Ethics in pragmatics

This paper compiles a series of useful resources, which should act as pointers for decision-making processes for ethics in pragmatics. We show why ethical considerations are central to good academic practice, and key to protecting the interlocutors and informants whose practices we wish to study. In doing do, we advocate adopting an understanding of ethical-decision making as a process, and not the result of a single decision made at the outset of research (cf. e.g., Markham and Buchanan, 2012). As we delineate in this chapter, this approach is key, given that there are not always straightforward, easy solutions to ethical desiderata. To ensure that scholars can benefit from the ethical-decision making processes other scholars have undergone, we thus advocate that scholars include brief discussions of the ethical measures underlining the research presented in their work. This transparency would serve to encourage a conversation among scholars within and across research disciplines and for greater recognition of the importance and relevance of seeing ethics as a process.