The Necessity of Linguistic Sophistication for Social Workers

Abstract

This article calls for the introduction of English language study into the social work curriculum. It explains how the kinds of social judgments that people make about each other on the basis of dialectal differences may interfere with communication between social workers and their clients, coworkers, or the general community. The authors suggest that English language study can ameliorate these barriers to effective communication and show how it can be incorporated into the social work curriculum, either by a course in sociolinguistics or by inclusion in the methods sequence.