BJSW Advance Access originally published online on January 10, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2005 35(1):37-53; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch161
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BJSW Vol. 35 No. 1 © The British Association of Social Workers 2005; all rights reserved.
Language and the Shaping of Social Work
Sheffield University’s Department of Sociological Studies as Lecturer in Social Work (Continuing Professional Education) in 2001, after sixteen years in the Probation Service, the last six of which were spent in Practice Teaching, initially on the DipSW and latterly the Diploma in Probation Studies. Her special interests are professional development and the changing nature of the probation service.
University of Hull, having previously lectured at the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield. She spent ten years in social work practice, latterly specializing in health-related work. She teaches community care policy and practice and researches the health and social care interface, with particular reference to people with Parkinson’s disease.
Correspondence to Marilyn Gregory, University of Sheffield, Department of Sociological Studies, Elmfield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK. E-mail: m.j.gregory{at}shef.ac.uk
This article is concerned with the power of language to shape and confirm social work’s identity and to control its essential direction and task. Social work has perennially concerned itself with communication but paid surprisingly little attention to the more abstract concept of language. The authors trace the changing language used throughout social work’s UK history, placing this into socio-political and socio-economic context and analysing the discourses thus created and promoted. We identify three broad periods in the development of social work, characterized as the moral enterprise, the therapeutic enterprise and the managerial enterprise. We conclude by connecting this discussion with some key challenges, issues and dilemmas currently facing social work in the criminal justice and community care arenas, highlighting the language and discourse of punishment, risk management, consumerism and the market economy. The article concludes by arguing that social work must reclaim the language of its activity as it engages with the challenges to its identity.
Keywords: Language, social work, identity
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