Ethics and Translanguaging Research

The question of ethics in the context of relationships between researchers' and research participants' identities has been discussed quite extensively in the social sciences and humanities—as much as in other fields such as the bio-medical sciences. But some glaring blind spots remain: Whose ethics? From what ontological perspective? And is there such a thing as a universal ethics that must apply to all contexts and to all types of research equally? How about researcher positionality, reflexivity, and onto-epistemology? This chapter will address these and related questions in the context of translanguaging research. A key contour of translanguaging perspectives is that of unsettling and troubling normative, taken for granted assumptions about language and associated meta-discursive regimes, including those about what constitutes good and ethically sound research. The chapter yokes together the foundational premises of translanguaging on the one hand, and the demands of ethics imposed upon researchers, on the other. It also draws on insights from decolonial and Indigenous perspectives to support the arguments advanced. The goal is to craft alternative trajectories of research ethics that are consistent with the anti-colonial and anti-foundational inspirations of most translanguaging research agendas.