speak AIDS? Terminological clarifications 2 Although most people know that “AIDS” stands for “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” and therefore that AIDS is a “syndrome,” not a “disease,” the use of the word “disease” is, strikingly, almost systematic, whether it be in literature or in mainstream media. Several scholars have reflected upon this inaccuracy, and it seems that the explanation lies in what people expect from a diagnosis: in our postmodern times,5 a diagnosis is meant to unite a set of symptoms under a readable banner, a label that can be understood. A “disease” is something everyone understands; a “syndrome,” however, is precisely a set of clinical signs and symptoms. As a result, the word “syndrome” is exactly what people do not want from a diagnosis: the medical establishment is expected to come up with words that simplify and unite symptoms. This is why the word “disease” is still used: inaccuracy is chosen over unreadability. 3 Most people know what “AIDS” stands for, but fewer people know the precise difference between being HIV-positive and having AIDS. And the reason is that there are two official definitions, one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)6 and one by the World Health Organization (WHO).7 The CDC definition takes into account a biological marker, the CD4+ cell count, and/or the presence of one or several opportunistic infections that are part of an official list (revised in 1993); the WHO definition (revised in 2007) only takes into account clinical manifestations, and can therefore be used in contexts where CD4+ cell count testing is not available. This two- tier system reflects and aims to manage the heterogeneity of the epidemic,8 but it also causes the very name of the disease to be unstable. The focus of this paper being the diachronic dimension of the specialized language of AIDS, it is interesting to point out that, when the CDC definition was revised in 1993, the inclusion of the CD4+ cell count aimed to make the definition of AIDS more encompassing. In that respect, the following example is noteworthy; it so happens that, when the CDC revised the definition of AIDS, writer David Feinberg had already been tested positive for HIV, and the broadening of the definition of AIDS resulted in his fitting the new definition, as he mentions in Queer and Loathing: I’m getting AIDS this Wednesday, April 19, at 12:01 AM because my T-cells have consistently been under 200 for the past year and the Center for Disease Control’s definition of AIDS is scheduled to change on April 1 to include […] the fewer- than-200 T-cells criteria. April fool! I’ve got AIDS. (1994: 90) 4 Given that AIDS is the final stage of HIV infection,9 crossing the threshold between “being HIV-positive” and “having AIDS” is quite significant, as author Mark Doty points out in Heaven’s Coast: For many people, there’s a clear line of demarcation which marks the crossing from being HIV-positive to having AIDS. That’s a telling grammatical distinction, the difference between being and having, between a condition and a possession. AIDS is a possession one is possessed by. (1996: 139)10 5 One last issue that needs to be raised is that of the name of the virus. Christening the virus was actually a several-step process: it was first dubbed “LAV” in 1983 (that was the name given by the French team who discovered it, and they chose cautiousness: “Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus” was chosen because early AIDS patients usually ASp, 71 | 2017 A diachronic analysis of the language of AIDS in Armistead Maupin's Tales of ... 3 suffered from a swelling of the lymph nodes); it was tagged “HTLV-III” in 1984 (that was the name given by the American co-discoverer, who thought the virus was bound to be a close relative of the retroviruses he had already discovered, “HTLV-I” and “HTLV- II”—it turned out not to be the case), and it ended up being called “HIV,” which is actually a compromise agreed upon in 1986 by the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses in the midst of the feud between the two teams. Interestingly enough, in one of the most recent AIDS novels, A Horse Named Sorrow (2012), whose plot is set in the early years of the epidemic, Trebor Healey goes so far as to avoid naming the virus altogether: Jimmy came from Buffalo, New York, and he had the acronym with him on the train platform the day I met him. […] “I got something I gotta tell ya.” He stared for another second. “I got it.” Any faggot worth his salt knew what it was too. […] The mother of all acronyms. […] I don’t dignify it with a name. (2012: 5–76) 6 The question that needs to be asked to conclude this first section is the following: is the language of AIDS a specialized language? No such book as a dictionary of HIV/AIDS exists, but the “Terminology Guidelines” regularly published and revised by UNAIDS come close. UNAIDS is the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and it freely provides a number of reference documents that include the “Terminology Guidelines,” the latest version (published in 2015) being a sixty-page booklet whose first two sentences are worth quoting: “Language shapes beliefs and may influence behaviours. Considered use of appropriate language has the power to strengthen the global response to the AIDS epidemic” (2015: 3). The first part of the booklet, entitled “Preferred terminology,” consists in a table that features, on the left-hand side, the phrases and terms you are not to use and, on the right-hand side, those you should prefer: for example, page 8, it is recommended not to use “fight and other combatant language (e.g., struggle, battle, campaign or war),” the explanation (given in the middle column of the table, entitled “Background”) being the following: “Avoid such terms unless in a direct quotation or because of the specific context of the text.