Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the “problem” with case notes in contemporary social work
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Theresa Lillis
Theresa Lillis is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics at The Open University, UK. Her research interest in writing across a range of domains centers on the politics of production and participation. Authored, co-authored and edited books and Special Issues include
Academic Writing in a Global Context (with Mary Jane Curry, Routledge, 2010),The Sociolinguistics of Writing (EUP, 2013), “Theory in Applied Linguistics Research,”AILA Review (vol. 28, 2015) andThe Politics of Language and Creativity (co-edited with David Hann, Open University, 2016).
Abstract
Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of imagined, prescribed and actual trajectories is used to track specific instances of entextualization and to illustrate why the production of case notes is a particularly complex activity. A key argument is that in the institutional imaginary, and reflected in the institutionally prescribed trajectory, case notes are construed as a comprehensive record of all actions, events and interactions, prior to and providing warrants for all other documentation. However, they are in actual practice produced as parts of clusters of a range of different text types which, together, provide accounts of, and for, actions and decisions. This finding explains why case notes are often viewed as incomplete and raises fundamental questions about how they should be evaluated. The complexity of case notes as an everyday professional practice is underscored in relation to professional voice, addressivity and textual temporality.
About the author
Theresa Lillis is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics at The Open University, UK. Her research interest in writing across a range of domains centers on the politics of production and participation. Authored, co-authored and edited books and Special Issues include Academic Writing in a Global Context (with Mary Jane Curry, Routledge, 2010), The Sociolinguistics of Writing (EUP, 2013), “Theory in Applied Linguistics Research,” AILA Review (vol. 28, 2015) and The Politics of Language and Creativity (co-edited with David Hann, Open University, 2016).
Acknowledgments
My thanks to all the social workers who shared their perspectives and practice, to Peter Bunting for comments on an earlier draft, to the ESRC for providing grant funding for a subsequent project (ES/MOO8703/1) which enabled time to write this paper.
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© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: the dynamics of textual trajectories in professional and workplace practice
- Textual trajectories: Theoretical roots and institutional consequences
- Recruiting Frontstage Entextualization: drafting, artifactuality and written-ness as resources in police – witness interviews
- Text bite news: the metapragmatics of feature news
- Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the “problem” with case notes in contemporary social work
- Continuity and change: semiotic relations across multimodal texts in surgical education
- Tracing trajectories as units of analysis for the study of social processes: addressing mobility and complexity in sociolinguistics
- Analyzing textual trajectories: Tensions in purpose and power relations
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: the dynamics of textual trajectories in professional and workplace practice
- Textual trajectories: Theoretical roots and institutional consequences
- Recruiting Frontstage Entextualization: drafting, artifactuality and written-ness as resources in police – witness interviews
- Text bite news: the metapragmatics of feature news
- Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the “problem” with case notes in contemporary social work
- Continuity and change: semiotic relations across multimodal texts in surgical education
- Tracing trajectories as units of analysis for the study of social processes: addressing mobility and complexity in sociolinguistics
- Analyzing textual trajectories: Tensions in purpose and power relations
