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Ethical Considerations in the Research of Applied Linguistics

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Ethical Considerations in the Research of Applied Linguistics
Ethical considerations in the research of applied linguistics

JIAN HE
Monash University

1. Introduction

In applied linguistics researches, there are unlikely considerable issues related to ethics or morality due to the harmlessness of the nature of language study. And in most cases, the participants are even able to get more or less some benefits from the research. For example, the participants may have an opportunity to gain certain knowledge of a target language via practicing the tasks in the research if they are second language learners. However, once the human subjects being investigated, there will possibly raise potential risks and discomforts from the procedure of the research, for instance, the disclosure of privacy could be damaging to a person. A qualified researcher must place a premium on ethical considerations when doing the research planing , even if it appears to be of minimally risky to the subjects. In this paper, I tend to discuss on some prominent ethical issues concerned by the literatures of research methodology and to address some of them with a combination of the recommended solutions from the literatures and my own reflections after reading those texts. After all, as it is difficult to transact all of the ethical issues in all circumstances, to highlight some ethical dilemmas and make the tricky points noticeable to the researchers seems to be worth doing. And hopefully, every researcher of applied linguistics finds a balance point between the ethical considerations and their willingnesses of producing optimum researches. Anyway, whether ethically conducting the research or not also involves in the criteria for evaluating the quality of a research.

2. Researchers ' value

As the German sociologist Weber (1946) indicated, "all research is contaminated to some extent by the value of the researcher" (cited in Silverman, 2004: 257). How researchers carry out their researches therefore highly depends on the



References: Bouma, G. (1996) The Research Process. Melbourne: Oxford University Press Brooks-Lewis, K Bryman, A (2001) Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dornyei (2007) Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duff, P (2007), Qualitative approaches to classroom research with English language learners. In J, Cummins and C, Davison (Eds.), International Handbook of English Language Teaching Gass, S (2010) Experimental Research. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakiti (Eds.), Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics Holliday, A (2010) Analysing Qualitative Data. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakiti (Eds.), Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics Labov, W. (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell Mackey, A Punch, M (1994), Policing and Ethics in Qualitative Research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research Seliger, H & Shohamy, E (1989) Second Language Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Silverman, D (2004) Qualitative Research: Theory, method and practice. London: Sage. Sleeter, C. (1998) Activist or ethnographer? Researchers, teachers, and voice in ethnographies that critique Starfield, S (2010). Ethnographies. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakiti (Eds.), Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics Tisdale, K. (2004) Being Vulnerable and Being Ethical With/in Research. In deMarrais, K. & S. Trochim, M..K (2006) Research Methods Knowledge Base.

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