SSWR is Coming Up--and The Power of Words

The annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research will start Thursday, January 17, 2008, in Washington, D.C. There will be a meeting of the qualitative methods interest group. I expect that people will want to do some networking and to learn from each other.

I think we prefer to network in person. This blog has been up since May 2007, and it is now January 2008. Two people have used it.


Censorship and Worse on the Internet

I have several places where I can write what I please, but I've also found that ezinearticles.com will not let me publish articles about child sexual abuse.

These articles are based on interviews with survivors and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. I use the lanuage that they use. The website says my language is obscene, and they will not publish the articles. I am a bit worn out from pointing out that they are part of the problem. Their stance silences children and allows perpetrators to carry on. Stay tuned. Maybe they will see the point.

Paradoxically, Language Silences Child Sexual Abuse Survivors

Children who have been sexually abused have to use the words they know to decribe what happened to them. If adults tell them these words are dirty and they should not use them, what recourse do children have?

I interviewed a 14 year-old girl who was driven to tell me what had happened to her. This is what she said about the older teen who raped her: He said to me, "You fat oomph, you oomph
my oomph."

At least she communicated something.

Narrative Analysis Workshop

On Saturday at SSWR, Karen Staller, Kathleen Wells, and I are doing a workshop on social work and narrative analysis. Karen will cover a structured interview/narrative method, Kathleen will present on Labov's approach to narrative, and I will do critical discourse analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) looks at the power of words to construct other people and to silence people about oppressive practices. It is a role of social work to resist oppression. The example I gave above of the 14 year-old girl is an example of the effects of oppressive practices. An example of resistance is the word "queer,"which until fairly recently had negative connotations. The LGBT movement has reclaimed it and it even has surfaced in respectable circles of academia as queer theory.

The language of oppression not only leads to discrimination but also keeps discrimination going.

I hope other people use this blog. I have a book I want to tell you about but I will save that for another time.

I hope to connect with a lot of people at the SSWR conference.


Jane Gilgun