Publications

Publication details [#61030]

Monteiro, David. 2016. Street-level bureaucracy revisited. Formulating address in social work service encounters. Language and Dialogue 6 (1) : 54–80.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/ld

Annotation

In social work practice, keeping records of encounters with clients is a routinized practice for documenting cases. This paper focuses on the specific task of obtaining the prospective clients’ correct address for filling in a standardized personal report form. This analysis focuses on the way both the client(s) and the social worker cooperatively orient to the practice of writing addresses, showing how this apparently simple task is multimodally implemented within interaction, and how it can generate some complications and expansions. A special focus will be devoted to difficulties encountered by clients to give their address in an adequate way, as well as to the transformation of this activity from an individual to a collective task.