Course Description
Ethical dimensions of language usage, language ideologies, language policy, and linguistic research. The course explores the intersection of language and linguistics with moral questions about power, justice, equality, identity, and responsibility from the perspectives of normative ethics and linguistic theory and analysis.
Athena Title
Language and Ethics
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
- Students will reflect on their own core moral beliefs and their sources and how these principles can be applied to linguistic issues.
- Students will be able to explain basic concepts in normative ethics and the evolution of different ethical frameworks.
- Students will be able to assess rationales for ethical principles and develop ethical arguments from different positions.
- Students will be able to identify ethical issues concerning language and linguistics and evaluate ethical justifications for linguistic human rights.
- Students will be able to analyze how language practices reflect moral and social values, and how societal practices and policies affect language communities and individual speakers.
- Students will be able to assess specific issues in the ethics of language and linguistics, considering possible conflicts among ethical principles and differing sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspectives, and to apply an ethical decision-making strategy to resolve problems or dilemmas.
Topical Outline
- 1. Introduction to course: personal moral beliefs and their sources; what’s in a name? – why language matters
- 2. Foundations of ethical reasoning and the intersection of ethics and language: Fundamental concepts, introduction to major ethical frameworks and their historical development, ethical dimensions of language
- 3. Ethics of language use: truth and deception, persuasion and manipulation, politeness, harmful speech
- 4. Ethics and political discourse, language and power
- 5. Standard language ideology and inequality, language and nationalism
- 6. Linguistic discrimination and the ethics of representation
- 7. Language policy and linguistic human rights: minority and endangered languages, the impacts of English as a global language
- 8. Ethics and language technology: bias, representation, and access; transparency and explainability; data ownership and privacy; uses and misuses of technology
- 9. Ethics in linguistic research: professional standards and policies; objectivity and advocacy; accuracy and reproducibility; data ownership, access, collaboration, and community impact
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
Social Awareness & Responsibility
The capacity to understand the interdependence of people, communities, and self in a global society.
