Ethical events in the internationalising university

Engaging, Learning and Knowing in Spaces of Otherwise

Bibliographic Data

ID4178504
AuthorsL Holmes (0000-0002-9612-685X, University of the West of Scotland, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume2024
Issue287
Pages75-97
Publication date2024-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0165-2516 • E-ISSN: 1613-3668
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ijsl-2023-0038
OpenAlexW4399197407
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited40

This paper suggests that a sociolinguistics of potentiality is an "ethical" sociolinguistics that will grapple with the difference of others. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of Social Sciences classrooms in a Swedish university, it illuminates how students and teachers work to foster improved sociality and mutual responsibility across social and linguistic difference in internationalising university life. The paper develops through a consideration of Levinasian "ethical events", defined as interactions involving that which is not known, normative or ordinarily visible, but for which all involved are called upon to take responsibility. Analysis of the ethical events involving instances of embodied interdiscursive performance brings to light how late liberal values such as individualism and competition could be disrupted in favour of collaborative and mutually responsible academic and social practice. Yet, as is characteristic of "spaces of otherwise", the task of shaping such new relations in and around the classroom spaces involved risk and exhaustion. The study concludes by arguing that constructing university spaces as open to different ways of engaging, learning and knowing involves an orientation in response to others' desire for mutuality and reciprocity

Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Individualism · Linguistics · Normative · Political science · Social science · Sociality · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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Open DOIOpen Access