Volume 16, Issue 2

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.

The aim of this article is to investigate ethical and aesthetic dimensions of negotiating linguistic differences between researchers and participants in the initial research consent process, based on data from a collaborative research project in adult basic education for immigrants, in which a large number of students initially refused to participate. First, we interpret negotiations of consent as relational acts, where teachers and multilingual staff facilitated moral proximity through their affinity or shared biography with students, allowing us to move from anticipated difference to events of subjectivity. Second, we analyze research ethics protocols, notably the standardized consent letter, as aesthetic signs that evoked an affective response, which variously recalled unfavourable subject positions within neoliberal or authoritarian governmentality, including memories of trauma. The dynamic connection between aesthetics and relational ethics highlights the shortcomings of current institutional ethics requirements, since aesthetic interpretation cannot be fully anticipated and instead requires meaning-making in concrete relational encounters.

This article describes the social and ethical responsibility researchers experience in undertaking ethnographic research under conditions of neoliberalism. It acknowledges the hierarchical nature of working in large ethnographic teams in which a mixture of employment contracts and statuses exist. Drawing on relational ethics (Levinas 2003. Humanism of the Other . Champaign: University of Illinois Press.), and its attention to the humanizing potential of difference, the paper describes researchers’ propensity for relationality in the face of competitive neoliberalism. It presents a case study of a large research team and investigates the use of research vignettes to represent and relate in difference. Subjectivity is theorized not in terms of identity but rather through alterity and opacity arguing this direction opens up social and political alliances (Butler 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself . New York: Fordham University Press.). Specifically, the paper suggests the research vignette is a genre well suited to documenting the way humans live in difference, illustrating how the researcher yields to the face of the Other in field work encounters. As a form the research vignette is said to bridge the aesthetic and the scientific, demanding of its reader an engagement with a variety of interpretations. Further, the vignette is considered for its methodological potential in creating a dialogic relational space for research teams within the neoliberal university.

This paper proposes a sociolinguistics of in difference , an inquiry-based approach to stancetaking on others. It describes how multilingual speakers in an online context orientate towards a stance-object and affiliate, align and negotiate difference through embodied performances, as part of advancing an ethics of responsibility for the other and aesthetic investments. In the analysis of such orientations, I draw on virtual interactional data to illustrate how in difference through stancetaking is entextualized in the aesthetic, embodied performance of parody, in so-called Coloured English, Kaaps and a mixture of other languages by an emerging R&B and pop group in Cape Town. I demonstrate how the group invest in embodied performances merge the material, linguistic, cultural and semiotic significance of the body to undermine fixity and categorization. But also, how push-back from YouTube commentators, influencers, reactors take up evaluative, affective and epistemic stances as they move from difference to in difference . I conclude with the argument that in order for us to take adequate account of an ethics of responsibility for the other and describing aesthetic investments in embodied performances we have to recalibrate our theoretical and methodological toolkit to understand what it means to use language with dignity, to encounter each other in spaces of dignity and to just be dignified in diversity.

This paper emerged from an encounter with the Black Lives Matter placard I understand that I will never understand but I stand with you in Leipzig, Germany, and it centers white understanding as a constitutive practice of whiteness. This is mainly a theoretical contribution (learning towards the philosophical), although it includes some interview data and observations from protest participation. I contribute to raciolinguistics by reading the concept of the white listening subject through Barad’s new materialist notion of apparatuses, asking what exactly constitutes white understanding. This allows me to bring out the potentials and pitfalls (i.e. the counter/productivity) of white understanding as a reflective practice, which I put into conversation with my embodied practice of under-standing (i.e. standing under) the placard at a BLM protest in Berlin. I show how the white body is measured by a Black norm in the protest space, producing a productive discomfort filled with opportunities for becoming response-able towards the Black Other, but also towards whiteness. Considering the ethico-esthetic framing of this collection, I pursue an aesthethics of wor(l)ding that inter-rupts, dis/entangles, and walks around with and in words. It gestures towards what we usually leave out when pursuing one analytical avenue over another.

What is the possibility of ethical encounters in places that are historically, spatially, and morally configured to avoid them? And what can applied linguistics do to create such a possibility? This study is located in a rural community in eastern Slovakia with a history of separation between Slovak and Roma ethnic groups and the systemic spatial, economic and linguistic marginalisation of the latter. This paper draws on relational ethics to foreground the perceiving subject’s ethical responsibility. I take up the scholarship on semiotic repertoires and exploit their performative power to affect the perceiving subject. Advocating for aesthetics as an applied linguistics research praxis, this article both documents and invites a sensory entanglement with others through a series of aesthetic invitations . I see such an embodied engagement as a way for applied linguistics to stage the ground for ethical encounters, even if never guarantee an outcome. I discuss what this research pathway might mean for doing applied linguistics research in social and educational settings with entrenched narratives about the other and how quiet applied linguistics – one which privileges sensory attending and epistemological indeterminacy – might be a form of activism that disturbs the realm of the impossible.

In line with increasing forced migrations around the globe, there is also a growing need for ethical encounters between researchers and those forcefully displaced. This article focuses on responsible Listening, defined as the ethically motivated effort of researchers to conduct communication at eye level. However, findings have shown that listeners (e.g., researchers in institution or study settings) may already feel unsettled on the far more basic level of hearing a human voice, if certain implicit (e.g., aesthetic) expectations are not met. This makes encounters particularly vulnerable after forced migration where voices tend to be easily silenced. I will show by means of an empirical example what hearing a voice in its materiality, i.e. intonation, rhythm, accentuation etc., can set off, and how a privileged space of Listening to the Other can emerge.

This paper discusses the way the concept of culture is discursively constructed by large language models that are trained on massive collections of cultural artefacts and designed to produce probabilistic representations of culture based on this training data. It makes the argument that, no matter how ‘diverse’ their training data is, large language models will always be prone to stereotyping and oversimplification because of the mathematical models that underpin their operations. Efforts to build ‘guardrails’ into systems to reduce their tendency to stereotype can often result in the opposite problem, with issues around culture and ethnicity being ‘invisiblised’. To illustrate this, examples are provided of the stereotypical linguistic styles and cultural attitudes models produce when asked to portray different kinds of ‘persona’. The tendency of large language models to gravitate towards cultural and linguistic generalities is contrasted with trends in intercultural communication towards more fluid, socially situated understandings of interculturality, and implications for the future of cultural representation are discussed.

It is a common feature of the 21st century workplace to be multicultural. Working professionals need to possess strong Interactional Competence to handle professional communication in various intercultural encounters in their workplace. This has however posed challenges to professional communication education since educators need to incorporate different cultural practices and interlocutor profiles in their teaching and assessment materials. In this paper we reflect on the practical challenges of professional communication education in intercultural contexts and envisage what AI can offer in this place. We start with some practical, on-the-ground dilemmas in integrating diverse cultural representation in professional communication education. We then use an operational AI-mediated assessment tool to elaborate the possibilities, affordances and caveats in using AI to develop teaching and assessment materials for professional communication education. We conclude with directions for future research and practice in the emerging space of AI for professional communication in intercultural contexts (AI-for-PCIC).

Among the many ways that AI technologies are becoming embedded in our social worlds is the proliferation of Conversational User Interfaces, such as voice assistants (e.g. Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa), chatbots and voice-based conversational agents. Such conversational AI technologies are designed to draw upon the designers’ understanding of interactional practices employed in human–human conversation, and therefore have implications for intercultural communication (ICC). In this paper, we highlight some of the current shortcomings of conversational AI, and how these relate to ICC. We also draw on findings from Conversation Analysis to discuss how pragmatic norms vary across linguacultural groups (see Risager 2019 for a discussion of the term ‘linguaculture’), noting that this poses further challenges for designers of conversational AI systems. We argue that the solution is to work towards what we call interculturally adaptive conversational AI. Finally, we propose a framework for how this can be conceptualised and researched, and argue that researchers with expertise in language and ICC are uniquely placed to contribute to this endeavour.

This paper is concerned with issues of trust and bias in generative AI in general, and chatbots based on large language models in particular (e.g. ChatGPT). The discussion argues that intercultural communication scholars must do more to better understand generative AI and more specifically large language models, as such technologies produce and circulate discourse in an ostensibly impartial way, reinforcing the widespread assumption that machines are objective resources for societies to learn about important intercultural issues, such as racism and discrimination. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand how trust and bias factor into the ways in which such technologies deal with topics and themes central to intercultural communication. It is also important to scrutinize the ways in which societies make use of AI and large language models to carry out important social actions and practices, such as teaching and learning about historical or political issues.

Despite increasing concerns over the use of AI in surveillance, privacy, public health, climate change, global migration and warfare, the implications of its use in the field of intercultural communication are still not clearly defined. This paper critically examines the contemporary emergence of AI through the lens of a critical realist depth ontology to argue that AI, with its unending interplay of signs and symbols, is the ultimate simulacrum. As such, AI vacates the normative terrain of judgemental rationality in favour of the relativist terrain of endless simulacra and the fetish appearances of postmodernism. To illustrate this, it is argued that the inability of AI to make judgements based on judgemental rationality (or Ethics 1 ) occludes the possibility of intervening in the world to ameliorate real injustice. Therefore, if intercultural ethics remains within the realm of judgmental relativism (or Ethics 2 ) it abdicates the possibility to have an impact in the material world.

AI is not new. What is new, however, is the speed and depth of its expansion in almost every aspect of our lives. This discussion forum is dedicated to exploring new frontiers and agendas for language and intercultural communication research. In this concluding piece, we invite the contributors to share insights on five key questions: their experiences (Question 1), the challenges and opportunities that we face (Question 2), the strengths and skills afforded by intercultural communication and applied linguistics (Question 3), considerations when collaborating with AI developers and user groups (Question 4) and the future landscape of intercultural communication (Question 5). Through these inquiries, we hope to amplify the contributors’ voices and experiences, often difficult to fit in academic writing, but crucial for contextualizing their epistemological stances in their work. We seek to broaden the discussion, drawing out a bigger picture of pressing issues, and exploring future prospects.

English medium instruction (EMI) as a language policy in higher education is based on monolingual conceptions and limits the use of the full linguistic repertoire of bilinguals/multilinguals in the university classroom. Informed by the constructs of language ideology (Spolsky, Bernard. 2009. Language management . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), translanguaging (Li, Wei. 2018. Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39(1). 9–30) and pedagogical translanguaging (Creese, Angela & Adrian Blackledge. 2010. Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching? The Modern Language Journal 94(1). 103–115), this case study aimed to examine the ideologies held by micro-level stakeholders (i.e., teachers and students) towards institutional English-only EMI policy, translanguaging, and the significance and scope of pedagogical translanguaging in EMI classrooms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six teachers and 10 students at a public research university in Malaysia. Also collected were a variety of publicly accessible institutional documents, including the focal university’s programme brochures, promotional materials and policy statements on its website. Analyses of the interviews and documents revealed that although EMI was officially adopted in the programmes, both teachers and students advocated for translanguaging and underscored its important role in the transmission of new information, effective communication, and scientific meaning-making. In light of these findings, the study concludes that an inclusive language policy is required that allows teachers and students to access all their linguistic resources.

In this study, we provide a replicable language-anchored framework for capturing expressions of sympathy in interaction, by contrasting Chinese and English sympathising behaviour. Our framework combines interaction ritual and speech acts, and it captures sympathising without associating it with one particular speech act from the outset. Methodologically, we follow a tripartite design: First we identify puzzlements which ritual sympathising can trigger for Chinese expatriates living in the US and American expatriates in China. We then conduct Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) to identify conventions of sympathising in the two linguacultures. Finally, we interpret our expatriates’ puzzlement through the outcomes of the DCT analysis.

Repairs (including false starts, repetitions, and different types of self-corrections) have been examined in second language (L2) speech fluency research as one dimension of (dis)fluent speech. However, in contrast to other dimensions of L2 speech fluency (speed and breakdown), repair fluency is not equally well understood: the results are mixed, and more research investigating the factors behind L2 repair fluency is needed. While some previous studies suggest links between first language (L1) and L2 repair fluency, to what extent L2 repairs are connected with cognitive and affective factors is less understood. To achieve a comprehensive view of the factors behind L2 repair fluency, we combine perspectives of L1 repair fluency, attention control, and language anxiety (LA) that have individually been shown to potentially affect L2 repairs but have rarely been examined together. We analyzed data from L1 Finnish and L2 English monologue speech tasks, a Stroop task in L1 and L2, and surveys for general and task-specific LA from 59 advanced users of English to investigate how L1 repair fluency, cognitive fluency, and LA are related to L2 repair fluency. Correlational analyses revealed that task-specific LA and certain Stroop measures were connected with L2 repair measures, while correlations between L1 and L2 repair fluency measures were weak. An analysis of repair profiles of participants displaying the highest levels of L2 repair fluency revealed that, overall, repairs are more common in the L2 than in the L1, but patterns regarding preferences for repair types vary across individuals. The study has methodological implications for psycholinguistic and SLA research into L2 repair fluency and broader implications for L2 classrooms and assessment.

Based on a repertoire-oriented stance to language learning and a broad definition of language awareness, this study investigates students’ discursive representations of the languages in their repertoires in the context of a plurilingual language awareness course ( Almen Sprogforståelse ). The study is based on a subset of data collected in a multi-case study focusing on language awareness across educational levels. Through an inductive and iterative thematic content analysis of interview and classroom data, the authors identify six themes central to the ways in which students talk about language: (1) language learning experiences and skills, (2) gateways, (3) attractiveness, (4) family and friendship, (5) everyday presence and (6) usefulness. The study investigates the relationship between the different themes and languages, revealing how students’ personal linguistic biographies and Spracherleben interact with classroom ideologies in shaping the ways in which students perceive and describe different languages. Despite students’ display of rich repertoires and language awareness, some languages are positioned discursively as need-to-have and others as nice-to-have or even impossible-to-opt-out-of, mirroring societal discourses surrounding these languages. In this sense, the results of the study underscore the importance of the development of critical language awareness, specifically in the context of the compulsory General Language Awareness course.

This case study aims to explore the foreign language (FL) investments of a highly motivated young Irish adult in learning Chinese across different contexts, encompassing classroom settings and daily life, both in Ireland and abroad. By analysing the interview data through the lens of Darvin and Norton’s model of investment, this study shows that the participant’s investments at different stages of her learning journey appear to be intricately intertwined with her identities and are mediated by the perceived likelihood of achieving her imagined identity. This study highlights the importance of present identity and linguistic capital in shaping and consolidating native English speakers’ FL-related identities.It provides insights into how FL learning investment and FL-related identitiesare influenced by learners’ first language (L1) in the era of globalisation. As powerrelations among individuals with different L1s are often unequal in the globallinguistic marketplace, learners’ L1 can be valuable capital that influences the return of foreign language learners’ investment.

In this paper, we explore the notion of mobility as a dynamic process of keeping oneself in a privileged position through the mobilisation of linguistic, communicative, and semiotic resources. It is a proposed construct that troubles our understanding of the two dominant paradigms in the study of language in globalisation: the sociolinguistics of distribution (study of language-in-place) and the sociolinguistics of mobility (study of language-in-motion) (Blommaert and Dong 2007. Language and movement in space. Working Papers in Language Diversity . University of Jyväskylä). We examine the professional life story of Andrew and Juanito to map out the inventive manner by which they move around within their workplaces through their deployment of language, and English in particular. While there has been substantial work dedicated to unpacking elite language and how it enables the mobility of speakers, our paper departs from it by constructing an understanding of how such privilege is organized in terms of people’s ability to shift between linguistic and stylistic choices in order to mobilize their own privileged mobility within their chosen workplaces. What we see here is the mobilisation of ‘language-in-motion-in-place’ -- or broadly, mobility-in-place -- which erases the conceptual dichotomy between the two dominant paradigms in the study of language and globalisation: while the speakers are in place, they are also mobile.

Amidst Shanghai’s transformation into a global metropolis and the resulting influx of internal migration, obtaining Shanghai hukou remains a challenging yet highly coveted socioeconomic aspiration. Simply earning high incomes, even for middle-class migrants, falls short of ensuring the desired level of geographical and social mobility. This article draws from a sociolinguistic ethnography conducted within a Shanghai-based multinational corporation, where migrant employees are compelled to strategise around English proficiency as a form of cultural capital to position themselves as valued neoliberal worker-citizens, driven by ambitions of career advancement and privileged hukou attainment. It argues that in China’s globalising economy, English not only enables multinational companies to stratify employees and select ideal internationalised human capital but also expedites migrant professionals’ acquisition of Shanghai hukou  – a symbol of upward mobility in China. By delving into tensions and inequalities at work, this study demonstrates how English, the language of global capitalism, aligns the migrants’ interest in solidifying their middle-class status with Shanghai’s agenda of becoming an Asian-Pacific economic hub.

The use of humor and language play in second language (L2) education has received increasing attention from researchers in different contexts. However, the determining and governing factors of implementing humor in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts have been overlooked. To fill this gap, this study used a semi-structured interview with 35 Chinese EFL teachers to sketch the ecological factors of humor practice at the micro, meso, and macro levels. The findings of the thematic analysis showed that ‘teachers’ personality/character’, ‘classroom environment’, ‘students’ gender’, and ‘proficiency level’ were the most significant micro-level factors determining humor practice in Chinese EFL classes. Concerning meso-level factors, ‘institutional environment/climate’ and ‘institutional rules, regulations, and policies’ were influential. Furthermore, at the macro level, it was revealed that ‘culture’, ‘social norms’, and ‘educational system’ determine the implementation of humor in L2 education. The findings are discussed in light of empirical and theoretical foundations and corresponding implications for EFL teachers are presented.

Due to its colonial history and prevalent multilingualism, Cameroon is a country where language policies have profoundly impacted socioeconomic and political life. Cameroon has 273 local languages and two official languages, English and French. The two official languages have been a crystallization point for discontent and civil unrest, leading to secessionist sentiments and violence. In this paper, we assess Cameroon’s language policies, firstly by providing a brief historical and legal overview based in the literature. We then present a new decolonial analytical framework, building on but extending existing theoretical frameworks. Our new analysis shows that a transition to using indigenous languages in formal education and other domains is not necessary at present. However, we argue that such a transition will become unavoidable in future. We show that it will be practically possible to use a limited number of indigenous languages as mediums of instruction, building on existing bilingualisms in the country. We believe these languages should be chosen using rational criteria and we introduce an approximate assessment of which languages are easy to learn and teach, and for speakers of which other languages. The transition we foresee requires planning and preparation. A different approach to Cameroon’s languages may help in building national unity and healing national wounds in the areas of sociolinguistic power-sharing and interregional cohabitation. We expect that our approach also holds benefits for other African countries.

It is unanimously agreed that comprehension of academic lectures is cognitively demanding; however, few studies have focused on a listener’s real-time discourse representation of a lecture. Based on the qualitative analysis of the verbal protocols, the present study investigated sixteen Chinese university students’ verbal recall of an academic mini-lecture to explore how they made sense of the lecture and represented its discourse when they recalled it episode by episode, and to what extent they differed in discourse representation. The results show that listeners’ discourse representation involved a range of cognitive processes such as paraphrasing, summarizing, and verbatim copying. Paraphrasing and summarizing were the main methods of discourse representation used by the participants when they verbally recalled the lecture. Those who correctly paraphrased more idea units recalled more content of the lecture. They were able to select and retain more idea units in their short-term memory, build more associations between the selected idea units, integrate them with the existing discourse structures and ensure contextual coherence in the construction of the local discourse structures. The findings of the study contribute to a better understanding of how listeners comprehend academic lectures and confirm that improving students’ paraphrasing skills and hierarchical discourse construction in recall are conducive to better comprehension of academic lectures.