SWN025 Chap.9 Language, Discourse and Narrative
Language, Discourse and Narrative
This chapter explains discourse as the Week 7 lecture defines it, the way naming something makes it real, and shows how to analyse the language in your own account.
It covers regimes of truth, what language emphasises and silences, the categories and hierarchies language carries, subjugated discourses, deficit-based case writing, the welfare words examined in Week 9, and the reflexive skills that move from description to change. A clinic page lists phrases common in case writing, the discourse each carries and what each tends to silence.
Treat it as the chapter that teaches you to read your own case notes critically.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Discourse and regimes of truth
- 02
What language emphasises and silences
- 03
Categories, hierarchies and power
- 04
Subjugated discourses and what is left out
- 05
Deficit language in case writing
- 06
Welfare words and screen discourse
- 07
Reflexive skills for organisations
Worked example · free
Analyse the language of a referral
- 1Identify the discourse: chaotic, disengaged and non-compliance frame the family as the problem and the services as reasonable.
- 1Find what is silenced: the family’s own account, their circumstances and how earlier services treated them are absent.
- 1Name the effect: the history of non-compliance invites the next worker to expect failure before meeting the family.
- 1Rewrite: describe specific events and conditions, record the family’s view, and leave the history open to interpretation.
Key terms
- Discourse
- A discourse is a socially shared way of knowing and naming that shapes what counts as real and true in a setting.
- Regime of truth
- A regime of truth is Foucault’s term for the combination of power, language and institutional practice that fixes what counts as true.
- Subjugated discourse
- A subjugated discourse is a way of knowing that has been left out, distorted or hidden in a dominant account.
- Screen discourse
- A screen discourse is language that distracts attention from economic exploitation and the unequal distribution of power.
- Frame of meaning
- A frame of meaning is an organising set of words and assumptions, such as a market frame, that shapes how a situation is understood.
Language, Discourse and Narrative FAQ
Why should I analyse my own words rather than just my actions?
The Week 7 lecture argues that language does not merely convey experience but helps constitute identities, relations and contexts. The words you used determined what you emphasised and silenced, so they are direct evidence of the assumptions shaping your practice.
What is a subjugated discourse?
It is a way of understanding a situation that has been left out, distorted or hidden. The lecture explains that identifying the discourses you were operating in lets you ask what is missing, and that these subjugated discourses may show how meanings were built to preserve dominant practices.
How do dominant discourses keep their power?
According to the lecture, they hold their position only while they go unquestioned. Identifying and naming their contradictions can resist and change them, and naming alternative viewpoints is itself a step toward critical change.
What are welfare words?
The Week 9 lecture, drawing on Gramsci through Garrett (2020), uses the term for words such as underclass and welfare dependency. It argues they create a politically distracting screen discourse that deflects attention from economic exploitation and the unequal distribution of power, which makes them worth noticing in your own records.
What did Rossiter’s reflection model for students?
The Week 7 lecture notes that she puts herself inside the situation, owns the ways her assumptions and experiences may colour what she sees, examines herself critically, identifies gaps between how she thought she acted and how she may have been perceived, and demonstrates reflexivity.
Assessment move
Collect five phrases from your incident: two you used, two used by colleagues or records, and one from your agency’s official documents. For each, note the discourse it carries and what it silences. Use the strongest pair in the essay, citing Fook’s chapter on discourse, language and narrative and one of the Week 7 readings, and show how naming the discourse changed what you now see.
Read one Week 7 reading on discourse analysis in social work alongside Fook’s chapter, and borrow one precise term from it for your analysis. Then read your draft aloud and listen for the labels you have reused without noticing; the habits of case writing often survive into reflective writing.
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