"Every Couple Has Their Fights " Stigma and Subjective Narratives of Verbal Violence
Drawing on thirty in depth interviews with individuals who have experienced verbal violence in intimate and family relationships, this article utilizes constructivist grounded theory to examine the tensions inherent in representations of verbal violence in the interview context. The authors find that participants discursively construct verbal violence as a normalized experience, discuss it as an escalating problem, and retrospectively define it as an intolerable form of abuse. These discursive constructions are related to social understandings of verbal violence as both a normal experience (fighting) and a stigmatized behavior (abuse) Normalization and defensive othering are discussed as techniques of identity management in light of the stigma attached to being a victim of abuse.