Att tala, prata eller snacka: en studie om socialsekreterares reflektioner om förhållningssätt till kommunikation, språkbruk och uttryck

Sammanfattning: Abstract Author: Sebastian Hallin Title: To speak, talk or chat: a study of social workers reflections on approaches to communication, parlance and expression. [translated title] Supervisor: Helena Hansson The purpose of this study was to investigate social workers that work with clients in substance abuse and addiction problems. The study aimed to visualize approaches to parlance, communication and expressions in meetings with clients, this by reflection of social workers. Current research showed that social workers often used a client incomprehensible language, by technical terms and different formal expressions. It was also expressed that clients with active addiction problems used special expressions and parlance, as for outside groups also became unintelligible. This termed the current research as an existing cultural gap between social workers and clients. Therefore a study with focus on social workers and their reflective to approaches was needed. To enable the study, five social workers from three communities in southern Sweden were interviewed. The interviews resulted in various themes that were important to analyze together with two different theories; communication theory, with focus on the semantic perspective. And a power theory, based on the perspective of Foucault. The various themes were: different parlance, select a parlance, reflections of expressions, the power of language and finally, approach to the power of parlance. The study concluded that all of the social workers in the study expressed that they reflected on their approaches to communication, parlance and expressions in meetings with clients. But they did it differently and had different opinions about what should be the best way to relate to. The analysis showed that the social workers had different conceptions of parlance and how the approach should look like and be practiced. The social workers also had the ability to choose how they would talk and express themselves, and with this they also showed how they should relate to the power they expressed existed in the parlance. It was concluded that even if the social workers talked by a formal parlance or the parlance of their clients, they would end up on a unprofessional level. Which were described as a distance or friendly level. Further was the cultural divide seen to diminish, as the social workers were available to select parlance.