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

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.