This study aims to critically analyse and explore how social workers (operating in the adult social work practice domain) draw on wider social (and social work) discourses in accounting for the work that they do. Utilising purposeful samples of students and qualified social work practitioners, this exploratory study of discourses analyses the implications this has on the construction of the social work identity, role and practice (action). Driven by a series of research questions, the objectives of this research were: 1) To critically analyse and explore the discourses on which students and social work practitioners draw on in their accounts of social work practice; 2) To identify and critically analyse the subject positions and discursive practices (collective ways of speaking) of social workers in respect of these discourses; 3) To critically analyse how and in what way social workers at different stages of the career trajectory draw differently upon these discourses; 4) To critically analyse and evaluate the implications for practice and service users of the respondents’ subject positioning and the discursive practices that they employ; 5) Develop a critically reflexive method (model) for social work education and research in order to make recommendations for research, education and critical social work practice (in the context of self-awareness). As this study involves several people in the exploration of adult social work (Community Care policy context), it will contribute to knowledge of the meaning given to contemporary social work. It does so by expanding the concept of discourse analysis to the wider social context in which the overall narrative (story) is ‘told’. This research aims to understand how respondents draw on discourses in particular ways and includes an analysis of the contradictions and gaps within the overall narrative of social work. Stemming from wider pre-determined narratives that are available in social work cultures, this study not only analyses the words themselves by utilising discourse analytic tools, but demonstrates new ways in which to apply critical discourse analysis in the exploration of accounts of social work. In this examination, this research critically analyses and evaluates the implications these discourses can have on identity construction (personal and professional self), as well as on those social work intends to benefit (service users).

In the 300 years since the magazine originated, this mass medium has become synonymous with women and their worlds. Today, publications for, by and about women still dominate the global magazine market, and the selection and circulation of women’s magazines increase annually – indicative of the popularity of this mixed medium of information, instruction and entertainment. Since the 1980s, academics from different human sciences branches, such as Joke Hermes and Marloes Hülsken in the Netherlands and Angela Gough-Yates, Margaret Beetham, Ros Ballaster and Marjorie Ferguson in the United Kingdom, have proven the academic worth of women’s magazines, by using them as information sources about women’s social knowledge, positions and roles, their relationships and consumer behaviour in (amongst others) historical, sociological, psychological, mass media and women’s studies research. In South Africa, however, academic research on women’s magazines is still largely unexploited: apart from a few dissertations, information is mostly limited to single paragraphs in larger mass media studies. Magazines for black women have, for example, not been researched yet. In this study, South African and Dutch magazines from 2006 are studied as sociocultural journals: accounts or collections of the major trains of thought representative of a specific context and time frame. When magazine content is viewed as the textual distillation of the shared consciousness or culture of a particular audience, and discourse as ways of acting and thinking underlying this shared consciousness, magazines, by drawing on different discourses, report on the norms, values and habits particular to a specific era – yielding information that can be applied in reconstructing images of reality. This study aimed to research, within the context of current women’s magazines, the way in which women’s presence in the career world is accepted and legitimised as standard practice, and to explore the influence of the pursuit of a career on other female roles. It was assumed that the range of ‘superwoman’ roles (career woman, mother, wife, homemaker, lover, friend …) resonates in the ‘work discourse’ – and that all women experience similar frustrations, fears, dreams and expectations, irrespective of linguistic, cultural and socio-economic factors. A selection of sixteen magazines – two issues each of four South African and four Dutch magazine titles, aimed at diverse readerships – were singled out as primary research material. Magazine content was subsequently submitted to close reading, in order to examine as closely as possible the approaches towards women’s deployment in the career world, as made evident in the text. Theoretical concepts from mass media studies, cultural studies, discourse analysis and feminist criticism underpinned the identification of textual patterns, leading to the establishment of links between text and reality and meaningful interpretations of eventual findings. The results indicated that the work discourse in all the examined magazines is informed by three interpretative repertoires – that ultimately determine the way in which this discourse is developed and maintained, both in the magazine content and in everyday life. When the findings resulting from the textual analysis of the work discourse represented in these magazines were compared with actual statistics on the career world, it became obvious, however, that magazine content does not necessarily reflect reality – but that internalising the ambitious, larger-than-life dream aspects contained between a magazine’s covers is precisely the aspect from which readers derive pleasure and satisfaction. / Dissertation (MA (Afrikaans))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Afrikaans / unrestricted