Abstract
Contemporary professional social work can be characterised by increased textualisation (after Iedema, Rick & Hermine Scheeres. 2003. From doing work to talking work: Renegotiating knowing, doing and identity. Applied Linguistics 24(3). 316–337) with written texts mediating most action. At the same time, writing, as a key dimension to social workers’ practice and labour, is often institutionally unacknowledged, becoming visible primarily when identified as a “problem.” This paper draws on a three year nationally funded UK-based research project to offer a situated account of contemporary professional social work writing, challenging dominant institutional orientations to writing in professional practice. The paper outlines the specific ways in which social work practices, including writing, can be characterised as being ‘in flux’. Drawing on ethnographic data and adopting a Bakhtinian (Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. Discourse in the novel. In Michael Holquist (ed.), The dialogic imagination. Four essays by M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, 259–422. Austin: University of Texas Press; and Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. The problem of speech genres. In Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (eds.), Speech genres and other late essays, trans. V. W. McGee, 60–102. Austin: University of Texas Press) oriented approach to voice, the paper explores the entextualisation of three specific social work texts, focusing in particular on critical moments (after Candlin, Christopher N. 1987. Explaining moments of conflict in discourse. In Ross Steele & Terry Treadgold (eds.), Language topics: Essays in honour of Michael Halliday, 413–429. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Candlin, Christopher N. 1997. General editor’s preface. In Britt Louise Gunnarsson, Per Linell & Bengt Nordberg (eds.), The construction of professional discourse, viii–xiv. London: Longman). These critical moments offer insights into key problematics of social work writing, in particular the tensions around professional voice and discourse. The paper concludes by arguing for an articulation of professional social work writing which takes account of the dialogic nature of language and the discoursal challenges experienced in everyday practice.