Language is never neutral: a critical analysis of the language surrounding adoption in the UK

Abstract

In the light of increased attention to the role of social work in UK adoption practices, this article takes a ‘turn to language’ and examines the neglected field of the words and phrases commonly used in the adoption process. It subjects these to a critical scrutiny and suggests that the vocabulary employed contains inaccuracies, euphemisms, misnomers and aspirational promises and carries implications that limit options and determine outcomes. The article provides other examples from social work practice with children and families and concludes that a critical approach to a profession’s everyday language use can uncover how power is exercised.

Keywords

Adoption child care everyday language ‘insider’ shorthand professional power

Introduction

In 2016, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) launched an enquiry into adoption against a backdrop of growing debate and controversy, especially over adoptions from the care system. The objective was to:

… examine the role of the social worker in adoption, with a particular focus on how ethical issues and human rights legislation are understood and inform practice, and how these relate to pursuing good long-term outcomes for children and their families.

This article seeks to contribute to this debate by focusing on the language of adoption because, as is the case with the wider field of language use and social work, this has received little attention. It chooses this practice area because, embedded within everyday terms are what Goffman (1974: 321) describes as ‘critical features of everyday face-to-face talk that might otherwise remain invisible to us’. Widening Goffman’s concept of everyday talk to include writing, this article subjects adoption discussions to detailed scrutiny because a ‘turn to language’ can aid the development of a critical understanding of ‘the processes that continue to shape, legitimate and naturalise inequalities’ (Masocha, 2017: 172–173).

Masocha’s analysis involved an examination of the words used by those working with asylum seekers and shows how the seemingly innocuous use of the word ‘Africa’ or just the words ‘we’ and ‘here’ can uncover deep and unconscious assimilationist assumptions. He argues that these serve to construct and portray asylum seekers as embodying difference ‘which contrasted sharply with the dominant white culture that was represented as neutral and normal’ (Masocha, 2017: 171). Once language is given such attention, simple phrases in widespread use have serious connotations. With regard to disability, for instance, the phrase ‘confined to a wheelchair’ appears to compound a disability, whereas the more neutral phrase ‘using a wheelchair’ implies overcoming limitations. What is revealed when we turn to the language of adoption?

Adoption today

It is difficult to estimate how much of the work with children and families in the UK results in the adoption of children. What is incontestable is that statutory services are increasingly engaged in child protection rather than preventative activity (Featherstone, White and Morris, 2014) and that much of this work leads to consideration of the long-term welfare of children judged unable to live with their birth families. In such circumstances, it comes as no surprise that after being in decline during the decades 1970–2000, the number of adoptions from care in England has been steadily rising, from under 2500 to 5460 in 2015–16 and 4,350 in 2016–17 (Bilson, 2017). The pivotal point of the year 2000 in measuring this rise not only reflects increasing national poverty but also represents the efforts of leading politicians to make increases in adoptions a major social policy aim. In 2000, Tony Blair, the then UK Prime Minister, called for a ‘shake-up’ in adoption practices and the report of the Prime Minister’s Performance and Innovation Unit recommended much greater use of adoption accompanied by national targets (PIU, 2000). This political attention to increasing the rate of adoptions has continued and in 2012, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, announced the need for adoption procedures ‘which can be completed at speed’. He went on to announce that he would ‘not settle for a modest, temporary uplift in adoption numbers, nor a short-lived acceleration in the process. Nothing less than a significant and sustained improvement will do’ (Gove, 2012). More recently, in 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron expressed a wish for adoption numbers to be doubled and sought to speed up the processes (Cameron, 2015).

Early in 2017, Lord Justice McFarlane drew attention to the detrimental effects of these political pressures to increase adoption rates, describing this as problematic social work practice, ‘spurred on by consistent impetus from the highest level’ (2017). Notwithstanding reservations expressed by the judiciary about such pressures (see also Family Law Week, 2013) and disapproval of ‘rigorous adherence to inflexible timetables’, the upward trend has continued until the most recent 2016–17 figures. Similar rises have also occurred in the USA, another Anglophone country where concerns have been expressed about a ‘rush’ to adoption (Coakley and Berrick, 2008).

The reasons for such a policy push are not the subject of this article, though it is worth noting that Bilson has suggested that the rhetoric from leading politicians might be more to do with the costs of children who are looked after by the state (2017). What is clear is that the recent period has seen the generation of increased heat concerning adoption. What can attention to adoption language do to contribute light to the debates?

It’s only words?

Debates over claims as to whether or how language can define a problem and by doing so set a boundary to the way that a problem is perceived have flourished for nearly one hundred years since Sapir (1929: 209) declared that ‘the fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group’. Konrad Koerner (1992) argues that explorations of how language can ‘work’ in such a manner can be traced even further back to the mid-19th century.

Gumperz and Levinson suggest that one of the most significant changes in theories of language was to recognise that linguistic meaning resides not only in the words themselves (e.g. the culture-specific meanings) but also in how they are used in practice; in other words ‘the interpretation of certain words depends on who says them, where and when’ (Gumperz and Levinson, 1991: 619). At almost the same time as the rise of these debates, Thomas and Thomas (1928) formulated the ‘Thomas Theorem’, based on the concept that ‘if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (p. 572). Introducing, and stressing, the question of power, Mehan (1990: 173) elaborated on the ‘Thomas Theorem’, suggesting that ‘all people define situations as real; but when the powerful people define situations as real, then they are real for everybody involved in their consequences’.

This article does not intend to review these discussions among linguists and sociologists but invites us to pause and think about social work language and the words and phrases employed, and how their everyday usage can shape meanings and actions. Here, Raymond Williams’s Keywords (1983) provides a bridge between the academic and public worlds on which the work that words ‘do’ comes together with the consequences. It also offers help with how to go about exploring words in terms of their official definitions and societal meanings.

Williams raises the significance of a set of words that he argues are taken for granted but when subject to greater scrutiny, convey meaning and use that can be shown to reveal specific ways of thinking, assumptions and intentions. He writes of certain words being keywords in that they are ‘significant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretation’ and are ‘significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought’ (p. 13). He argues that through the medium of studying keywords, certain ways of seeing culture and society (his central concerns) become clear, providing an ‘extra edge of consciousness’ (p. 21) to our understanding of the forces at play in shaping notions of culture. Williams went on to list, with annotations, words in daily use at the time, such as literature, class and culture. He lists the dictionary definition then follows this with comments that interrogate both the definition and its usages.

Williams appreciates that, methodologically, his inclusions and exclusions may seem ‘arbitrary to others’ (1983: 12) and that, ‘many of my own positions and preferences come through. I believe that this is inevitable’ (p. 16). Commenting on Keywords and Williams’s method, Bennet and colleagues note that ‘to call a selection arbitrary does not mean that it is unmotivated … nor capriciously made’ (Bennet, Grossberg and Morris, 2005: xxxiii) but acknowledge that any choices made will always be contestable.

This article is concerned with a much smaller field than the general and public usages of the words that concerned Williams and his predecessors on the subject of keywords. It focuses on the world and vocabulary of adoption practitioners. This author’s choice of words and phrases, and accompanying comments, reflect his own perspective on adoption language and a wish to make ‘the familiar strange’ by interrogating the language of a profession that has long been the subject of controversy but which has escaped scrutiny of the words and phrases that feature in everyday practice. The methodology is also inevitably influenced by fifty years of personal and professional experience of adoption work.

As will be seen, although there is a body of literature on the language of professionals and some on the language of social work, there is little that applies to work with children and families, and even less on adoption.

The ‘insider shorthand’ of professions

Foucault (1982) defines discourses as ‘verbal signs’ that indicate a system of shared knowledge and ideas that reflect a mutual ideology or way of thinking among those engaging in it. A discourse can then reflect the culture, the norms and ideas of any given set of professionals or profession. Exclusivity within certain discourses allows for the person(s) engaging in that discourse to exert influence over those excluded from it, for instance when a patient has little knowledge of medical terms. Referring to them as ‘codes’ in the context of grounded theory, Charmaz (2006) writes about becoming attuned to those general terms ‘everyone “knows” that flag condensed but significant meanings … and … “insider shorthand terms” specific to a particular group that reflect their perspective’ (p. 55). This notion of insider shorthand in constant use within the professions and latent with meaning reveals, when scrutinised, the dynamics of how power is exercised and experienced, and so helps in understanding relations between professionals and the public.

In an early work on the language of professionals, Heath (1979), writing of the medical profession, charts the evolution of a specialised language. It comprises the names and labels for structures, functions and processes within medicine that not only allow doctors and other associated disciplines to acknowledge one another’s status but also help set members of the profession apart from non-professionals and patients. Also, in the same period that saw increased attention to the power of words begun by Sasz (1961), Edelman (1977: 109) drew attention to how professional terminology, what he termed ‘rhetorical evocations’, forms the cultural capital of the helping professions. Viewed thus, in the words of Meese (1980), this shared vocabulary of professionals is ‘power-in-action’.

In relation to social work, Masocha (2017: 162) notes that:

In spite of the centrality of language in the accomplishment of practice activities and in constituting social work itself, research that pays particular attention to the role of language is relatively new within social work.

There have, however, been some recent developments with Hall and Slembrouck (2011) and Firkins and Candlin (2011:13) examining ‘discourses of deficit’ in child protection. Hall and colleagues (2014) have subsequently explored further social worker–client conversations and Hood (2016) has analysed how child protection workers talk about their cases, seeking out the ‘assumptions of predictability and control currently embedded in policy and practice guidance’ (p. 125). On the language used in the field of child sexual abuse, Fincham and colleagues (1994: 247) remark that:

Language use is important because of its power to influence thought processes and thereby shape reality. In emotionally charged areas, the probability of examining assumptions underlying our use of words is likely to drop, giving words even greater power.

They give the example of the use of the word ‘validation’ as relating to allegations of sexual abuse and cite the phrase ‘assessment and validation procedures’, going on to point out that the language used implies that ‘the sole purpose is to confirm or validate abuse rather than to adopt the more balanced position of investigating an allegation’ (Fincham, et al., 1994: 247). Other examples are given of the way that terms employed shape discourse, e.g. the word ‘perpetrator’ in cases of alleged abuse suggests an already proven fact rather than an allegation. The same shaping of discourse can be seen in the widespread use of the word ‘victim’ with the more precise legal term of complainant dropped (i.e. complainant betokens someone who alleges an offence whereas ‘victim’ is someone on whom an offence has been committed).

But, elsewhere in the social services there has been little exploration of the way that words and terms can convey assumptions and value-based standpoints. An exception is the discussion by Roberts (2010) on how choices of terminologies, when examined, can reveal assumptions about the expected outcomes of drug-related help. In keeping with the others already referred to, he notes (p. 9) that:

…the conceptual frameworks that are used within policy, professional and practice communities do influence their success in engaging with the real world and real people: they embody assumptions that shape our practice, and they influence the way we think about our work and relate to service users.

Roberts goes on to question the use of the word ‘recovery’, suggesting that the discourse dominated by this notion resembles a medical model in which the service user’s ‘recovery’ success is judged in narrow, physical terms, i.e. abstinence, as distinct from a wider perspective of social reintegration and recovery of their life. Hamer and Finlayson (2015), writing about similar language use in mental health nursing, explain how patients’ worlds can be constructed by professional language and, by extension, how given outcomes can come to be seen as the ‘right’ ones.

On a less theoretical note, social work has a history of altering terms in keeping with changing mores and a desire to reduce stigma (‘client’ to ‘service user’ to ‘co-producer’, ‘mentally handicapped’ to ‘learning disabled’). Adoption policy and practice have also witnessed efforts to be more respectful; for example, there have been debates as to how to refer to adopted people with ‘adoptee’ falling out of favour; similarly, words for birth parent have come and gone, e.g. ‘natural’, ‘first’ and ‘biological’ have all, at one time or another, been prefixes (see Johnston (undated) for a discussion of ‘respectful’ adoption language).

These benign shifts of terminology have been recorded by Fincham and colleagues (1994). But as the adoption of children from care is one of the most emotionally charged and intrusive practices, the language used is more than a set of euphemisms or respectful words and carries profound implications and assumptions. What are these, and what might they signify?

‘Forever families’: adoption in words

The process of subjecting the shared vocabulary of adoption to close scrutiny opens a window on ‘how language functions in constituting and transmitting knowledge, in organising social institutions or exercising power’ (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 7). However, although power features large in adoption, it is often not obvious.

As indicated above, there is a subjective direction in any choice of what are believed to be significant words and phrases and the author’s selections will be contestable. The intention is to open a debate rather than prove a point. However, sources and frequencies (where possible) of words and phrases have been carefully researched and are laid out in Table 1 featuring frequently used, and recognisable, terms in adoption over 20 years -- from 1997 to 2017. The two leading international journals on adoption, Adoption & Fostering (A&F) in the UK and Adoption Quarterly (AQ) in the USA, have been scrutinised as representing the world of adoption language.

Table 1.

Common word or phrase/practice meaning/alternative reading.

Common word or phrase	Practice meaning	Alternative reading
Permanency planning Appears 62 times in A&F and 19 times in AQ (between 1997 and 2017)*	Making plans for the best permanent family home for a child	Birth parents are not part of this child’s future – permanent severance is the likely outcome
Permanence 557 (A&F) 128 (AQ)	A permanent family for a child throughout childhood and into adult life	It is hoped that this will be the last of the child’s moves in care until they are 18 years old
Profile or profiling	Description of a child for whom an adoption placement is sought	Description of a child designed to appeal to, or at least not deter, any prospective adopters
‘Find a family’ https://lifetimeadoption.com/find-a-family/ http://corambaaf.org.uk/ ourwork/ activitydays Or ‘meet my family days’ ‘adoption activity days’	An initiative that draws attention to children identified for adoption in order to find the best match	Images and accounts of family-less children arranged for maximum appeal. ‘Find a Family’ type publicity. Includes ‘adoption activity days’ during which prospective adopters and children are introduced to each other, with the latter aiming to please and be ‘chosen’
Forever family https://www.adoptionuk.org/agency/forever-families http://www.forever-families.org/ ‘Ten babies needing forever homes’ http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/news/article/781/	A family that a child will be happily and fully a part of for the rest of their life. Term now sometimes being substituted by ‘growing-up family’	The child’s connection with their birth family will be severed in order to ensure that the new family feel complete ownership
Freed for adoption 383 (A&F) 151 (AQ) A legal term – see section 18 of the Adoption Act 1976 England and Wales See also glossary entry for ‘Be My Parent’, the former website of BAAF: http://www.bemyparent.org.uk/glossary/²	A child is legally available for adoption as the courts have agreed that this is the only feasible option for their future care	Child has been rendered officially parentless and there is no way back for them to birth family
Matched 348 (A&F) 151 (AQ)	Prospective adopters have been identified who will meet the needs of the child much better than the birth family could	The hopes of adoptive applicants have been matched with those of the social worker
Placement 1292 (A&F) 388 (AQ)	The child has been found the best possible care arrangements at the time	Can mean anywhere that child goes to other than birth family but also that this is the only bed space that we can find or afford (short-term foster care, long-term foster care, children’s home)
Adoption panel 100 (A&F) 30 (AQ) The relatively low number of references to ‘Panel’ here may be because US states use different terms	Meetings where experienced professionals and lay people agree applicants’ suitability to adopt, and ‘match’ the applicants with the child	A process where the idealised features of adoptive applicants and children are agreed in order to create hopeful beginnings if not ‘happy endings’
Openness 593 (A&F) 273 (AQ)	A move from completely closed adoption, which accommodates some contact with – or at least ‘about’– parts of a child’s birth family	Openness does not include birth family knowing much, if anything, about the adopters. Does not include knowing whether the adopters have separated, if the child has been abused or rejected, and has come back into care should their adoption break down (see disruption below)
Attachment 603 (A&F) 214 (AQ)	What is described as the existence of a secure trusting bond of a child with carers	‘Attached’ is regularly applied to describe child(ren) who seem to have accepted their new family and have stopped showing visible signs of distress over separation from their birth relatives
Contact 899 (A&F) 286 (AQ)	The process whereby a relationship (with a birth parent, sibling) has been arranged to continue under terms, often not mutually agreed	Adoptive parents agree to the birth family sending letters via a third party but do not guarantee these will be read or replied to. May be ended at any point by professionals or adoptive parents. Also an arrangement in which adoptive parents have veto over arrangements
Disruption 331 (A&F) 113 (AQ) http://www.bemyparentorg.uk/glossary/.	The relationship between adopters and child has deteriorated to the point where the child must be found an alternative placement, hopefully temporary	A child has been returned by or has run away from the adoptive home. Means a return to the care system for child

Adoption & Fostering and Adoption Quarterly are the pre-eminent journals of the adoption profession in the UK and the USA. References to frequencies of words and phrases in the title or body of papers in these journals will be referenced thus 62 (A&F) and 19 (AQ). The search was undertaken online on 25 May 2017.

The words or phrases are accompanied by their everyday practice meaning and then the author’s alternative, more quizzical definition. The sequence of terms tries to follow as much as possible the process of adoption and fostering a child.

Discussion

For George Orwell (2004), writing about political language, words have the power to shield their users and listeners from fully experiencing what they are saying and doing. The words related to adoption may well have that same function. Adoption language is populated with claims (‘forever family’), euphemisms¹ – Tummy Mummy (Madrid-Branch, 2004) is the title of a children’s adoption book recommended on the US website www.creatingafamily.org – misnomers (‘contact’), aspirations (‘permanence’) or, on close examination, insensitivity as when a child has ‘come up’ for adoption in the way that a house comes on the market. Also, the symbolic imagery of a ‘forever family’ may not be matched by the facts.

Set the language, set the agenda

As indicated in the above table, some of the most commonly used words and phrases in adoption can have multiple readings. Such close readings of text tells us how words create ‘institutionalised rationalities that are linked with agency and that exercise power’ (Bartel and Ullrich, 2008: 54). In adoption, the terms used have significant meanings that when analysed reveal power imbalances. For instance, ‘contact’ in adoption can mean different things to the parties concerned: a fleeting encounter (adoptive parents and social worker), a puzzling and confusing time (child) or a longed-for chance to hang on to a relationship (birth parent). It is all these things but despite the diversity of these meanings, it is social workers – but especially adoption professionals and specialists – who set the terms of contact by beginning the discussion of a hitherto unknown practice with the other parties concerned. Furthermore, they hold access to an academic knowledge base relating to contact (which is slim and contested, see Triseliotis, 2010), continue the discussion within clear parameters of what is to be expected of the various parties and the likely outcomes, and exercise judgement over the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the contact event. But in such a charged field as adoption, the language – spoken or written – has a rhetorical dimension; the words, terms and phrases used are both evocative and persuasive.

A second theme that can be discerned from the alternative readings in Table 1 is that of the relegation of birth parents, thus necessitating child rescue. This, too, can obscure a more complex reality of adoption from prospective adoptive parents. This theme is more bluntly expressed by influential figures in the public discourse on adoption who express a parent-blaming explanation for poor child welfare (e.g. Gove’s (2012) declaration: ‘And I want social workers to feel empowered to use robust measures with those parents who won’t shape up’), with the consequence of child rescue when parents do not ‘shape up’ (Featherstone, White and Morris, 2014). It is a world that pays less attention to the child’s rehabilitation with their birth family (Biehal, 2007) and one that is imbued with the notion of permanent removal of children from their families to ‘the sunny upland of a happy, settled secure future with a “forever family” ’ (Lord Justice McFarlane, 2017). In short, it is portrayed as an act of benevolence rather than what it actually is, a ‘highly intrusive and draconian intervention’ in the lives of a child and family that has life-long consequences for all concerned. This suggests the need for recognition of this less voiced reality, not as a substitute but as another narrative in adoption that ought to have equal claim on our attention.

As argued by Foucault (2007), it is raised for debate that what is at work in professional language is the process of governing how others conduct themselves. In the case of adoption policy and practice, but especially the way in which policies and practices are spoken and written about, the discourse of adoption terminologies can be understood as a vehicle for establishing and exercising the dominance of a certain concept of adoption. This is one that involves the marginalisation of the continuing importance of origins, rescuing a child or children and the latter’s re-rooting in a substitute relationship, and as such fits with a political emphasis on speedier decisions.

While this article has chosen to focus on the language of adoption as a case study to argue that attention to words and language is long overdue, it is worth noting that other services for children and families are equally capable of such scrutiny and might produce similar results. For example, foster care talk contains the same terminologies (‘matching’, ‘placement’, ‘attachment’, ‘permanence’) but also has its own lexicon. For instance, ‘care experience’ could be alternatively read as time in state care and the more one stares at the phrase ‘care leaver’, the more it resembles an awkward, non-human label designed from above by those seeking a category useful for audit and financial purposes.

Deeper readings of foster care texts can show an unconscious attitude towards birth families; in New Vision, the Alliance for Children in Care and Care Leavers (2016: 2) write of the need for ‘access to joint training for carers, social workers, teachers and professionals’ as if the only people in a child’s life were their foster carers. Residential care, it is suggested, is no different once subject to the analytical approach taken in this article. What is a ‘secure unit’ if not a ‘locked establishment’ (for a young person)? In Narey’s (2016) report on residential care, the language can be alternatively read as that of the business world where the word ‘provision’ (as in ‘residential provision’) is used 28 times, and ‘providers’ and ‘outcomes’ 36 and 29 times respectively. Such language can be interpreted as commodifying with its description of accommodation boiled down to beds (as in ‘a bed has become free’) and talk of the service as an ‘enterprise’ and empty beds kept to the minimum. Take this quotation from the Chief Executive of a ‘distinguished charity’, cited in Narey (2016: 17):

Residential child care, particularly at the specialist clinical end, is an immensely difficult enterprise to sustain. The low volume/high cost equation means that we only need to have a few beds empty and we are losing a great deal of money very quickly.

A further example of the need to interrogate language in residential services is presented by the phrases ‘group care’, ‘residential group home’ or ‘group care placement’ which are commonplace and seek to describe a therapeutic environment for a child. An alternative definition has already been offered: ‘residential homes are violent environments where groups of children with very challenging behaviour live under one roof’ (Hart and La Valle, 2015: 60). Words such as ‘group’, ‘home’ and ‘care’, when taken together, remain powerful signifiers of more aspiration than reality. As argued by Kelly (1989), writing about the language of residential care for children, ‘key words have the power to evoke elaborate emotional and cognitive resonances which prevent the disintegration of ambivalent action into recognition of the reality’ (p. 212).

Conclusion

Commenting on Williams’s Keywords, Garrett (2015: 402) argues that ‘Williams’s work provides inspiration for a renewed attentiveness to the way in which words become inculcated, sedimented and reinforced within the everydayness of neoliberal orders.’ When social work power is exercised to construct a language of semi-truths, promises and wishes, children are not served well, nor are those who care for them.

This article has argued that in adoption practices, but most revealingly in the vocabulary and rhetoric of adoption, children are commodified and the removal from their families of birth to live with strangers is glossed over as the inevitable consequence of parental failure. Their future is also described in Lord Justice McFarlane’s words as a ‘sunny upland’. This has to be laid alongside an alternative, more problematised and sceptical reading of adoption informed by our knowledge that both the processes of coming into care and being in care can be painful and abusive (Devine, 2017). It is also the case that once adopted, as we have come to know from the various enquiries into historic adoption practices and the demands for adoption apologies, confusion and hurt are not abolished, nor is a future wholly secured (Community Affairs References Committee, 2012). The continued insistence by leading politicians that adoptions must be increased seems to be being reflected in higher numbers, but a more critical perspective on the practice and policy of adoption is overdue. It is hoped that this article has shown that such scrutiny should include language too.

Footnotes

Notes

Gary Clapton is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

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