The document discusses the discourse of social work. It outlines several key aspects of the social work discourse, including its values, language used, relationship to other disciplines, and controversies. The main points are: - Social work aims to address social injustices, promote social justice, and help those in need while upholding values of service, dignity, worth, integrity, and competence. - It relies on language skills and understanding the languages of clients, researchers, professionals and more. - Disciplines like sociology, medicine, and psychology complement social work by providing information to address problems. - A controversy is whether social workers should overlook risks to themselves when helping others, as upholding service

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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
1. There are several forms of Business Organizations available
in the US. Which forms would be most advantages to which
Health services organizations, and why? In your comments try
to give at least one or two examples.
2. Though Health benefits have traditionally not been taxed, the
Affordable Care Act includes a tax on high-cost insurance plans
(effective in 2018). What would be the impact of this on
individuals? . . . on the Health Services industry?