”Vi erbjuder rådgivning och stödinsatser. Enheten har myndighetsutövning.” -en kritisk analys av socialtjänsters informationstexter

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study has been to analyze the social services' information texts to see what pattern emerge from these texts, and how this relates to power. Users of social services in Sweden receive a wide array of information texts from the social welfare offices. Despite several efforts from the Swedish government to make the language in these text more simple they still come across as being bureaucratic. The efforts from the government have been in the form of laws such as “Language Act” and paragraphs of “Social Services Act” as well as several books on the subjects such as “Myndigheternas skrivregeler”. The information texts in this study are taken from ten Scanian municipalities, and have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis and qualitative document studies. The study has focused on which words are used, how the information texts refer to a course of events and which other discourses the texts draw upon. Gatekeeper theories, theories about the different aspects of social work and Bourdieus social space theories have been used as theoretical framework. The main finding in the study was that a distinct line can be drawn between the text that refers to what Billquist (1999) labels administrative social work and what Billquist labels supportive social work. In texts referring to administrative social work the language is far more bureaucratic and distanced from the reader than in texts referring to supportive social work. This distinction correlates to where the reader is situated in regard to gatekeepers in the social services. The reader of administrative social work texts has not passed the gatekeeper and is not yet entitled to any form of social benefits. The reader of supportive social work texts has passed the gatekeeper and is entitled to some form of social benefits. The use of bureaucratic language can also be related to cultural capital in accordance with Bourdieus social space theories. The study shows that the language in the information texts can be related to social workers and users of social services in general and not only in the individual meeting between a social worker and a user. The study furthermore claims that the use of bureaucratic language can result in users not choosing to appeal to court since they believe that they do not have the resources/language to be able to win a court case against the social welfare office.