Volume 63, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Ethics in linguistics; Guest Editor: Marina Terkourafi

Although formal, e.g., generative, approaches to linguistic inquiry are primarily concerned with the analysis of structural patterns, ethical concerns for the elicitation and documentation of empirical data that motivate these analyses persist. In this article, we explicate the challenges to be met and responsibilities that formal linguists must take in data collection, documentation, and analysis to ensure high ethical standards. We direct our attention especially toward research on heritage, minoritized and endangered languages, which have enriched the theoretical landscape in recent decades. Finally, we show that, when proper ethical concerns are recognized and accounted for in formal research, this collective body of research in its current form is also fully capable of respecting the integrity of individual speakers and their communities.

This article outlines ethical principles for ‘participant-centred linguistic research’ (PCLR), a term we coin to incorporate a range of linguistic research approaches that place importance on the involvement of participants. Linguistics, as a field, has strengthened its focus on participant-centred and socially situated research, recognising the value of better understanding our participants’ practices and linguistic knowledge. However, this also brings ethical challenges for our research practice. Drawing on three differing UK-based case studies from the authors’ own work, the article explores complex issues that can arise during PCLR and establishes four key principles that cut across our varied experiences. Firstly, we address participant consent and confidentiality, establishing the principles: 1. Informed consent and ethics protocols are dialogic processes and 2. Expectations around confidentiality and anonymity can shift during a project. Secondly, we address our research relationships with participants, our key principles being: 3. The researcher-participant relationship is complex and variable and 4. Close attention must be paid to power dynamics within the research setting . Ultimately, we argue that the human interactions and relationships involved in PCLR mean research may inevitably be somewhat unpredictable; researchers therefore need an understanding of the ethical parameters of their practice to navigate these complexities.

Pre-existing digital data are a valuable resource for linguistic research. Collecting these materials is often thought of as straightforward (“the data exist anyway”) and ethical dilemmas are given little consideration. In this article, we discuss microethical issues we encountered while collecting electronic text messages, photos, and videos posted on a digital platform and app during paramedical treatment. Since ethics and methods are intertwined, we discuss the various ethical and methodological aspects of collecting these sensitive digital data for our linguistic research project and reflect on the benefits and limitations of the choices we made during this process. We specifically highlight the interdependence of ethics with technology and discuss how this can be even more challenging when working in a specific institutional context characterized by different conceptions of ethics and technology. Our article highlights the importance of microethics complementing prevalent ethical guidelines. We show that when pre-existing digital data are available in non-public digital spheres, it is difficult for researchers to define in advance in ethical protocols or guidelines how the data can be collected and what ethical measures should be taken. We argue that ethical reflections should be at the center of research, including research on pre-existing digital data, guiding the decisions to be made at all stages.

Linguist-centred approaches to fieldwork on endangered languages aim to advance scientific knowledge while minimising unintended risks for participants. However, the situated nature of this fieldwork often calls for more community-centred ethical approaches so that research also translates into benefits for the researched community and not solely for science. Focusing on the relation between research and society, this article reviews macro- and microethical approaches from diverse fields and exemplifies their application in a research programme on the documentation and maintenance/revitalisation of Cypriot Arabic, a severely endangered language spoken in Cyprus. A key principle in this context is collaboration, both with the community and among experts in theoretical and applied linguistics, didactics, language technology, etc. Such multiple-disciplinary collaboration is essential for addressing community-driven goals, such as writing system codification, teaching material creation, etc., which exceed the scope of theoretical linguistics alone. Ultimately, the paper calls on theoretical linguists to embrace multi-disciplinary teamwork and to collaborate with the language communities where they conduct their research in order to align their research with the communities’ needs.

What does ‘good’ ethical conduct in linguistics look like from the perspective of the communities with whom we work? We address this question by drawing on observations from a community-bridging and knowledge exchange exercise involving both researchers and members of researched communities. Based on the experiences of those co-authors on the research team working with and for two associations representing Latin Americans and Chagossians in the United Kingdom, we discuss power asymmetries in collaboration, academic gatekeeping, and issues surrounding knowledge production, with specific reference to the design and implementation of funded research projects in formal linguistics. The paper’s originality lies in the practical recommendations made to the formal linguistics community on the basis of our synthesis of the testimony offered, so as to promote equitable and ethical research conduct. These include a prioritising of principles drawn from community-based and participatory research frameworks, the co-design of a long-term action plan, and a reconsideration of resource allocation to incorporate opportunities for professional development and infrastructure building. Our contention is that striving for a research design that is beneficial to the community on their terms should be the guiding star of project planning inasmuch as it is both ethically compelling and achievable.

As most linguists and social scientists are now aware, cross-cultural field research can be extractive, especially when the target community does not have ready access to and/or understanding of the research products. The notions of collaborative research, with communities rather than on them, and co-design of research with the participant community, are now common currency in funding applications, and indeed, an international code of ethics for cross-cultural research now exists: the TRUST Code. But it is easy to pay lip service to some of the principles of the TRUST Code, such as collaboration, co-design, and respect, without offering hard proof of these, at project design and ethics and funding application stages. I propose a straightforward and easy-to-implement partial solution: fair budgets. I suggest, as a starting point, that: (1) any grant proposal or ethics application must state what proportion of the overall project funds will be distributed among local community members, and (2) the travel costs for outsiders must be less than or equal to funds distributed within the local community. Because it may be impossible to match the costs of international travel through participant payments alone, such quotas will require researchers not only to pay everyone who supports the project in the field fairly (as suggested in the TRUST Code on a smaller scale), but also to envision meaningful, capacity-building ways to involve local people in running the project. Then, once local people are trained, they can design and run their own locally relevant projects. Budget quotas are already used by research funders like the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, which requires that a minimum of 40 % of all grant monies must be spent in-country, but this idea has not yet taken hold widely in social science and humanities research.

Ecological sustainability has become a central concern in academic and political discourse and should be considered in research ethics guidelines. However, despite growing environmental awareness, current research ethics guidelines overlook the environmental impacts of academic activities such as travel, lab-based research, and high-performance computing. We argue that it is now imperative to incorporate environmental ethics in these guidelines, aligning them with the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the UN. Drawing on empirical impact studies, we propose both general recommendations applicable across disciplines and specific guidance for linguistic research that involves high-performance computing, laboratory research, and fieldwork. We also discuss how environmental issues can be addressed in ecolinguistics, linguistics teaching, outreach, and knowledge transfer. In our recommendations, we focus on researchers’ responsible use of natural resources in academic practices, including travel, conferences, events, laboratory work, and institutional operations.

What aspects of a linguist’s work should be covered in training for ethical linguistics? Are they specific to the study of language? Specific to the treatment of research subjects? Specific to the practice of research? Having a clear answer is a necessary first step in planning an effective ethics education program. Related questions are which institution(s) should take responsibility for it and what settings will be most conducive to ethical learning. Should training take place in the classroom, the research lab, the department, professional society meetings? Inspired by the “Responsible Conduct of Research” U.S. regulatory framework, this article presents an approach to department-level ethics education that moves beyond individual compliance and instead has as its goal the cultivation of a next generation of linguists who are able to identify and respond to the ethical issues that arise in all aspects of the work that they do.