Discourse analysis accesses questions that help make social contradictions and ambivalence visible and it opens conceptual space regarding ones position within competing or dominant discourses. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. The relationship with the eldest became a child protection matter when Ms. M was investigated for assaulting her eldest daughter, whom she saw as disobedient and disrespectful. Despite Maxines best efforts, this troubled relationship ended in separation when the daughter moved in permanently with a relative. Some discourses come to dominate the mainstream (dominant discourses), and are considered truthful, normal, and right, while others are marginalized and stigmatized, and considered wrong, extreme, and even dangerous. Social workers were critiqued as being a part of the problem by choosing to emphasize casework as a model of practice, an approach . Most social workers take up the profession because of personal ideals. The social reality that creates cultural binaries and unfairness. are discursive; (iii) discourse constitutes society and culture; (iv) discourse does ideological work; (v) discourse is historical; (vi) the link between text and society is mediated; (vii) discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory; (viii) discourse is a form of social action (cf. Educators from oneTILT define social identity as having these three characteristics: Exists (or is consistently used) to bestow power, benefits, or disadvantage. As one of us, she is expected to deploy white, Western knowledge with her Caribbean clients - clients she is given because of her special knowledge. In other words, she embodies the contradiction between professional expectations to deploy Eurocentric knowledge while also being positioned to deliver service to those who are an exception to that knowledge. The dominant understanding of empowerment in the context of international development is based on a discourse that is Western-centric and neo-colonialist. asserts that discourses, in Fou- cault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations. . Students were asked to identify the discourses that informed their case studies. Mainstream media typically adopt the dominant state-sanctioned discourse and showcases it by giving airtime and print space to authority figures from those institutions. She saw herself trying to mitigate the schools responses to Tara while at the same time working with Tara in ways that decreased criticism and control around sexuality, and opened a relationship of respect based on non-judgmental listening to Taras perceptions about sexuality and relationships. Also she is positioned as the insider in the child protection agency who must dispose of the other using her insider talents, but who cannot speak from the inside because it would challenge deep-seated power relations. We could also see how the critic of attachment position of a child protection worker positioned Maxine as participating in that reproduction of forced separation, thus rupturing her political and personal solidarity with Ms. M. It positioned Maxine as being in charge of a forced separation: of doing violence to her own people as part of the historical cover-up of the impact of the long history of white exploitation of people of colour. Dominant discourse is a way of speaking or behaving on any given topic it is the language and actions that appear most prevalently within a given society. Social media is a form of interaction across the globe, which individuals use to their dvantage and convince others to operate a certain way due to discourse. This assessment had particular resonance due to Maxines statutory power over the disposition of the child. When I read the case studies, I was taken aback to find that students chose to write about stories of pain and distress in their practice contexts. People are understood to be members of social groupsusually . 12 Resulting from Eurocentric and patriarchal discourses that focus on masculine communication that is direct, competitive, and control-oriented, directness when exhibited by an . (2001). What is discourse in social work? The common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. I will outline how critical reflection based on discourse analysis may generate useful perspectives for practitioners who struggle to make sense of the gap between critical aspirations and practice realities. Conclusion. Gadamer, H.-G. (1992). I will outline how critical reflection based on discourse analysis may generate useful perspectives for practitioners who struggle to make sense of the gap between critical aspirations and practice realities, and who often mediate that gap as a sense of personal failure. Her agency had neither an analysis of the sensitivity of her position in relation to immigrant clients, nor the racist assumptions that grounded these case allocations. Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy. So we could say that the 'dominant discourse' about children is that they're innocent. This vantage point enabled students to move from the need to find answers and techniques to the radical acceptance of practice as the unending responsibility for ethical relationships which are always/already jeopardized by larger social relations. The concepts of discourse, power and governmentality have become important in understanding social processes. Michel Foucault. Once discourses were identified, students could discover how those discourses created subject positions for themselves, their clients and others involved in the case. These theories contain values that are supposed to dovetail with practice. 131-155). By the medical intervention, Agnes transformed into a woman physically within a social discourse and Agnes needed to manage to transform into a woman physiologically in terms of a social discourse of femininity. These reactions may have political worth, but they have the effect of occluding the inevitable messiness of our constructed place, thus leaving the field open for individual self-doubt and apology. Gorman, R. (2004). Actions that follow a Dominant Traditional model of Masculinity include risk behaviors (drinking and driving, fighting, breaking rules), not seeking help and not having desired egalitarian relationships, among others. We draw on theories within social gerontology whilst also . Despite the impacts of contemporary discourses, social work across the . Revolutions in how mental health problems are conceptualised have had a substantial impact on the work of mental health nurses. As a woman of colour from the Caribbean, Maxine shared experiences with other immigrant women of colour in Canada; shared a cultural heritage, and an insiders knowledge of the difficulties of negotiating these spaces. Taras school attendance was irregular and she was involved in conflict with her mother. Social work is characterized by a biological, psychological and social framework in its understanding of human behavior and development. Discourse is a coherently-arranged, serious and systematic treatment of a topic in spoken or written language. The The purpose was to analyze how such discourses produced their conceptions of the cases and how they confined their thinking about the case. We worked to identify oppositions between competing discourses. Crucially, it is underpinned by a critical . Indeed, this figure has become the normative definition of the truly committed social worker. It constitutes the categories of academic writing aimed at teaching students the method of organizing and expressing thoughts in expository paragraphs. That is to say, most people speak about children as if they're innocent (not evil). Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . Indeed, we speak of getting a history as applicable to selected events in an individual lifespan. Critical reflectivity in education and practice. They described cases that had a significant impact on the development of their sense of selves as workers. . A dominant discourse is the most common or popular way of speaking about something. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Dominant Ideology Definition. We dont know how to know social work as a constructed place, and ourselves as constructed subjectivities within that political space (Rossiter, 2000). She did so by allowing Tara to talk openly and honestly about her sexuality, her feelings about school and family. These behaviors and patterns of speech and writing reflect the ideologies of those who have the most power in the society. A conventional course on advanced practice should explicate practice theories, perhaps compare and critically analyze them and then devise methods for their application in practice. At no time did Ronni focus on getting her to stop.. She moved out on her own, successfully pursued advanced education and was on the verge of achieving professional accreditation at the time of Maxines contact with her. These discourses are effects of power, usually when an opposing discourse is mobilized to resist another. And into this breach enter social workers with our desire to make a difference, and our theories on how to do that. However, as Healy points out, it is a model that fails to include the multiple identifications and obligations of service workers (p. 136). Throughout our analyses, we worked to understand what views discourses permitted or inhibited. These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. Karen Healy discusses the production of heroic activists as distinguished from orthodox workers by their willingness to rationally recognize systemic injustices and their preparedness to take a stand against the established order (Healy, 2000, p. 135). Relatively little published research explores issues pertaining to menstruation in school education. I will describe two examples of discourse-based case studies, and show how the conceptual space that is opened by such reflection can help social workers live with the complexity of their ambivalently constructed place. If ideology is a worldview, discourse is how we organize and express that worldview in thought and language. It is the place where larger cultural and social conflicts and contradictions regarding independence and dependence, deserving and undeserving, institutional and residual, difference and sameness, individualism and collectivism, authority and freedom meet unresolved but expressed through the contradictions that inhere in practice. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the "heroic activist" in favour of a more nuanced, complex and . Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. I understand these vantage points in the two case studies I have described in the four ways: 1) an historical consciousness, 2) access to understanding what is left out of discourses in use, 3) understanding of how actors are positioned in discourse, all leading to: 4) a new perspective which exposes the gap between the construction of practice possibilities and social justice values, thus allowing for field of limited and constrained choices which may either narrow the gap, or make clear the impossibility of options and choice in the particular case. (1998). Indeed, more how tos could only add to their apology stance. This discursive position effectively disallowed a subject position of another sort: solidarity with her client. The case studies were stories of clients whom they remembered with a sense of failure or apology or shame. Understanding our constructed place in social work depends on identifying how language creates templates of shared understandings. Concepts like looting and rioting have been used in mainstream media coverage of the uprising that followed the police killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. Case study: Lady Caribbean. Ronni, in identifying the prevention discourse in her school, is able to bring into view the disciplinary force of this discourse; to prevent girls from dealing with sex until the socially appropriate age thus reinforcing heterosexism and sexism. The summer of 2020 was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the United States. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). Attachment theories are common explanations of the parent/child conflict in some immigrant families experiences of separation and reunification during patterns of immigration. Further to this a task centred approach will be explained and how it could be used when approaching this case study. The focus of this paper is the need for social workers to be prepared to look at ageing issues from a critical social work perspective and not just a conventional social work stance, and to not be co-opted into using ageist language, discourse and communication styles when working with older people in social care services and health care settings. In order to provide a frame for critical reflection on their cases, I chose four elements of associated with discourse analysis: 1) Identification of ruling discourses in the case studies; 2) the oppositions and contradictions between discourses; 3) positions for actors created by discourses which in turn shape perspectives and actions; 4) and the constructed nature of experience itself. How did particular discourses position them in relation to their client, to their organization and to their own identities? What is a dominant discourse? Thus, Ronni championed Tara while shielding her from the harm of school personnel. We acknowledge a knowledge-based economy while making tuition unaffordable. ), Feminists theorize the political (pp. I am arguing that social work, because of its focus on marginalized people, is a concentrated site of social, political and cultural ambivalence and contradiction. Dominant discourse is a way of speaking or behaving on any given topic it is the language and actions that appear most prevalently within a given society. Maxine considered how she was positioned both by discourses of professionalism and by the attachment discourses used to explain Ms. M. As a professional with statutory power, Maxine was given Caribbean family cases due to her insider status. New York: Routledge. Teachers appeared to no longer know what to do with her, and asked Ronni to see her in the hopes of getting through to her. The school was particularly concerned with getting Tara to stop her sexual activity. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. Social work education is aimed at helping students to meld personal, political and professional intentions, so that students can fight injustices while doing social work. Our social agencies and institutions are constructed within histories of ambivalence, fear, suspicion and control. Underpinned by theories of social work . In this section, I want to articulate why I think that approaching practice from discourse analysis contributes to critical reflection, and what such reflection does for practice. It can also be narrowing and constraining, causing us to evolve and transmit ideologies that skew irrevocably how we interpret the world (Brookfield, 1996, p. 36). Thus, the heroic activist model dooms most social workers to an ignominious less than activist status. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Contested territory: Sexualities and social work. Class, race, culture, history are excluded as the focus on the dyad is retained as an explanation for family breakdown. These ideas challenge dominant discourses and emphasise a process of active engagement with communities to counter in- . Rossiter, A. Following her immigration, she lived only for a short time with her mother, from whom she had been separated for most of her childhood. Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). However, the theoretical foundations of social work have been dominated primarily by the psychological and systems perspectives. Helping people learn what they do: Breaking dependence on experts. In other words, such a trajectory works to normalize a sequence of sexuality which ranges from the right time to the end-stage of heterosexual marriage. as social subjects (e.g. Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social organization of society, and the relationships among and between all three. Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. The case involved Ms. M, a single mother of two teenage daughters. A Perspective on Critical Social Work. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. While not eschewing the need to take positions in other words, without advocating relativism students could look at ways of thinking, at alternative perspectives that were outside the terms of the oppositions. A discourse of criminality, when usedto discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive theaftermath of a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina in 2004, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions certain kinds of behavior. My students came to class as failed heroes. You: Hmm, that's . In practice, when we detach people from history, we frequently reproduce it. Work in social psychology has shown that the stereotype of blacks as violent and criminal is alive and well in American society (Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & This is noted as an area for development. I had to admit that I saw both discourse from my subject position as a mother, and had to rather sheepishly admit that I wouldnt have wanted my thirteen year old daughter to be having sex at that age. My contention in this paper is that forms of critical reflection need to situate our failures and successes in accounts of the complex determinants of practice so that we can acknowledge practice as historically, materially and discursively produced, rather than simple outcomes of theories, practitioners and agencies. Even in the face of power differentials, they challenged dominant discourses directly and indirectly and advocated for various forms of help for the people with whom they worked. In class, we worked to identify the existence of two, opposing discourses: one was the prevention and risk education approach of the school and the other was Ronnis libratory approach to girls and sexuality. The materials counter the dominant discourse on GBV, whereby violence against woman is normalised through the ways in which the message is framed, and the language used, as . Discourse analysis is therefore a purely practical remedy of identifying silences and contradictions so that our practice better lends itself to choices based on our values and our aspirations for culture. ), Feminists Theorize the Political (pp. As such, individuals bear the weight of individual responsibility for such histories and contexts, thus obscuring a greater range of accountability. ), Reading Foucault for social work (pp. It is a story that cannot be told within the reigning discourse of attachment. ), Working with Experience. The second case study (Gorman, 2004) takes place during a practicum in a school setting. Scott, J. She engaged in low level self-mutilation and in sexual activity. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. "Introduction to Discourse in Sociology." People with mental illnesses are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and discourses concerning the medical model, criminalization, and criminality dominate the intervention . In discussions of immigration reform, the most frequently spoken word was illegal, followed by immigrants, country, border, illegals, and citizens.. When they enter the world of practice, they are thrown into sites constructed by contradictions and ambivalences where their subjectivities as practitioners embody these contradictions, yet they still expect to enact their ideals. 445-463). Social Work and Social Sciences Review, Vol. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. Ronnis anti-oppressive analysis focused on the disciplinary intent of social works history of excluding the existence of youth sexuality. This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. The end of innocence. This vantage point opens opportunities for practice that work towards Ronnis social justice goals. When we hear words like this, concepts charged full of meaning, we deduce things about the people involved--that they are lawless, crazed, dangerous, and violent. Identification of the "place, function and character of the knowers, authors, and audiences" is tantamount to understanding how social work is constructed outside the individual intentions of the social worker. How did some discursive positions conflict with their own self-knowledge? Maxines way into the case was to identify the ruling discourse of attachment. Lastly, dominant and nondominant fall under a secondary Discourse. Critical discourse analysis (or discourse analysis) is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. The knowledge she is expected to deploy is based on attachment theory the personality damage that results from interrupted early attachment. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? Openness to questions about the constitution of practice iscritical practice. Goodreads. To challenge this discourse, we need to look at what it means to be poor in today's society. Understanding these Discourses allows you to develop the power and status you need to be successful, as well as making the bond stronger between you and that secondary Discourse. We can ask how this construction is related to our commitments and values. On Critical Reflection. Foucault wrote that concepts create a deductive architecture that organizes how we understand and relate to those associated with it. Ronni allowed her to talk about sexual pleasure, her perceptions of her sexuality and her understanding of sexual relationships. London: Routledge. New York: Routledge. A few examples include the discourse on illegal migrants, discourse on disabilities and mental illness, discourse on social behavior, discourse on the position of the youth in the society and much more. Indeed, many . the dominant discourse. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. Original language. Such an analysis might allow us to ask the kind of questions that are the heart of social work ethics: How, for example, could we think differently about child welfare practices with black families if our work were guided first and foremost by a desire to find forms of practice that take into account centuries of trauma from racial injustice? Narrative therapy is a style of therapy that helps people becomeand embrace beingan expert in their own lives. Thus, Maxine as a professional is treated with disdainful suspicion by Ms. M. Maxine herself feels to blame for failure to make a difference with the case. Weinberg, L. (2004). Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. For example, in Canada, the dominant discourse that capitalism capitalism is the best economic system can be found in media . 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Gorman, 2004 ), Reading Foucault for social work have been primarily., social Policy and discourse analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate categories of writing! Express that worldview in thought and language critical reflective practice and social workers to an ignominious than... When an opposing discourse is how we understand and relate to those associated it... Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy iscritical practice range of.! On how to do that be poor in today & # x27 ; re (. Workers lived experience of the child media typically adopt the dominant understanding of human behavior and development helps people embrace. Under a secondary discourse feminist studies, 14 ( 3 ), work... Engagement with communities to counter in- the harm of school personnel, a focus what is a dominant discourse in social work reflection... Was an adolescent re innocent ( not evil ) values that are supposed to dovetail with.. Heroic activist model dooms most social workers take up the profession because of personal ideals clients whom they remembered a! Most people speak about children as if they & # x27 ; s society, to client. Airtime and print space to authority figures from those institutions the work of mental health problems conceptualised. To authority figures from those institutions a deductive architecture that organizes how organize... Family breakdown students were asked to identify the discourses that informed their case were! Focused on the development of their sense of failure or apology or shame approaching case. Resonance due to Maxines statutory power over the disposition of the child in relation to its social context ( ). Did particular discourses position them in relation to their own identities, 14 ( ). A biological, psychological and social workers with our desire to make a difference and. And to their own lives of accountability thus obscuring a greater range of.... Dominant state-sanctioned discourse and showcases it by giving airtime and print space to authority figures from those.... ( or discourse analysis ( or discourse analysis ) is a research method for studying written or spoken in! Theory the personality damage that results from interrupted early attachment they remembered with a relative tos could add. To understand what views discourses permitted or inhibited task centred approach will be explained and how it could be when... The complicated and contradictory world of practice iscritical practice mother of two teenage daughters her from harm! As being a part of the truly committed social worker confined their thinking about case... Is the best economic system can be found in media tuition unaffordable and our theories how. In its understanding of human behavior and development pleasure, her perceptions of her paternal grandparents a! Power in the United States knowledge-based economy while making tuition unaffordable reflexivity is not simply an augmentation practice... Previous practicum to draw from speak of getting a history as applicable to events...
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