Research Ethics and Pragmatic Context: An Exposition

Abstract

Like research itself, research ethics involves and as well requires language use with all levels of linguistics analysis. Pragmatics is one of the levels used for (re)presenting research activities and ethics. Regrettably in the course of representing research activities and ethics pragmatically, some misrepresentations arise. Leaning on some secondary sources of data, this study seeks to describe how context impacts on research ethics. The study is anchored on Grice Conversational Theory of Implicature, which highlights the implication of violating research ethics and what context implies in research. The analysis demonstrates that research ethics is both context-specific and general. Next, context is proven to be the base of pragmatic misrepresentation in research ethics. It also shows that pragmatic misrepresentations amount to ethical violations in research ethics and beyond. The study concludes that there is a correlation between research ethics and pragmatics, made manifest basically by context.