Reflecting in/on social professions: the critical potential of rhetorical reflexivity

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the critical potential of rhetorical studies to inform a concept of reflexivity for social professions. In response to an increasing turn towards technical notions of professional identity across social professions, a renewed critical emphasis on reflective practice, critical reflection, and reflexivity positions professional practice as inevitably an interpretive and discursive endeavor. Despite the growing attention to professional discourse in the current reflection-debate in the social sciences, thus far there has not been a comprehensive exploration of how rhetorical studies can deepen our understanding of reflexivity and can stimulate reflexive attitudes in social professions. Building on conceptual and empirical research in the domain of ‘new rhetorical studies’ as well as on my own research, I examine the various methodological and pedagogical tools rhetoric offers to encourage students to reflect on the interpretive and discursive dimensions of their practice and discipline in critical and productive ways. I argue that a strengthened intersection between rhetorical studies and social sciences can add to the knowledge base on critical and reflexive professional attitudes by deepening our understanding of human interaction in the social world and of how knowledge about this social world can be reflexively produced and mediated.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflexivity
• rhetoric
• discourse
• critical pedagogy
• social professions

Acknowledgments

For reasons of consistency, I have consequently written in the I-form when outlining the critical case studies I set up as part of my research on rhetorical reflexivity. However, I want to explicitly thank all the co-authors of the papers about these studies for their contributions in the process of data collection and providing feedback on my work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Notes on contributors

Laura Van Beveren

Laura Van Beveren is a post-doctoral researcher, affiliated with the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy and the Culture & Education research group at Ghent University. Her research interests include critical and cultural pedagogy, rhetorical studies, and critical reflexivity in social and behavioral sciences. She teaches courses on Current Issues in Social Work and Interpretive Research Methodologies.