Abstract
This article explains the rationale for proposing an applied linguistics of ethical encounters. It does so by extending the current reach beyond the critical and ideological commentary of unjust linguistic practices and considers how applied linguistics research might play an active role in both theorising and enabling ethical encounters. By ethical encounters we mean those that enact the political vision of an inclusive and just society in face-to-face meetings with particular others, i.e. the Other. We ground our inquiry in a relational framework, which places the subject’s responsibility at the heart of ethical relationships and as a basis for a political achievement of just society in settings of trauma, social stigma and unequal power relationships. We argue that the subject’s ethical responsibility is not merely interactionally accomplished but also aesthetically experienced in particular moments of proximity to others. We examine opportunities for an engaged applied linguistics that arise when its inquiry is pursued through the ethical and aesthetic lens.
Funding source: Arts and Humanities Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: AH/T005637/1
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Maggie Hawkins, Haley De Korne and anonymous reviewers for their generous and constructive comments on this paper.
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Research funding: This research has been supported by the grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/T005637/1) Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other: New Frameworks for Encountering Difference (ETHER; 2020–2022) https://ether.leeds.ac.uk/.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue 1 : Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other; Guest Editors: Maggie Kubanyiova and Angela Creese
- Introduction
- Introduction: applied linguistics, ethics and aesthetics of encountering the Other
- Research Articles
- “When we use that kind of language… someone is going to jail”: relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters
- The humanism of the other in sociolinguistic ethnography
- Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: stancetaking on others
- Becoming response-able with a protest placard: white under(-)standing in encounters with the Black German Other
- (Im)possibility of ethical encounters in places of separation: aesthetics as a quiet applied linguistics praxis
- Unsettled hearing, responsible listening: encounters with voice after forced migration
- Special Issue 2: AI for intercultural communication; Guest Editors: David Wei Dai and Zhu Hua
- Introduction
- When AI meets intercultural communication: new frontiers, new agendas
- Research Articles
- Culture machines
- Generative AI for professional communication training in intercultural contexts: where are we now and where are we heading?
- Towards interculturally adaptive conversational AI
- Communicating the cultural other: trust and bias in generative AI and large language models
- Artificial intelligence and depth ontology: implications for intercultural ethics
- Exploring AI for intercultural communication: open conversation
- Review Article
- Ideologies of teachers and students towards meso-level English-medium instruction policy and translanguaging in the STEM classroom at a Malaysian university
- Regular articles
- Analysing sympathy from a contrastive pragmatic angle: a Chinese–English case study
- L2 repair fluency through the lenses of L1 repair fluency, cognitive fluency, and language anxiety
- “If you don’t know English, it is like there is something wrong with you.” Students’ views of language(s) in a plurilingual setting
- Investments, identities, and Chinese learning experience of an Irish adult: the role of context, capital, and agency
- Mobility-in-place: how to keep privilege by being mobile at work
- Shanghai hukou, English and politics of mobility in China’s globalising economy
- Sketching the ecology of humor in English language classes: disclosing the determinant factors
- Decolonizing Cameroon’s language policies: a critical assessment
- To copy verbatim, paraphrase or summarize – listeners’ methods of discourse representation while recalling academic lectures
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue 1 : Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other; Guest Editors: Maggie Kubanyiova and Angela Creese
- Introduction
- Introduction: applied linguistics, ethics and aesthetics of encountering the Other
- Research Articles
- “When we use that kind of language… someone is going to jail”: relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters
- The humanism of the other in sociolinguistic ethnography
- Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: stancetaking on others
- Becoming response-able with a protest placard: white under(-)standing in encounters with the Black German Other
- (Im)possibility of ethical encounters in places of separation: aesthetics as a quiet applied linguistics praxis
- Unsettled hearing, responsible listening: encounters with voice after forced migration
- Special Issue 2: AI for intercultural communication; Guest Editors: David Wei Dai and Zhu Hua
- Introduction
- When AI meets intercultural communication: new frontiers, new agendas
- Research Articles
- Culture machines
- Generative AI for professional communication training in intercultural contexts: where are we now and where are we heading?
- Towards interculturally adaptive conversational AI
- Communicating the cultural other: trust and bias in generative AI and large language models
- Artificial intelligence and depth ontology: implications for intercultural ethics
- Exploring AI for intercultural communication: open conversation
- Review Article
- Ideologies of teachers and students towards meso-level English-medium instruction policy and translanguaging in the STEM classroom at a Malaysian university
- Regular articles
- Analysing sympathy from a contrastive pragmatic angle: a Chinese–English case study
- L2 repair fluency through the lenses of L1 repair fluency, cognitive fluency, and language anxiety
- “If you don’t know English, it is like there is something wrong with you.” Students’ views of language(s) in a plurilingual setting
- Investments, identities, and Chinese learning experience of an Irish adult: the role of context, capital, and agency
- Mobility-in-place: how to keep privilege by being mobile at work
- Shanghai hukou, English and politics of mobility in China’s globalising economy
- Sketching the ecology of humor in English language classes: disclosing the determinant factors
- Decolonizing Cameroon’s language policies: a critical assessment
- To copy verbatim, paraphrase or summarize – listeners’ methods of discourse representation while recalling academic lectures