In three short paragraphs (about 100 words each) answer the following questions about each the three sources that you have chosen for your paper: 

What is the proper MLA or APA citation for your source?

Who is/are the author/s and why are they credible?

What was the author’s purpose for creating the text you are using? 

Why is this a good source for your paper and how will it help you discuss your discourse community?

Liu1

Liu8

Social worker

Social work remains one of the most important professionals in the owing role it plays in the community and society. In life, the social, economic, political and spiritual aspect defines the whole concept of life. In the event any of the mentioned aspects fail to functions as expected, the life of human life is endangered. In the world, social injustices, economic inequality and religious misunderstanding have been on the rise which eventually affects socially, economically and mentally affects human beings. In presence of these issues, social workers are needed to bring hope to lives of people, advocate for the less fortunate and voiceless and indeed act in self-denial to for the good of the majority and society. In view of this, social work is the most significant career to bring transformation in the society.

Referring to the Gee, ascertain the need to have a clear understanding of the discourse. According to the Gee, social groups have beliefs, values and systems which define them and if any an individual need have clear mastery of these ingredients to claim membership of such group. Therefore, to effectively act and influence change in the society, the social worker need to walk and act in the values, beliefs and systems that define the office of the social worker or in other words, the discourse of the social work (Hennessey, 2015). Further, Gee argues that status and power is developed when individuals have dominant discourse (Hennessey, 2015). Therefore, the success of the social workers is born in the alter of the compromise but rather, standing in the values, code of ethics and using the language that indeed describes one as an aggressive social worker.

In the career and discourse, there are most important values, actions, language and system of the beliefs which being one need to subscribe to as the member of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). NASW documents 6 ethical core values that each professional bows to and is the requirement to adhere and comply with the established values. First, social workers should be ready to offer service to humanity. According to this ethical value, the interest of the other people should be the priority and stand above the self-interest (Miller, 2018). Considering numerous social problems in society, social workers need to concentrate on providing solutions to the people and not focusing on elevation their social status. In view of this, social workers to be ready and willing to volunteer themselves for the sake of making the lives of other people better. In the process of offering service to the humanity, they should not seek to compare skills and professionalism with financial returns that they make but what should stand paramount in meeting the needs of the people (Miller, 2018).

Second, social work discourse is defined by the desire to promote social justice in society. Social workers should be driven by the desire to bring social change to the people by addressing the issues of unemployment, poverty and discrimination (National Association of Social Workers, n.d). There are categories in the society who are voiceless such as children who are oppressed through early marriages, circumcision of the girls in some communities which affects the health of the girls and others are women who are oppressed in the society because of the cultural practices where some are denied access to the education and ownership. Therefore, these are some of the social injustices which are addressed by the social workers and it matters most when social have a clear understanding of it because they know their boundaries.

Third, social workers value dignity and worth of the person. In this ethical principle, social workers treat all people with dignity and respect taking into consideration the value of the life of the human being. They do not allow personal biases to control their decision making but rather, take cognizant of the difference in the cultural values and instead, let clients to discover themselves. Fourth, social workers value integrity. It is required of them to address with honesty, transparent and remain true to the confession they make to the clients of maintaining the privacy of the information they receive from clients (Miller, 2018). They should hold to professional standards and never allow to compromise to conceal the truth for the benefit of the oppressors and rich in the society that are perpetrators of the social injustices.

Fifth, competence is another value that social workers should uphold. They should practice in the area of their professionalism and attain training and do research to increase expertise and knowledge base (National Association of Social Workers, n.d. This will help in widening their contribution to the society. It is of the great importance for the social workers to have a clear understanding of the five values discussed which will help them to have a dominant course as argued by Gee.

In social work, the most important action of social work practitioners is standing against social injustices in society. There are series of the social problems and injustice such as killing of the women, stigmatization of patients with HIV/AIDS, retrogressive cultural practices such as circumcision of the women, children poverty, racial discrimination, child abuse, and substance abuse and also extrajudicial killing in other countries (Colby & Dziegielewski, 2016). Social workers stand and bravely advocate for the democracy, become the voice of the voiceless, advocate for the fair treatment and create awareness in the communities to change their perspectives in particular issues. In other cases, head social community development projects and mobilize resources to help in the social and economic empowerment of the communities. Therefore, social work is a discourse to transform communities for better and address social injustices in the communities.

According to Gee, language is one of the most important factors in the discourse of social work. In the language, social workers are required to be multilingual and translingual in sense that they can understand language of the client, capable of understanding abstract language, empirical language of the researchers, categorical language of the information scientists, languages of the professionals and also preferential languages which all coupled together help in the effective delivery of the human service (Bloom, Wood & Chambon, 1991). The mystery of the language is of the critical because it informs of the critical thinking approach, understanding of the issues and developing up the best approach to address a particular issue.

Social work does not work in isolation. There are other discourse communities complement social work. There are several disciplines which social work depends on them for effective delivery of the results. First, sociology and social work are related in various areas. Sociology theoretically explains the problems that are affecting society while social work addresses these problems practically (Thomas, 2010). Second, medicine and social work have a close relationship. In the medicines, causes of the outbreak of the diseases in the society. On the other hand, social workers need information released about public health to inform them of the decision that they can take (Thomas, 2010). For example, if there is outbreak of the Cholera and Medicine discipline establishes that dirty water is the cause of the incidences, social workers come up with social programs of creating awareness among the people of the need of taking clean water and even availing clean water to affected individuals in some cases. Psychology, psychiatry are also some of the disciplines which complement the working of the social work. Psychology and psychiatry help social workers in addressing concerns of mental health (Thomas, 2010). Above mentioned disciplines and many others, complement social work by providing the information needed by the social workers to offer human service and addressing social problems.

In every profession, there controversies that dominate them and this is not exceptional to the social work. One of the controversies in the social work is in the respect of one of the values-service to humanity which demands to keep away of the self-interest. According to this value, personal interest matters less and but what is of the most important is offering service and meeting the needs of the other people. In raises concerns, if social workers have to overlook some of the factors such as risks that befall them such as death, health risks in the name of helping other people. In raises concern because social workers have families that depend on them and therefore, they need to tread with care and preserve their lives even when they have resolved to help other people.

Considering the discourse of the social work and most importantly on ethical values, I find that some of the values need to be acquired while others should be learned. For example, integrity is defined by the character of an individual and therefore it can only be acquired rather than learning. Commitment to service to humanity deals mainly on what one believes in and such sacrifice and commitment can only be acquired from a deep sense of the passion and not basically learning from the school. However, competence requires learning where skills are attained on how to deal with particular social issues. Some of the social issues require one to have a clear understanding of the policy dynamics which can be used to restore justice, others require counselling while others require creating awareness and passing information in the society. Therefore, in the discourse of the social work, it will matter a lot to have clear understands of the values which can be acquired and those require learning so that one can operate effectively.

Considering my identity in social work, I have two aspects that define my membership. First, it is a personal identity where may personal attributes, values and beliefs in the social workers have created a sphere of the influence in the society and colleagues who believe in my abilities. Second, it is the social work identity where various organizations and social group recognize my thoughts and feelings towards bringing change in the society by fighting for social justice. I desire to develop competency in the policy frameworks with the aim of the understanding policies and relevant bodies that are relevant in addressing any particular social injustice. I have the plan to further my knowledge by doing research to have a clean sheet of information on the social injustices that have been addressed in the United States, social organizations involved, policies used and policies developed in some of the unique situations.

In the social work, have egocentric and as time goes by, will work on acquiring a heart of service to humanity minding less of personal interest. Considering other discourses, I belong to the psychology and psychiatry which deals understanding of the mental problems because most of the social problems require knowledge of understanding the mind and mental health of the people and applying psychotherapies. In studying the discourse of the social work, the main thing that stood out is that to have dominant discourse, one needs to have solid values, beliefs and systems.

In conclusion, social work discourse deals with addressing both internal and external social problems. In view of this, causes of the social problems should be understood and practical steps should be taken to address them. Finally, in order to effectively solve social problems, ethical values, beliefs and systems are primary factors in the discourse of social work.

References

Hennessey, C. (2015). .James Gee and The Idea behind Discourse. Retrieved from

https://medium.com/literacy-discourse/james-gee-and-the-idea-behind-discourse-86dde02639d8

National Association of Social Workers. (n.d). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from

https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English

Colby, I., & Dziegielewski, S. F. (2016). Introduction to social work: The people’s profession. Lyceum Books.

Bloom, M., Wood, K., & Chambon, A. (1991). The six languages of social work. Social work, 36(6), 530-534.

Thomas, G. (2010). School of Social Work Indira Gandhi National Open University Maidan Garhi, New Delhi 110068.

Miller, A. (2018, June 30). Top 5 Values in Being a Social Worker. Work – Chron.com. Retrieved from

http://work.chron.com/top-5-values-being-social-worker-11466.html