Copying and Coping Conceptualizations of Language: Counseling and the Ethic of Appreciation for Human Differences

Int J Adv Counselling (2008) 30:249261 DOI 10.1007/s10447-008-9061-1

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

James T. Hansen

Published online: 4 October 2008# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008

Abstract The author takes the position that the foundational value of the counseling profession is an ethic of appreciation for human differences. The professional tool that is used to actualize this value is language. In this regard, the philosophical distinction between copying and coping conceptualizations of language is overviewed. The author argues that the value of the counseling profession is optimally actualized when a coping conceptualization of language is adopted. Implications for current ideological movements and the future of the profession are discussed.

Keywords Counseling . Professional identity . Philosophy

Introduction

Counselors engage in a remarkably diverse array of helping activities. While this professional diversity, and concomitant expansion into new realms, has been a positive development, it has also created identity challenges, because it has become increasingly difficult to conceive of a unified identity that encompasses the multifarious roles that counselors contemporarily play (Gale and Austin 2003).

One possible response to this identity dilemma is to conclude that identity is not a useful construct for uniting the profession, and that it is time to give up the identity search. This conclusion, that counselors should simply stop trying to find a unified identity, may be compelling for at least three pragmatic reasons: (a) after decades of searching, no widely agreed-upon, unified identity has been posited (Gale and Austin 2003); (b) the profession continues to expand into new realms, which will make finding a comprehensive identity even more challenging (Gale and Austin 2003); (c) the counseling profession is now, arguably, more fractured than at any other point in its history, with whole divisions breaking free from the host professional organization (Hansen 2005). Clearly, decades of identity debates have not been effective at uniting the profession. Perhaps, then, the goal of

J. T. Hansen (*)

Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Copying and Coping Conceptualizations of Language: Counseling and the Ethic of Appreciationfor Human Differences

250 Int J Adv Counselling (2008) 30:249261

squeezing all counselors into a singular identity box should be reappraised, and an alternative construct, which has a better chance of tying together the diverse professionals who identify themselves as...