Can discourse analysis enable reflective social work practice?

Abstract

This article explores the implications of discourse analysis for reflective social work practice. Because discourse analysis is itself embedded in discourse, we begin by placing contemporary discourse analysis within its post-modern and post-structuralist context. In the second section we provide an analysis of humanism, as the dominant social work discourse, and black perspectives and feminism, as examples of alternative discourses. Alternative discourses deconstruct the knowledge claims of dominant discourses by exposing their Euro-centric and patriarchal assumptions. Under the scrutiny of post-modern analysis, however, even alternative discourses have been &constructed, their own knowledge claims called into question. In the third section we consider the possibility that discourse analysis, if incorporated into social work training, might encourage reflective practice. Because of the &constructive nature of discourse analysis, it can help place social workers in a "position of uncertainty" This uncertainty may be threatening to professionals" conceptions of themselves. But to the extent that professionals can learn to accept and tolerate contingency, they might be able to assume a posture of openness that would, in turn, facilitate reflective practice.

Doing Narrative Research

“…Although there are risks associated with using such metaphors -namely that they may be seen to romanticize narrative research -I believe they have utility for three main reasons. First, they are useful because they shake off the scientific illusions of objectivity to foreground, instead, researcher subjectivity (Ellerman, 1998;Lawler, 2002;Plummer, 2001). Second, they are useful because they refer to activities that are familiar to many 'ordinary' people (Berger Gluck, 1991).…”

“…Narrative researchers are aware that in the process of pulling together threads of others' stories, we will be telling stories of our own (Ellerman, 1998;Ezzy, 1998;Solas, 1995). This is particularly important as we translate oral talk into some form of written analysis.…”

When Methodology Beats Techniques; or, Why We Prefer Discourse and Narrative Analysis to Interpret Textual Data

“…Narratives are essentially temporal by structure, historical by design, and rhetorical by explanation mode (Griffin, 2010: 133). So, no less than everyday actors, sociologists are "narrators" (e.g., Ellerman, 1998;Ezzy, 1998;Fraser, 2004), telling "stories" to explain how they transform narratives of everyday actors and empirical objects into some spatial, temporal, and logical configurations (Campbell, 2002;Maines, 1993: 17). Thirdly, one can choose a broad definition of narrative as a metaphor for various forms of biographies that denies the possibility of systematic and precise methods of obtaining, transcription and analysis of narratives, i.e.…”

Trying to Complete Socially Just, Politically Sensitive Social Work Research

“…Trying to conduct research in timely fashion, and with some degree of personal gratification, are subsidiary themes. In the following auto-ethnographic reflection (Ellerman, 1998;McNeill and Chapman, 2005;Plummer, 2001), I consider some of the lessons I have learned doing research over the last two decades. Included in this experience is work done as a student, researcher, lecturer in social work research, supervisor of graduate students, and as members of ethics and editorial boards.…”