PROFESSIONAL ETHICS–II

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS–II

A Doctoral Framework for Ethical Scholarship, Professional Integrity and Responsible Knowledge Production

Course Code: UR/PhD–811

Level: PhD

Discipline: English Linguistics / Languages / Humanities and Social Sciences

Credit Hours: 2

Duration: 15 Weeks

Contact Hours: 2 hours per week

Course Type: Doctoral Core / University-wide Professional Ethics

Proposed Title: Professional Ethics–II: Ethics, Integrity and Responsible Practice in Academic and Research Professions

1. COURSE RATIONALE

Professional Ethics–II: The Moral Architecture of Doctoral Scholarship

A doctoral researcher is not merely a more advanced student. A doctoral researcher is entering the community of knowledge producers.

That distinction should define the entire philosophy of Professional Ethics–II.

At undergraduate level, students are principally learning what a discipline knows. At postgraduate level, they begin to interrogate that knowledge, evaluate competing explanations and develop increasingly independent intellectual positions. At doctoral level, however, the relationship changes fundamentally: the scholar is no longer merely consuming or reproducing knowledge but is being entrusted with the authority to produce, evaluate, challenge, interpret and disseminate knowledge.

With that authority comes responsibility.

A PhD therefore represents more than the successful completion of coursework, a dissertation and a series of examinations. It constitutes entry into a professional and intellectual community whose credibility depends upon the trustworthiness of its members. A doctoral scholar may publish findings that influence subsequent scholarship, shape policy, inform professional practice, enter educational materials, affect public understanding or become the foundation for future research. The ethical quality of that scholarship consequently matters not only to the researcher but to everyone who relies upon the scholarly record.

Professional Ethics–II is designed around this fundamental proposition:

The higher the authority of the scholar, the greater the responsibility attached to the use of knowledge.

From Rules to Judgement

At doctoral level, ethics cannot be reduced to a catalogue of virtues, professional manners or abstract moral principles. Nor should the course become a procedural exercise in memorising institutional regulations.

The real ethical challenges of scholarship frequently emerge precisely where rules become insufficient.

A doctoral researcher may know that plagiarism is prohibited, yet encounter difficult questions about paraphrasing, translation, quotation, text recycling, collaborative writing or the use of generative artificial intelligence. A researcher may understand that authorship should reflect intellectual contribution, yet confront unequal power relationships between supervisors, students and collaborators. A linguist may know that research participants deserve protection, yet have to decide whether naturally occurring online discourse can ethically be collected, archived and published.

Professional ethics therefore requires something more sophisticated than rule recognition. It requires ethical reasoning.

The course consequently asks students to move from:

“What does the rule say?”

to:

“What is the ethically responsible course of action, why is it responsible, what principles justify it, who may be affected, and how can I defend my decision?”

This movement, from compliance to judgement, is central to doctoral maturity.

The Ethical Questions of Contemporary Scholarship

A contemporary doctoral scholar operates within an increasingly complex knowledge environment. The traditional boundaries between researcher, author, editor, teacher, supervisor, reviewer and technology user are becoming more fluid, while digital technologies have introduced ethical questions that earlier generations of researchers could scarcely have anticipated.

Professional Ethics–II therefore confronts students with questions such as:

• What constitutes plagiarism when a source has been paraphrased or translated through an AI system?
• When does legitimate collaboration become inappropriate intellectual appropriation?
• Who deserves authorship on a research paper?
• Can a supervisor ethically publish research derived from a student's dissertation?
• How should intellectual contribution be distinguished from administrative or supervisory assistance?
• What should a researcher do when institutional pressure conflicts with research integrity?
• How should linguistic data involving vulnerable communities be collected, stored, analysed and disseminated?
• Who owns a corpus?
• Can naturally occurring online discourse ethically be used as research data without individual consent?
• What happens when participant privacy conflicts with the potential scholarly value of publication?
• How should researchers acknowledge the use of generative AI?
• What constitutes responsible use of ChatGPT and comparable AI systems?
• Who bears responsibility when an AI system generates fabricated references, distorted quotations or inaccurate interpretations?
• How should researchers respond when data appear fabricated, manipulated, selectively reported or otherwise unreliable?
• What are the ethical responsibilities of reviewers, editors, supervisors and examiners?
• When does academic competition become exploitation?
• What constitutes a conflict of interest in research, supervision, reviewing or publication?
• What does academic freedom mean when it comes into tension with institutional responsibility?
• How should scholars respond to discrimination, harassment, bullying or abuse of academic power?
• When does a questionable research practice become research misconduct?
• What responsibilities does a scholar have toward research participants, students, colleagues, institutions and society?

These are not peripheral questions. They are questions about whether knowledge itself can be trusted.

A university may possess sophisticated laboratories, extensive libraries, powerful databases and advanced computational systems. None of these guarantees trustworthy scholarship. Ultimately, the integrity of a university's knowledge enterprise depends upon the ethical judgement of the people who produce and transmit that knowledge.

The Central Movement of the Course

The architecture of Professional Ethics–II is therefore deliberately developmental.

The course moves through the following intellectual progression:

Moral Theory → Professional Character → Academic Integrity → Research Ethics → Disciplinary Ethics → AI Ethics → Institutional Responsibility → Ethical Decision-Making

This sequence is important.

Students first encounter ethics as a philosophical question concerning human action and moral judgement. They then examine the formation of professional character and the virtues expected of members of an academic community. From there, the course moves into the concrete ethical infrastructure of scholarship: research integrity, authorship, plagiarism, data management, publication, peer review and supervision.

The course subsequently becomes discipline-sensitive.

For doctoral scholars in English Linguistics, ethics cannot remain a generic discussion of professional conduct. Linguistic research raises distinctive questions concerning language data, identity, multilingualism, discourse, corpora, endangered languages, digital communication, translation, transcription, participant representation and computational systems.

Finally, students confront the emerging ethical landscape of artificial intelligence and learn to integrate ethical principles into actual scholarly decision-making.

The goal is not simply to make students aware of ethical problems.

It is to make them capable of recognising, analysing, negotiating and resolving ethical problems responsibly.

Integrating Islamic Ethics with Contemporary Professional Ethics

The course also occupies a distinctive intellectual position within an Islamic educational context.

It does not treat Islamic ethics and contemporary professional ethics as competing systems in which students must choose between a "religious" morality and a "modern" professional code.

Instead, it asks a more productive question:

How can Islamic ethical concepts illuminate the responsibilities of the contemporary scholar?

Concepts such as amanah (trust and entrusted responsibility), 'adl (justice), ihsan (excellence and beneficence), sidq (truthfulness), taqwa (God-consciousness), shura (consultation) and mas'uliyyah (responsibility/accountability) provide a rich ethical vocabulary through which contemporary academic practices can be examined.

The concept of amanah, for example, offers a particularly powerful way of understanding doctoral scholarship. Research data, participant narratives, institutional resources, scholarly authority and the public's trust are all forms of responsibility entrusted to the researcher.

Sidq places truthfulness at the heart of scholarly communication.

'Adl raises questions of fairness in authorship, assessment, supervision, peer review and access to academic opportunity.

Ihsan moves professional conduct beyond minimal compliance toward excellence in practice.

Shura encourages consultation, intellectual openness and responsible collaborative decision-making.

Taqwa introduces an important dimension of internal accountability: ethical conduct should not depend exclusively upon surveillance, regulation or fear of punishment.

And mas'uliyyah reminds the scholar that professional authority inevitably carries corresponding obligations.

The result is an integrated ethical framework in which contemporary research integrity and Islamic moral philosophy can enter into serious intellectual dialogue.

Why Professional Ethics–II Matters Particularly in English Linguistics

The course has particular significance for doctoral researchers in English Linguistics, because language research is fundamentally human research.

A linguist does not merely study abstract structures. Depending upon the field, the researcher may work with speakers, communities, identities, conversations, interviews, classrooms, social media, literary texts, institutional documents, multilingual populations and increasingly large computational datasets.

A linguistic corpus may contain someone's words.

A discourse dataset may contain someone's political identity.

An interview may contain someone's trauma, beliefs or private experiences.

A sociolinguistic recording may reveal a speaker's ethnicity, location or social background.

A digital corpus may contain material that was publicly accessible but never intended by its creators to become permanent research evidence.

The ethical question is therefore not simply:

Can this data be collected?

It is:

Should this data be collected, how should it be represented, who may be affected, and what responsibilities follow from using it?

This becomes even more consequential when research involves vulnerable communities, minority languages, indigenous linguistic knowledge, endangered languages, children, migrants, refugees or digitally marginalised populations.

The linguist must therefore learn to see language data not merely as objects of analysis, but as traces of human lives.

The AI Transformation of Linguistic Scholarship

The emergence of generative AI makes this ethical orientation even more urgent.

English Linguistics now operates in an environment in which machines can generate grammatical sentences, translate texts, imitate academic styles, summarise research, produce synthetic dialogue, classify linguistic patterns and participate in forms of linguistic analysis.

This creates extraordinary research opportunities. It also creates extraordinary ethical responsibilities.

The fundamental question is no longer simply whether researchers should use AI.

It is:

How can researchers use increasingly powerful computational systems without surrendering intellectual responsibility to them?

A doctoral scholar must be able to distinguish between assistance and substitution, augmentation and outsourcing, automation and accountability.

AI may assist a researcher. It cannot assume the researcher's ethical responsibility.

The scholar remains accountable for the sources cited, the data analysed, the interpretations produced, the claims published and the consequences of those claims.

From Ethical Awareness to Ethical Identity

The deepest purpose of Professional Ethics–II is therefore transformational.

The course should not merely produce doctoral researchers who know that plagiarism is wrong, that informed consent matters, that conflicts of interest should be disclosed or that research data should be handled responsibly.

It should produce scholars for whom these principles become part of their professional identity.

The ultimate transition is:

from knowing ethical rules → to recognising ethical problems → to reasoning through ethical dilemmas → to consistently acting as a trustworthy scholar.

That is the difference between ethical compliance and ethical professionalism.

A mature doctoral researcher should eventually reach a point at which ethical conduct does not require constant external supervision. Integrity becomes internalised.

The researcher does the right thing not merely because the university requires it, because a supervisor is watching, or because misconduct could result in disciplinary action.

The researcher does it because scholarship itself is understood as a trust.

The Foundational Question of the Course

Professional Ethics–II should therefore be organised around one question that can accompany the doctoral researcher throughout the course:

If society grants me the authority to produce knowledge, what responsibilities do I acquire in return?

Everything else follows from this.

How we collect data follows from it.

How we treat participants follows from it.

How we cite sources follows from it.

How we assign authorship follows from it.

How we supervise students follows from it.

How we review manuscripts follows from it.

How we use artificial intelligence follows from it.

How we report inconvenient findings follows from it.

How we respond to error follows from it.

How we exercise academic power follows from it.

And ultimately, how we understand ourselves as scholars follows from it.

The purpose of this course, therefore, is not to produce researchers who merely avoid misconduct.

It is to cultivate researchers who actively deserve the trust placed in them by the university, their participants, their disciplines, their colleagues, their students and society.

That is why Professional Ethics–II should occupy a central rather than peripheral position in doctoral education.

A PhD gives a scholar the authority to make claims about the world. Professional ethics asks whether the world can trust the person making those claims.

That is the problem this course exists to address. And that is the standard by which the course itself should ultimately be judged.

2. COURSE PHILOSOPHY

From Compliance to Character: The Five-Dimensional Ethical Scholar

The philosophy of Professional Ethics–II begins with a deceptively simple proposition:

Professional ethics is not the art of avoiding punishment; it is the disciplined practice of doing what is right when rules alone cannot tell us what to do.

This proposition distinguishes genuine professional ethics from mere regulatory compliance.

A scholar who behaves ethically only because misconduct may be detected has learned the rules. A scholar who acts ethically when there is no surveillance, when misconduct would be advantageous, when institutional pressure is intense, or when the ethical choice carries a personal cost has begun to develop professional character.

Doctoral education must cultivate the latter.

The contemporary university is an intricate moral ecosystem. A doctoral scholar simultaneously occupies multiple roles: researcher, teacher, learner, supervisor or future supervisor, author, reviewer, colleague, citizen and increasingly a user of powerful digital and artificial-intelligence systems. Each role carries different responsibilities, but they converge upon one fundamental obligation:

To exercise intellectual authority without abusing the trust that accompanies it.

Professional Ethics–II therefore does not treat ethics as an isolated subject appended to doctoral education. It treats ethics as a cross-cutting dimension of scholarly life.

The course is organised around five mutually reinforcing dimensions of ethical scholarship.

2.1 The Ethical Person

Character Before Credential

The first dimension is the ethical person.

Before a scholar becomes a researcher, lecturer, supervisor, reviewer or academic leader, there is a human being making choices. Professional competence cannot compensate for a defective moral foundation.

The ethical scholar therefore cultivates:

honesty, humility, responsibility, justice, empathy, integrity, respect and intellectual courage.

Honesty requires the scholar to represent evidence truthfully, including evidence that weakens a preferred argument.

Humility requires recognition that expertise is always partial and that being intellectually accomplished does not make one infallible.

Responsibility requires accepting ownership of one's decisions, errors and consequences.

Justice requires fairness in assessment, authorship, supervision, collaboration and professional relationships.

Intellectual courage requires the willingness to question assumptions, including one's own assumptions, and to speak truthfully when doing so is professionally inconvenient.

The ethical person also understands that character is tested most seriously when ethical behaviour carries a cost.

It is easy to be honest when honesty is rewarded.

The deeper test comes when accuracy threatens a publication, transparency risks institutional displeasure, acknowledging another scholar's contribution diminishes one's own apparent achievement, or admitting an error requires public correction.

Professional Ethics–II therefore seeks to move students beyond the question:

“What behaviour is permitted?”

toward:

“What kind of person should I become as a scholar?”

2.2 The Ethical Professional

Responsibility in the Academic Community

The second dimension is the ethical professional.

Academic life is relational. Scholarship does not occur in isolation. Every researcher participates in networks of students, supervisors, colleagues, reviewers, editors, institutions and communities.

The ethical professional recognises that every academic role carries obligations.

As a teacher, the scholar has obligations of fairness, competence, respect and intellectual honesty.

As a supervisor, the scholar exercises a form of power that must never become exploitation. Students are not inexpensive research assistants, publication instruments or extensions of a supervisor's academic identity. Their intellectual contributions must be recognised, their development supported and their academic independence protected.

As an examiner, the scholar must evaluate work according to defensible academic criteria rather than personal preference, institutional rivalry, ideological disagreement or interpersonal relationships.

As a reviewer, the scholar becomes a temporary custodian of another researcher's intellectual labour and must therefore protect confidentiality, avoid conflicts of interest and provide fair, evidence-based evaluation.

As an author, the scholar must represent contributions accurately, acknowledge intellectual debts and accept responsibility for the published work.

As a colleague, the scholar contributes to a professional culture in which disagreement does not become hostility and competition does not become exploitation.

The ethical professional therefore understands an important principle:

Academic freedom does not eliminate professional responsibility; it makes responsible conduct more important.

2.3 The Ethical Researcher

The Integrity of the Knowledge Enterprise

The third dimension is the ethical researcher.

This is perhaps the most obvious component of research ethics, but it must be understood in its broadest sense.

Research integrity is not simply the prohibition of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. It encompasses the entire chain through which evidence becomes knowledge:

Question → Design → Data → Analysis → Interpretation → Publication → Dissemination

Ethical responsibility exists at every stage.

The researcher must formulate questions honestly, design studies responsibly, collect data appropriately, preserve records accurately, analyse evidence transparently and distinguish findings from speculation.

The ethical researcher does not manipulate evidence to produce a preferred conclusion.

Nor does the scholar quietly discard inconvenient findings, manufacture certainty where uncertainty exists, or present exploratory observations as established facts.

Perhaps most importantly, the ethical researcher understands that negative, unexpected and contradictory results are also knowledge.

The credibility of scholarship depends not upon always being correct but upon being truthful about what the evidence can and cannot establish.

This dimension consequently develops three foundational habits:

Transparency

Make methodological choices, limitations and relevant sources of uncertainty visible.

Accountability

Accept responsibility for the integrity of one's research, including work conducted with collaborators or technological tools.

Reproducibility and traceability

Maintain sufficient records for others to understand, evaluate and, where appropriate, reproduce the research process.

The ethical researcher therefore asks not merely:

“Can I publish this?”

but:

“Can I defend every important decision that produced this knowledge?”

2.4 The Ethical Citizen

Knowledge Has Consequences

The fourth dimension extends ethics beyond the university.

The ethical scholar is an ethical citizen who understands that knowledge does not remain confined to journal articles, dissertations and conference presentations.

Research can influence policy.

Language research can affect communities.

Educational research can shape classrooms.

Artificial-intelligence research can influence systems used by millions.

Psychological or medical findings can alter individual behaviour.

Historical and social research can influence public narratives.

Even apparently abstract scholarship can eventually shape how societies understand themselves.

The ethical citizen therefore asks:

Who may be affected by what I discover, how I represent it and how others use it?

This question is especially important in English Linguistics.

Research involving minority languages, endangered languages, indigenous communities, migrants, refugees, children, vulnerable populations or politically sensitive discourse requires more than methodological sophistication. It requires sensitivity to power, representation, ownership and potential consequences.

A linguist must therefore resist treating speakers merely as data sources.

Behind every recording, transcript, interview and corpus entry may be a human being whose words carry identity, memory, dignity and social meaning.

The ethical citizen recognises that scholarship has a social contract.

The university does not exist merely to accumulate knowledge.

It exists, at least in part, to serve human flourishing through knowledge.

2.5 The Ethical Digital Scholar

Intelligence Without Abdication of Responsibility

The fifth dimension is increasingly indispensable: the ethical digital scholar.

Digital technologies have transformed the production of academic knowledge. Artificial intelligence can now assist with literature discovery, translation, transcription, coding, corpus analysis, drafting, editing, data organisation and many other scholarly tasks.

These technologies offer extraordinary opportunities.

They also create unprecedented ethical risks.

The ethical digital scholar understands that technological capability does not automatically confer ethical legitimacy.

The relevant question is not simply:

“Can an AI system do this?”

but:

“Should I use it for this purpose, under these conditions, and can I remain fully responsible for the result?”

This requires students to develop AI literacy alongside ethical literacy.

They should be able to recognise fabricated citations, misleading outputs, algorithmic bias, privacy risks, confidentiality concerns, intellectual-property questions and inappropriate automation.

They must also understand that generative AI can produce language without possessing the scholarly responsibility that accompanies the language.

A machine can generate a plausible argument.

It cannot assume responsibility for the truth of that argument.

A machine can produce a citation.

It cannot guarantee that the cited source actually supports the claim.

A machine can transform data.

It cannot determine whether the transformation is ethically justified.

The human scholar therefore remains the ultimate locus of epistemic accountability.

The ethical digital scholar does not reject technology.

Nor does the scholar surrender to it.

Instead, the scholar develops a mature relationship with technology:

Use intelligently. Verify rigorously. Disclose appropriately. Protect confidentiality. Retain human judgement. Accept responsibility.

The Five Dimensions as an Integrated Architecture

These five dimensions should not be taught as five disconnected units.

They constitute an integrated model.

Dimension	Central Question	Core Responsibility
Ethical Person	Who am I becoming?	Character
Ethical Professional	How should I treat others in academic life?	Professional conduct
Ethical Researcher	Can my knowledge be trusted?	Research integrity
Ethical Citizen	What consequences does my knowledge have?	Social responsibility
Ethical Digital Scholar	How should I use technological power responsibly?	Digital and AI responsibility

Together they produce a more complete conception of doctoral professionalism.

A scholar may be technically competent but ethically careless.

A researcher may be honest but professionally exploitative.

A lecturer may be compassionate but methodologically weak.

A brilliant academic may produce influential research while failing to consider its social consequences.

A technologically sophisticated researcher may use AI extensively while becoming intellectually dependent upon it.

The five-dimensional model prevents such fragmentation.

It asks the doctoral scholar to develop character, professional responsibility, research integrity, civic consciousness and digital judgement simultaneously.

The Course's Ultimate Movement

The architecture of the course can therefore be represented as a movement from the self outward:

PERSON → PROFESSION → RESEARCH → SOCIETY → TECHNOLOGY

But the movement ultimately returns to the individual.

Because every ethical decision eventually becomes a question of who the scholar chooses to be.

The purpose of Professional Ethics–II is consequently not to create scholars who merely know the difference between ethical and unethical conduct.

It is to create scholars who can recognise ethical complexity, reason through competing obligations and act responsibly even when no rule, supervisor, committee or algorithm provides the answer.

That is the highest form of professional maturity.

And it brings the entire philosophy of the course back to its foundational principle:

Professional ethics is not the art of avoiding punishment; it is the disciplined practice of doing what is right when rules alone cannot tell us what to do.

A doctoral scholar who internalises that principle does not merely graduate with a PhD.

They graduate with something more difficult to earn and far more important to preserve: the capacity to be trusted.

3. COURSE DESCRIPTION

Professional Ethics–II: From Ethical Theory to Responsible Scholarly Practice

Professional Ethics–II is a doctoral-level course designed to develop an integrated, intellectually rigorous and practically applicable understanding of professional, academic and research ethics within contemporary higher education.

The course begins from a fundamental premise: doctoral education does not merely prepare individuals to obtain advanced qualifications; it inducts them into a community entrusted with the production, evaluation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Professional ethics is therefore not an auxiliary component of doctoral training but one of the conditions upon which the credibility of scholarship itself depends.

The course moves beyond a narrow compliance-based conception of ethics. Rather than treating ethics as a catalogue of prohibitions, institutional regulations or professional manners, it examines the reasoning, virtues, responsibilities and institutional conditions that enable scholars to make ethically defensible decisions when professional situations are complex, ambiguous or contested.

Students are introduced to classical and contemporary theories of morality and examine how different philosophical traditions conceptualise duty, virtue, consequences, justice, character, responsibility and moral agency. These perspectives provide the conceptual vocabulary necessary for analysing difficult professional situations rather than simply labelling conduct as "ethical" or "unethical."

A distinctive component of the course is its engagement with Islamic ethical thought. Concepts including amanah, sidq, 'adl, ihsan, taqwa, shura and mas'uliyyah are examined in relation to contemporary academic and professional practice. The objective is not to place Islamic ethics and professional ethics in opposition, but to explore their points of intellectual convergence and examine how Islamic moral principles can illuminate questions of scholarly integrity, responsibility, justice, excellence and accountability.

The course then moves from moral philosophy into the practical architecture of academic life.

Students examine professional identity, rights and responsibilities, academic integrity, research misconduct, authorship, collaboration, supervision, peer review, assessment and examination. Particular attention is given to the unequal distribution of academic power and the ethical responsibilities that accompany positions of authority. The course therefore treats supervision, assessment and academic leadership not merely as administrative functions but as relationships carrying substantial obligations of fairness, dignity, confidentiality and accountability.

The integrity of the research process constitutes another major strand of the course. Students critically examine research design, data collection, data management, analysis, interpretation, reporting, publication and dissemination as interconnected ethical activities. Issues of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate attribution, selective reporting, duplicate publication, questionable research practices and conflicts of interest are analysed through realistic scholarly cases.

The course also addresses the increasingly complex ethical dimensions of contemporary knowledge production, including intellectual property, copyright, data ownership, privacy, confidentiality, human-participant research and digitally mediated research. Particular consideration is given to situations in which material may be technically accessible but ethically problematic to collect, reproduce or publish.

Publication ethics receives sustained attention because the modern scholar operates within a highly competitive academic environment. Students examine the responsibilities of authors, editors, reviewers and publishers, including appropriate authorship, acknowledgement, peer-review confidentiality, conflicts of interest, editorial independence, corrections and retractions. The course emphasises that publication is not simply the final stage of research; it is an extension of the researcher's ethical responsibility to the scholarly record.

The course further examines academic freedom and academic responsibility as complementary rather than contradictory principles. A university must protect intellectual inquiry and legitimate disagreement while simultaneously maintaining standards of evidence, professional conduct, institutional accountability and respect for human dignity. Students are therefore encouraged to consider difficult questions concerning institutional pressure, dissent, professional loyalty, whistleblowing and the public responsibilities of academics.

Questions of equity, inclusion and social justice are integrated throughout the course rather than treated as an isolated topic. Students consider discrimination, harassment, unequal access to academic opportunity, power asymmetries and the ethical treatment of vulnerable communities. Environmental responsibility is likewise introduced as part of the expanding social responsibility of contemporary scholarship.

Ethics in English Linguistics and Related Disciplines

A defining feature of this course is its discipline-specific orientation.

Professional ethics cannot be adequately understood by doctoral researchers in English Linguistics through generic examples alone. Linguistic scholarship frequently involves the collection and interpretation of human language, and consequently raises distinctive questions concerning identity, representation, privacy, consent, community ownership, multilingualism and power.

Accordingly, the course addresses ethical problems relevant to:

• English Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• TESOL and ELT
• Language Education
• Discourse Analysis
• Critical Discourse Analysis
• Sociolinguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Corpus Linguistics
• Computational and Digital Linguistics
• Digital Humanities

Students may encounter ethical questions such as whether naturally occurring online discourse can be used as research data; how speakers should be anonymised; how linguistic communities should be represented; who owns a corpus; how sensitive multilingual or sociolinguistic data should be stored; whether translation changes the ethical status of quoted material; and how researchers should negotiate the relationship between scholarly value and participant privacy.

The course consequently encourages students to see linguistic data not merely as analytical material but as humanly situated evidence.

A transcript may represent a person's identity.

A corpus may preserve a community's linguistic heritage.

An interview may contain information that participants never expected to become permanently searchable.

A digital dataset may reproduce inequalities embedded within the platform from which it was collected.

Ethical linguistic research therefore requires both methodological sophistication and moral judgement.

The AI Turn in Professional Ethics

No contemporary doctoral ethics course can remain adequate without addressing artificial intelligence.

Generative AI has fundamentally altered the conditions under which academic writing, research assistance, translation, coding, transcription, literature discovery and knowledge dissemination occur.

The course therefore examines ethical AI use not as a technological add-on but as a central question of contemporary scholarship.

Students consider:

• responsible and irresponsible uses of generative AI;
• authorship and attribution;
• disclosure of AI assistance;
• fabricated citations and unverifiable information;
• algorithmic bias;
• privacy and confidential research material;
• intellectual-property concerns;
• AI-generated research data and synthetic content;
• automated analysis;
• human oversight;
• verification and reproducibility;
• academic assessment in the age of generative AI; and
• the continuing responsibility of the human researcher.

The guiding principle is straightforward:

Technology may assist scholarly work, but it cannot inherit the scholar's ethical responsibility.

A researcher remains accountable for the accuracy, integrity, provenance and consequences of material submitted under their name.

From Ethical Knowledge to Ethical Action

The course culminates not in the memorisation of ethical rules but in the development of a practical Ethical Decision-Making Framework.

Students will be required to analyse complex professional cases in which legitimate values may conflict—for example, confidentiality versus public interest, academic freedom versus institutional responsibility, student welfare versus academic standards, research openness versus participant privacy, or scholarly productivity versus research integrity.

The final intellectual movement of the course is therefore:

Recognise → Analyse → Deliberate → Decide → Justify → Act → Reflect

Students must learn to identify the ethical problem, determine the relevant stakeholders, distinguish facts from assumptions, identify competing values and obligations, consult appropriate professional and institutional standards, evaluate possible consequences, reach a defensible decision, justify that decision transparently and reflect upon its implications.

The ultimate objective is to develop not merely ethically informed researchers, but ethically trustworthy scholars.

A successful student should leave the course capable of answering a question that lies beneath every major topic in the syllabus:

When knowledge, power, professional interest and human welfare come into conflict, can I make a decision that I can defend intellectually, professionally and morally?

That is the standard toward which the entire course is directed.

Professional Ethics–II is therefore not simply a course about ethics. It is a course about the kind of scholar a doctoral researcher becomes when entrusted with the authority to produce knowledge.

4. COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

1. Explain major concepts and theories of ethics.
2. Distinguish ethics, morality, law, policy, professional codes and personal values.
3. Critically examine Islamic approaches to moral and professional conduct.
4. Evaluate major Western ethical traditions and their relevance to professional life.
5. Explain principles of research integrity and responsible conduct of research.
6. Identify plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and other questionable research practices.
7. Apply ethical principles to authorship, publication, peer review and supervision.
8. Evaluate ethical problems associated with linguistic and human-participant research.
9. Analyse intellectual-property, copyright, privacy and data-governance issues.
10. Evaluate ethical implications of generative AI in teaching and research.
11. Resolve professional dilemmas through structured ethical reasoning.
12. Demonstrate ethical academic practice through transparent scholarship.
13. Develop an individual Doctoral Research Ethics Charter.
14. Demonstrate the relationship between professional excellence and moral responsibility.

5. COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES — CLOs

At successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

CLO	Learning Outcome	Level
CLO-1	Critically explain major ethical theories, concepts and traditions.	Analyze
CLO-2	Compare Islamic ethical principles with contemporary professional ethics.	Analyze
CLO-3	Evaluate ethical problems in teaching, supervision, assessment and academic relationships.	Evaluate
CLO-4	Apply research-integrity principles to doctoral research design and publication.	Apply
CLO-5	Critically evaluate ethical issues in English Linguistics and language research.	Evaluate
CLO-6	Analyze ethical implications of AI, digital scholarship, data and emerging technologies.	Evaluate
CLO-7	Resolve complex professional dilemmas using a systematic ethical decision-making framework.	Create/Evaluate
CLO-8	Demonstrate ethical academic practice through responsible scholarship, citation, transparency and intellectual honesty.	Create

6. THE CENTRAL CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Professional ethics becomes meaningful only when it moves beyond the memorization of principles and enters the difficult territory of judgment. A doctoral scholar may know that honesty is a virtue, that plagiarism is wrong, that research participants deserve respect, and that conflicts of interest should be disclosed. Yet real academic life rarely presents ethical problems in such clean forms. The difficult cases arise precisely when legitimate values collide: transparency may conflict with confidentiality; a supervisor's authority may conflict with a student's intellectual ownership; research openness may conflict with participant privacy; academic freedom may conflict with institutional responsibility; efficiency may conflict with methodological rigor; and the promise of artificial intelligence may conflict with the scholar's obligation to preserve intellectual authorship.

Professional Ethics–II therefore adopts an integrated model:

VALUES → PRINCIPLES → DUTIES → DECISIONS → ACTION → CONSEQUENCES → ACCOUNTABILITY

This sequence represents the movement from ethical orientation to ethical responsibility. It also captures a fundamental proposition of doctoral education: ethical scholarship is not merely a matter of possessing good intentions. It is the disciplined capacity to translate values into defensible professional action.

6.1 Values: What Do We Consider Worth Protecting?

Ethical reasoning begins with values. Values are the underlying commitments that give moral significance to professional conduct.

For the doctoral scholar, these may include:

• Truthfulness — representing evidence accurately.
• Integrity — maintaining consistency between one's claims, methods and conduct.
• Justice (adl) — treating persons fairly and avoiding arbitrary discrimination.
• Trustworthiness (amanah) — treating knowledge, authority, data and relationships as responsibilities entrusted to the scholar.
• Compassion (rahmah) — recognizing the dignity and vulnerability of others.
• Excellence (ihsan/itqan) — pursuing the highest responsible standard of scholarly work.
• Sincerity (sidq/ikhlas) — resisting deception and intellectual performance for merely personal gain.
• Accountability (mas'uliyyah) — accepting responsibility for the consequences of one's scholarly decisions.

Values answer the foundational question:

What kind of scholar ought I to become?

6.2 Principles: What Ethical Rules or Standards Guide Us?

Values become operational when translated into principles.

A commitment to honesty, for example, becomes a principle of accurate citation. A commitment to justice becomes a principle of fair authorship. Respect for human dignity becomes a principle of informed consent and protection of participant identity.

At this level, doctoral researchers should learn to distinguish among:

Ethical principles — broad standards of right conduct.

Professional codes — standards established by disciplinary or professional communities.

Institutional policies — rules governing conduct within a particular university or research organization.

Law — formally enforceable requirements established by the state.

Personal values — an individual's own moral commitments.

These categories may overlap, but they are not identical. Something may be legal without being ethically admirable; something may be institutionally permitted while still requiring serious ethical reflection.

The mature scholar therefore asks not merely:

“Is this allowed?”

but:

“Is this responsible, justifiable and worthy of scholarly trust?”

6.3 Duties: What Am I Responsible For?

Principles generate duties.

A researcher working with human participants has duties concerning consent, privacy, confidentiality and responsible data management. A supervisor has duties toward students. An examiner has duties concerning impartiality. A reviewer has duties concerning confidentiality and intellectual independence. An author has duties concerning accurate attribution and disclosure.

The concept of amanah is particularly powerful here.

Academic knowledge is not simply property. It is also a trust.

A dataset entrusted by participants is a trust. A student's dissertation is a trust. A referee's confidential manuscript is a trust. A university's institutional authority is a trust. Even the privilege of making public claims as a scholar is a trust.

The question consequently becomes:

What responsibilities arise because I occupy this particular professional role?

6.4 Decisions: What Should I Actually Do?

Ethical scholarship ultimately requires judgment.

Consider a doctoral student who discovers that a highly cited article contains suspicious data. Several possibilities immediately arise. The student could ignore the problem, privately contact the author, inform a supervisor, investigate further, or raise the matter through an institutional research-integrity mechanism.

There is no ethical achievement in simply recognizing that something feels wrong. The scholar must determine what action is proportionate, evidence-based and responsible.

This is where ethical reasoning becomes a professional competence.

6.5 Action: What Will I Do?

A decision becomes ethically meaningful only when translated into conduct.

Professional ethics therefore rejects the comfortable separation between what we believe and what we do.

A scholar who publicly celebrates research integrity but manipulates a dataset remains ethically compromised.

A supervisor who lectures students about plagiarism but appropriates their ideas remains ethically compromised.

A researcher who advocates participant rights but carelessly exposes identifiable linguistic data remains ethically compromised.

Ethics is ultimately visible in practice.

6.6 Consequences: What Will Happen Because of My Decision?

Ethical reasoning must extend beyond immediate intentions.

Every professional decision can affect multiple stakeholders.

A publication decision may affect:

• the researcher;
• co-authors;
• participants;
• students;
• institutions;
• future researchers;
• public understanding;
• and the credibility of the discipline itself.

This is particularly important in language research. A seemingly harmless quotation from an online discussion may reveal a participant's identity. A corpus containing minority-language data may inadvertently expose a vulnerable community. An AI-generated transcription may introduce systematic errors that subsequently become part of a published dataset.

The ethical scholar therefore asks:

Who may be affected by what I am about to do, including people who are not present in the room?

6.7 Accountability: Can I Take Responsibility for the Decision?

The final stage is accountability.

A doctoral researcher should be able to explain:

• what decision was made;
• what evidence informed it;
• what ethical principles were considered;
• which alternatives were rejected;
• what risks were identified;
• what safeguards were introduced;
• and why the final action was proportionate.

This transforms ethics from private sentiment into publicly defensible professional reasoning.

It also produces a crucial distinction:

An ethical scholar is not someone who never encounters an ethical dilemma. An ethical scholar is someone who can recognize the dilemma, reason through it, act responsibly and accept accountability for the decision.

6.8 The Seven Questions of Ethical Scholarship

To operationalize the model, students will apply seven questions to complex academic cases.

Question 1 — What is happening?

Establish the facts before judging the situation.

What actually happened? What is known? What is uncertain? What evidence exists?

This protects ethical reasoning from rumor, assumption, ideological bias and premature accusation.

Question 2 — Who is affected?

Identify the stakeholders and their vulnerabilities.

Who stands to benefit?

Who may be harmed?

Who possesses institutional power?

Who lacks the ability to protect their interests?

In research involving students, children, refugees, minority-language communities or other vulnerable populations, this question becomes especially important.

Question 3 — What principles are involved?

Identify the ethical values at stake.

Is the case primarily about:

• honesty?
• justice?
• autonomy?
• confidentiality?
• privacy?
• intellectual ownership?
• academic freedom?
• beneficence?
• non-maleficence?
• professional responsibility?
• institutional accountability?

Often, the hardest cases involve competing legitimate principles, not an obvious conflict between right and wrong.

Question 4 — What duties apply?

Determine which responsibilities govern the situation.

Consider:

• professional codes;
• institutional regulations;
• research ethics requirements;
• disciplinary conventions;
• contractual obligations;
• applicable law;
• and relevant Islamic ethical principles.

The purpose is not simply to find a rule that permits an action. It is to identify the responsibilities attached to the situation.

Question 5 — What alternatives exist?

Refuse the false binary.

Ethical dilemmas are frequently presented as:

“Either I do X or I do Y.”

But responsible reasoning asks whether a third, fourth or fifth option exists.

Could the data be anonymized rather than discarded?

Could authorship be negotiated rather than imposed?

Could a concern be raised privately before formal escalation?

Could an AI tool be used with disclosure and verification rather than either unrestricted use or complete prohibition?

Ethical intelligence often begins when we discover alternatives that the original framing concealed.

Question 6 — What are the consequences?

Evaluate both immediate and long-term effects.

Ask:

• Who benefits?
• Who bears the risk?
• What harms could occur?
• Are those harms reversible?
• What precedent would this decision establish?
• Could the decision undermine trust in the researcher, institution or discipline?

A decision that solves an immediate problem while creating a larger future harm is not necessarily an ethical solution.

Question 7 — Can I publicly defend my decision?

This is the course's Public Defensibility Test.

Ask:

If my decision appeared tomorrow on the front page of a newspaper, in an institutional inquiry, before an ethics committee, or in my doctoral viva, could I explain and defend it honestly?

The test is not designed to encourage fear of publicity. Its purpose is to expose decisions that depend upon secrecy, embarrassment, personal privilege or the assumption that nobody will ask questions.

A strong ethical decision should survive scrutiny.

6.9 The Public Defensibility Test

The Public Defensibility Test can therefore become one of the course's signature intellectual tools:

Do not ask only whether you can get away with the decision. Ask whether you can responsibly defend it.

This distinction is fundamental.

Compliance asks:

“What is the minimum I must do to avoid violating the rules?”

Ethical professionalism asks:

“What is the most responsible action I can justify under the circumstances?”

The first produces compliance.

The second produces character.

And doctoral education should aspire to the second.

6.10 The Ethical Decision-Making Matrix

For practical application, students can record their reasoning using the following structure:

Stage	Diagnostic Question	Student Response
Facts	What is actually known?	Evidence-based account
Stakeholders	Who is affected?	Individuals/groups
Values	What matters ethically?	Competing values
Principles	Which ethical principles apply?	Relevant principles
Duties	What responsibilities exist?	Professional/institutional/legal duties
Alternatives	What possible actions exist?	At least three options
Consequences	What may follow?	Benefits, harms and risks
Decision	What should be done?	Proposed action
Justification	Why is it ethically defensible?	Reasoned argument
Accountability	Who should know and what should be documented?	Transparency mechanism
Reflection	What would I do differently next time?	Reflexive evaluation

This matrix transforms ethics from an abstract lecture topic into a repeatable scholarly practice.

6.11 The Final Principle

The architecture ultimately returns us to the purpose of the course itself.

A PhD does not merely give a person advanced knowledge. It gives that person a greater capacity to produce, interpret, evaluate and disseminate knowledge.

With that capacity comes greater responsibility.

The ethical scholar therefore moves through a continuous cycle:

Know → Question → Evaluate → Decide → Act → Account → Reflect → Improve

The final objective is not moral perfection. No researcher, teacher or institution is free from error.

The objective is something more intellectually demanding:

the capacity to recognize responsibility before responsibility becomes crisis.

That is the mark of doctoral maturity.

And it is why the ultimate question of Professional Ethics–II is not:

“Do you know the rules?”

It is:

“When the rules are incomplete, competing, ambiguous or silent, can you still be trusted to do what is right?”

That is the threshold between a person who possesses a PhD and a scholar who deserves the authority that a PhD confers.

7. ISLAMIC ETHICAL INTEGRATION

From Moral Instruction to an Architecture of Scholarly Character

Islamic ethics should not appear in Professional Ethics–II as an isolated week, a detached religious supplement, or a collection of quotations inserted into an otherwise secular curriculum. Such an arrangement would fundamentally misunderstand both the richness of Islamic ethical thought and the purpose of doctoral education.

The stronger pedagogical approach is integrative rather than additive.

Islamic ethical concepts should function throughout the course as a parallel vocabulary for thinking about professional responsibility, research integrity, human dignity, intellectual conduct and the proper use of knowledge. Students should encounter these concepts not merely as doctrines to be remembered but as ethical lenses through which contemporary academic problems can be examined.

The central question is therefore not simply:

“What does Islam say about professional ethics?”

It is the more intellectually demanding question:

“What kind of scholar does an ethical worldview produce?”

That question moves the course from religious instruction toward ethical formation.

7.1 Knowledge as Amanah: Scholarship as Trust

Perhaps the most powerful organizing concept is amanah: trust, responsibility and entrusted duty.

A doctoral researcher does not merely possess knowledge. The researcher has been entrusted with intellectual resources, institutional privileges, research participants, data, students, collaborators and the authority to make claims that others may accept as knowledge.

Under this conception, research data are not simply raw materials. They are a trust.

A participant's testimony is a trust.

A student's dissertation is a trust.

A confidential manuscript sent to a reviewer is a trust.

A university's resources are a trust.

Even the authority attached to the title “Dr” can be understood as a trust: an institutional recognition that the holder has demonstrated competence to contribute responsibly to human knowledge.

This immediately transforms the ethical question.

Instead of asking:

“Can I use this?”

the scholar asks:

“Have I been entrusted with this, and what does responsible stewardship require?”

That principle has direct implications for data management, authorship, supervision, publication, assessment and the use of artificial intelligence.

7.2 Sidq: Truthfulness as the Foundation of Research

Sidq, truthfulness, provides a direct ethical foundation for scholarly integrity.

Research depends upon an implicit social contract: when scholars report that an experiment was conducted, a corpus was analyzed, a participant said something, a statistical result was obtained or a source supports a claim, readers must be able to trust that representation.

Fabrication violates that trust.

Falsification violates that trust.

Selective reporting can violate that trust.

Misleading citation can violate that trust.

Undisclosed manipulation can violate that trust.

The ethical researcher therefore does not ask merely whether a statement is rhetorically persuasive. The researcher asks:

Is it true, and have I represented the evidence faithfully?

For doctoral researchers, this becomes particularly important because the pressure to publish can create incentives to exaggerate novelty, suppress inconvenient findings or present preliminary conclusions as established knowledge.

Sidq establishes a higher standard: the integrity of the claim must matter more than the prestige of the claimant.

7.3 Adl: Justice in Academic Life

Adl, justice and fairness, provides an ethical framework for relationships in academic institutions.

Justice has practical consequences for:

• authorship;
• examination;
• grading;
• recruitment;
• supervision;
• peer review;
• allocation of research opportunities;
• recognition of intellectual contributions;
• treatment of students;
• and professional evaluation.

A doctoral supervisor who assigns authorship according to hierarchy rather than contribution raises a question of justice.

An examiner who evaluates a student's argument according to personal preference rather than stated criteria raises a question of justice.

A reviewer who treats work from an unfamiliar theoretical tradition more harshly than work from a familiar tradition raises a question of justice.

The principle therefore requires scholars to distinguish professional judgment from personal preference.

7.4 Ihsan: Excellence Beyond Mere Compliance

If adl establishes fairness, ihsan introduces a higher conception of excellence.

A professional code can tell a researcher what must not be done. Ihsan asks what ought to be done at the highest responsible level.

This distinction is essential.

Compliance says:

“I have followed the minimum requirement.”

Ihsan asks:

“Have I done the work as carefully, responsibly and humanely as I reasonably could?”

A researcher may technically satisfy institutional requirements while still producing careless scholarship.

A lecturer may technically complete the syllabus while failing to inspire intellectual curiosity.

A supervisor may technically meet students while providing little meaningful mentorship.

Ihsan therefore shifts ethics from minimum compliance to professional excellence.

7.5 Taqwa: The Ethics of the Unobserved

One of the most profound contributions of Islamic ethics to professional conduct is the concept of taqwa.

Its significance for academia lies in internal accountability.

External regulation is necessarily limited. Universities cannot monitor every sentence a researcher writes, every dataset a scholar examines, every student interaction, every peer-review decision or every use of artificial intelligence.

An ethics system dependent entirely upon surveillance will therefore always have gaps.

Taqwa introduces an internal moral orientation: the scholar behaves responsibly even when no supervisor, reviewer, administrator or camera is present.

This creates a powerful distinction between:

compliance under observation

and

integrity in the absence of observation.

For doctoral education, the latter is indispensable.

7.6 Mas'uliyyah: Responsibility for Consequences

Mas'uliyyah, responsibility and accountability, complements amanah.

If amanah asks what has been entrusted to me, mas'uliyyah asks:

What am I responsible for because I possess this authority?

A linguist publishing sensitive sociolinguistic data has responsibilities toward participants and communities.

A supervisor has responsibilities toward doctoral researchers.

A journal editor has responsibilities toward authors, reviewers and readers.

A teacher has responsibilities toward students whose intellectual development depends partly upon their instruction.

A scholar using generative AI has responsibilities for the accuracy and provenance of the resulting work.

Professional authority therefore cannot be separated from professional accountability.

7.7 Shura: Consultation Rather Than Intellectual Isolation

Shura, consultation, offers an important model for collaborative academic decision-making.

Research is increasingly collaborative. Complex projects may involve supervisors, students, statisticians, corpus specialists, field researchers, translators and interdisciplinary collaborators.

Ethical scholarship should therefore cultivate a culture in which significant decisions can be discussed rather than unilaterally imposed.

In doctoral supervision, shura can encourage:

• transparent research planning;
• negotiated authorship;
• open discussion of methodological problems;
• collaborative problem-solving;
• respectful disagreement;
• and shared responsibility.

Consultation does not eliminate academic leadership. It makes authority more deliberative and accountable.

7.8 Rahmah: Protecting the Vulnerable

Rahmah, compassion and mercy, becomes particularly significant in human-participant research.

Language research often involves people whose voices may already be socially marginalized: children, migrants, refugees, minority-language communities, patients, people with disabilities, economically disadvantaged populations and communities whose linguistic practices have historically been misrepresented.

A technically competent research design may still be ethically inadequate if it treats participants merely as sources of data.

Rahmah reminds the researcher that the participant is a person before becoming a participant.

The question consequently changes from:

“What data can I obtain?”

to:

“How can I obtain knowledge without unnecessarily compromising the dignity, safety or autonomy of those who make that knowledge possible?”

7.9 Adab: The Ethics of Scholarly Disagreement

Academic life depends upon disagreement.

Theories compete.

Interpretations conflict.

Evidence is challenged.

Arguments are rejected.

Articles are criticized.

Students disagree with supervisors, researchers challenge established scholars, and reviewers recommend rejection.

The ethical question is therefore not whether disagreement can be eliminated. It is whether disagreement can remain intellectually rigorous without becoming personally degrading.

Adab provides a powerful framework for scholarly conduct: criticism should address arguments and evidence rather than attack the dignity of the person making them.

A scholar can say:

“The argument is unsupported.”

without saying:

“The researcher is incompetent.”

This distinction is fundamental to a healthy intellectual culture.

7.10 Tawadu': Intellectual Humility

Tawadu', humility, is particularly important in doctoral education because advanced knowledge can easily produce intellectual overconfidence.

A PhD does not transform a scholar into an authority on everything.

It establishes specialized competence.

The ethical scholar must therefore remain capable of saying:

“I do not know.”

“The evidence is insufficient.”

“I may be wrong.”

“Another interpretation is possible.”

“This limitation matters.”

Intellectual humility is not weakness. It is one of the conditions of genuine scholarship because knowledge advances precisely through the recognition of what remains uncertain.

7.11 Itqan: Precision as an Ethical Obligation

Itqan, excellence, precision and careful execution, brings methodological discipline into the ethical framework.

In research, carelessness is not merely a technical defect.

An incorrectly transcribed linguistic dataset can distort findings.

An inaccurate citation can misrepresent another scholar.

A poorly designed interview can compromise participant evidence.

A careless translation can alter meaning.

An unchecked AI-generated reference can introduce a fictitious source into the scholarly record.

Thus methodological precision becomes an ethical responsibility.

Good intentions cannot compensate for careless scholarship.

7.12 Avoiding Ghibah: Responsible Academic Communication

The prohibition against ghibah, backbiting or speaking about others inappropriately, also has relevance to academic culture, particularly in environments dominated by informal communication and digital platforms.

Academic criticism should not become personal gossip.

Professional disagreement should not become reputational destruction.

A confidential review should not become social-media commentary.

A colleague's mistake should not become an opportunity for humiliation.

This does not mean that misconduct should be concealed. Legitimate reporting of serious concerns is fundamentally different from malicious gossip.

The ethical distinction is between:

responsible disclosure for the protection of academic integrity

and

irresponsible communication for the degradation of another person.

7.13 Transparency, Deception and Gharar

The principle of avoiding deception and undue uncertainty can illuminate contemporary questions surrounding informed consent, research communication and digital scholarship.

Participants should not be misled about the nature or purpose of research without ethically justified reasons.

Researchers should not conceal material information that affects informed participation.

Authors should not disguise the provenance of generated or borrowed material.

Students should not represent AI-produced work as entirely their own if doing so violates the expectations of the assessment.

Transparency therefore becomes a practical expression of ethical trust.

7.14 An Integrated Islamic–Professional Ethical Architecture

The concepts can be brought together into a single framework:

Islamic Ethical Principle	Scholarly Meaning	Professional Application
Amanah	Trust and stewardship	Research data, students, institutional resources
Sidq	Truthfulness	Accurate evidence, citation and reporting
Adl	Justice	Fair assessment, authorship and review
Ihsan	Excellence	Going beyond minimum compliance
Taqwa	Internal accountability	Integrity when nobody is watching
Mas'uliyyah	Responsibility	Accountability for scholarly consequences
Shura	Consultation	Collaborative decision-making
Rahmah	Compassion	Protection of vulnerable participants
Adab	Ethical conduct	Respectful scholarly disagreement
Tawadu'	Humility	Recognition of uncertainty and limitation
Itqan	Precision and excellence	Methodological and scholarly rigor
Avoidance of Ghibah	Responsible speech	Ethical professional communication
Avoidance of deception	Transparency	Consent, disclosure and honest representation

This framework should not be treated as a vocabulary list to memorize for an examination. It should become a working ethical toolkit.

Students should repeatedly be asked to apply these concepts to authentic doctoral situations:

• Should this student be listed as a co-author?
• Can this interview transcript be published?
• What should a reviewer disclose as a conflict of interest?
• How should a supervisor respond when a student reports misconduct?
• Can an AI-generated translation be used in a published corpus?
• What should happen when research findings contradict an institution's preferred narrative?
• How should a researcher respond when a colleague's data appear manipulated?
• When does academic criticism become unethical personal attack?

The purpose is to make Islamic ethical reasoning operational rather than ornamental.

7.15 The Deeper Question: What Kind of Scholar Are We Producing?

The ultimate purpose of Islamic ethical integration is therefore not to create a scholar who can recite a list of virtues.

It is to cultivate a scholar whose professional identity is itself ethically constituted.

A scholar shaped by amanah asks whether knowledge has been responsibly stewarded.

A scholar shaped by sidq refuses to manipulate evidence.

A scholar shaped by adl seeks fairness.

A scholar shaped by ihsan refuses mediocrity.

A scholar shaped by taqwa behaves ethically without surveillance.

A scholar shaped by mas'uliyyah accepts accountability.

A scholar shaped by shura listens before deciding.

A scholar shaped by rahmah protects vulnerable people.

A scholar shaped by adab disagrees without humiliating.

A scholar shaped by tawadu' recognizes the limits of knowledge.

A scholar shaped by itqan treats precision as responsibility.

This produces a conception of doctoral education in which knowledge and character cannot be separated.

The university does not merely ask the doctoral researcher to become more knowledgeable. It asks the researcher to become more trustworthy.

And that is where Islamic ethical integration reaches its deepest significance.

The ultimate question is not whether a scholar knows what is right. It is whether that knowledge has become part of the scholar's character strongly enough to govern what the scholar does when nobody is watching.

That is the difference between ethical instruction and ethical formation.

And it is precisely the difference that Professional Ethics–II should seek to make.

8. 15-WEEK MASTER SCHEDULE

WEEK 1 — What Is Professional Ethics?

Core Questions

• What is ethics?
• What is morality?
• What is professionalism?
• What is the difference between law and ethics?
• Can something be legal but unethical?
• Can something be ethical but institutionally inconvenient?

Key Concepts

Ethics, morality, values, virtues, duties, norms, professional codes, accountability.

Activity

Ethical dilemma diagnostic: Students respond anonymously to five professional scenarios and defend their decisions.

WEEK 1 — WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL ETHICS?

From Knowing the Rules to Becoming Worthy of Professional Trust

Opening Proposition

Professional ethics begins where rules end.

A doctoral researcher can memorize every university regulation, every research-integrity policy and every professional code of conduct and still face situations in which no rule provides a complete answer.

A supervisor may know that students deserve fairness but still have to decide how to handle a student's intellectual dependence on them.

A researcher may have institutional permission to collect publicly available linguistic data but still need to ask whether using those data could expose vulnerable individuals.

A scholar may be permitted to use generative AI but still have to determine what level of assistance is compatible with intellectual authorship.

A reviewer may be under no legal obligation to recommend publication but still possess a professional responsibility to evaluate another scholar's work fairly.

Professional ethics therefore begins with a deeper question:

What should a responsible professional do when the rulebook does not tell us exactly what to do?

That question will become the intellectual foundation of this course.

1. Why Begin With Ethics?

The first temptation in a course on professional ethics is to begin with a list of prohibitions:

Do not plagiarize.

Do not fabricate data.

Do not discriminate.

Do not misuse institutional resources.

These rules are necessary, but they are insufficient.

Professional ethics is not primarily a catalogue of things we must avoid. It is an inquiry into how human beings ought to exercise professional knowledge, authority and responsibility.

A university gives scholars unusual forms of power.

A researcher can define what counts as evidence.

A supervisor can influence a student's career.

An examiner can determine whether years of doctoral work meet the required standard.

A journal reviewer can influence whether another scholar's work enters the public record.

A lecturer can shape how hundreds of students understand knowledge, evidence and intellectual disagreement.

With professional authority comes professional responsibility.

Therefore:

The more authority a profession gives a person, the greater the ethical responsibility attached to its exercise.

This is one reason doctoral education requires a distinctive conception of ethics. A PhD candidate is gradually moving from being a consumer of knowledge to becoming a producer and evaluator of knowledge.

2. What Is Ethics?

At its broadest, ethics is the systematic study of what ought to be done and why.

Ethics asks questions about:

• right and wrong;
• good and bad;
• justice and injustice;
• duties and obligations;
• responsibility;
• virtue and character;
• consequences;
• human dignity;
• and the justification of moral decisions.

Ethics is therefore not simply about having opinions.

It asks us to provide reasons.

There is an important difference between:

“I don't like this.”

and

“This action is ethically problematic because it violates confidentiality and creates an unjustifiable risk to participants.”

The first expresses preference.

The second offers an ethical argument.

A doctoral scholar must learn to move from intuition to justification.

3. What Is Morality?

Morality generally refers to the beliefs, norms and practices through which individuals or communities understand right and wrong conduct.

Ethics and morality are closely related, but they are not identical.

A useful working distinction is:

Morality concerns beliefs and practices about right and wrong; ethics involves the critical examination and justification of those beliefs and practices.

For example, a community may possess a strong belief about appropriate professional behavior.

Ethical inquiry asks:

• Why is this considered right?
• Who benefits from the rule?
• Who might be disadvantaged?
• Is the principle consistently applied?
• Are there circumstances in which the rule should be reconsidered?

This distinction becomes particularly important in culturally diverse academic environments.

4. What Are Values?

Values are the things we consider important or worth protecting.

Examples include:

• honesty;
• justice;
• freedom;
• compassion;
• dignity;
• equality;
• responsibility;
• excellence;
• loyalty;
• autonomy;
• respect.

But values can conflict.

Consider a researcher who discovers that publishing a dataset could produce significant scientific benefits but might also expose the identities of vulnerable participants.

Two legitimate values may collide:

knowledge sharing

versus

privacy and protection.

Ethical reasoning begins when we recognize that professional dilemmas are often not battles between a good value and a bad value.

They are frequently conflicts between two or more legitimate values.

5. What Is a Virtue?

A virtue is a stable quality of character that enables a person to act well.

Examples include:

• honesty;
• courage;
• patience;
• fairness;
• humility;
• generosity;
• intellectual integrity;
• responsibility.

This introduces an important distinction between doing the right thing and becoming the kind of person who habitually does the right thing.

Professional ethics should pursue both.

A scholar may avoid plagiarism because plagiarism can lead to disciplinary action.

That is compliance.

A scholar who refuses to appropriate another person's intellectual contribution even when there is no realistic possibility of detection demonstrates integrity.

That is character.

The course therefore asks students to move from:

“What rule must I follow?”

toward:

“What kind of scholar should I become?”

6. What Is a Duty?

A duty is an obligation to perform, or refrain from performing, particular actions.

Professionals possess duties because professional roles create relationships of responsibility.

A lecturer has duties toward students.

A supervisor has duties toward doctoral researchers.

A researcher has duties toward participants.

A reviewer has duties toward authors and journals.

An examiner has duties toward candidates and institutions.

An editor has duties toward the scholarly record.

These duties may sometimes conflict.

For example, a supervisor may have a duty to protect a student's interests while also having a duty to maintain academic standards.

The ethical challenge is not simply identifying duties. It is determining how competing duties should be balanced responsibly.

7. What Is Professionalism?

Professionalism is more than appropriate dress, punctuality, polite communication or institutional etiquette.

Those things matter, but they are surface manifestations of a deeper concept.

Professionalism is the responsible exercise of specialized knowledge, authority and trust.

A professional possesses expertise that others do not necessarily possess.

That asymmetry creates responsibility.

The student trusts the lecturer's expertise.

The research participant trusts the researcher's handling of personal information.

The public trusts scholars to distinguish evidence from fabrication.

The university trusts faculty members to exercise institutional authority responsibly.

Professionalism therefore combines:

competence + integrity + responsibility + accountability.

A person may be technically brilliant but professionally irresponsible.

Conversely, a person may be deeply committed to ethical conduct but lack the competence required for responsible professional practice.

The ideal professional requires both.

8. Ethics, Law and Institutional Policy

One of the most important distinctions in professional ethics is the difference between law, policy and ethics.

Law

Law establishes formally enforceable standards within a jurisdiction.

Institutional Policy

Policy establishes rules governing conduct within a particular institution.

Professional Codes

Professional codes articulate standards established by disciplinary or professional communities.

Ethics

Ethics asks what ought to be done and why.

These systems overlap, but they are not identical.

The critical question:

Can something be legal but unethical?

Yes.

An action may satisfy the minimum requirements of law while violating broader principles of fairness, honesty, dignity or professional responsibility.

For example, a researcher might technically possess access to publicly available online material. The legal status of that material does not automatically settle every ethical question concerning its use in research.

Likewise:

Can something be institutionally permitted but ethically questionable?

Yes.

Institutional rules cannot anticipate every possible circumstance.

That is precisely why professional judgment remains necessary.

9. The Three-Level Model

Students should distinguish three increasingly demanding levels of professional conduct:

Level 1 — Compliance

“I have not broken the rules.”

Level 2 — Responsibility

“I have considered my obligations and the people affected by my decision.”

Level 3 — Ethical Excellence

“I have chosen the most responsible course of action I can reasonably justify.”

The university should obviously require Level 1.

Doctoral education should cultivate Level 2.

Professional excellence aspires to Level 3.

This distinction will recur throughout the course.

10. Professional Ethics in English Linguistics

For students of English Linguistics, professional ethics is not an abstract philosophical exercise.

The discipline regularly creates ethical problems involving human beings and their language.

Consider:

Sociolinguistics

Researchers may study identity, ethnicity, class, gender, migration and social marginalization.

Discourse Analysis

Political speeches, social-media posts, interviews and institutional communications may contain sensitive personal information.

Psycholinguistics

Research may involve experimental participants, cognitive measures or potentially vulnerable populations.

Corpus Linguistics

Researchers must consider questions of data ownership, privacy, consent and responsible reuse.

Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Researchers frequently work with students, teachers, multilingual communities and educational institutions.

Forensic Linguistics

Linguistic evidence may influence legal proceedings and therefore carries significant consequences.

Digital Humanities

Large quantities of online material can create new possibilities for research while simultaneously generating difficult questions concerning privacy, consent and ownership.

AI and Language Research

Generative AI introduces additional questions concerning:

• authorship;
• attribution;
• originality;
• data provenance;
• copyright;
• bias;
• privacy;
• hallucinated information;
• algorithmic accountability;
• and human responsibility.

Thus:

The ethics of language research is ultimately the ethics of how we treat people, evidence and knowledge.

11. The First Great Distinction: Intention vs Consequence

A common mistake in ethical reasoning is to assume:

“I did not intend to cause harm, therefore my action was ethical.”

That does not necessarily follow.

A researcher may unintentionally reveal a participant's identity.

A careless citation may unintentionally misrepresent another scholar.

A poorly designed questionnaire may unintentionally disadvantage a participant group.

An AI-generated reference may unintentionally introduce false information into a dissertation.

Good intentions matter.

But ethical responsibility also requires attention to foreseeable consequences.

The ethical scholar therefore asks two questions:

What did I intend?

and

What could reasonably result from my action?

12. The Second Great Distinction: Error vs Misconduct

Not every mistake is misconduct.

Researchers are human.

Datasets can contain errors.

Calculations can be wrong.

Interpretations can change.

A scholar may make an honest mistake and later correct it.

This is fundamentally different from deliberately fabricating evidence.

Professional ethics therefore requires students to distinguish among:

honest error

negligence

recklessness

questionable research practice

and

deliberate misconduct.

The distinction matters because ethical systems should encourage correction and transparency, not merely punishment.

A scholarly culture in which people are terrified to admit mistakes may actually become less ethical because errors remain hidden.

13. The Third Great Distinction: Private Morality vs Professional Responsibility

A person may possess strong personal moral convictions while still having professional obligations that require careful judgment.

A scholar's private beliefs do not automatically determine how students should be assessed.

A supervisor's personal preferences do not determine authorship.

A reviewer's theoretical allegiance should not determine whether another scholar receives fair evaluation.

Professional ethics therefore requires a distinction between:

“What do I personally prefer?”

and

“What does my professional role require me to do?”

This is particularly important for educators.

14. Islamic Ethical Lens

Islamic ethical thought will be integrated throughout this course rather than confined to a separate section.

The Week 1 discussion begins with several foundational concepts:

Amanah

Knowledge and professional authority are trusts.

Sidq

Scholarly claims must be truthful.

Adl

Academic decisions should be fair.

Ihsan

Professional conduct should exceed bare minimum compliance.

Taqwa

Ethical conduct must survive even when external surveillance disappears.

Mas'uliyyah

Professional authority entails accountability.

Adab

Intellectual disagreement should preserve dignity.

These concepts will become increasingly concrete as the course moves into research integrity, supervision, authorship, participant research and AI ethics.

15. The Doctoral Scholar as a Moral Agent

A doctoral student is not simply a person receiving ethical instructions from an institution.

A doctoral scholar is a moral agent.

That means the scholar must eventually be capable of making responsible decisions independently.

The mature researcher cannot continually ask:

“What does my supervisor want me to do?”

The more important question becomes:

“What can I responsibly justify as a scholar?”

That transition, from dependence to responsible intellectual agency, is one of the defining characteristics of doctoral education.

16. The Five-Minute Ethical Pause

Before acting in a difficult professional situation, students should learn to pause and ask:

STOP

S — Situation: What exactly is happening?

T — Trust: Whose trust is involved?

O — Obligations: What duties apply?

P — Possible consequences: Who may be affected?

This simple diagnostic can prevent impulsive professional decisions.

Later in the course, it will be expanded into the full Seven Questions of Ethical Scholarship and the Ethical Decision-Making Framework.

17. Seminar Activity: The Ethical Dilemma Diagnostic

Students will respond anonymously to five scenarios.

The objective is not to discover the “correct” answer immediately.

The objective is to reveal how people actually reason about ethical problems.

Scenario 1 — The Supervisor's Paper

A doctoral student has produced a substantial portion of the literature review and analysis for a research paper under supervision. The supervisor proposes submitting the paper under the supervisor's name alone.

Question:

Is this merely a matter of academic hierarchy, or is there an ethical problem?

Scenario 2 — The AI-Assisted Dissertation

A student uses generative AI to improve the language of a dissertation chapter. The student verifies the information and rewrites portions of the output but does not disclose the AI assistance.

Question:

Is the work acceptable because the ideas remain the student's, or does non-disclosure create an ethical problem?

Scenario 3 — Publicly Available Linguistic Data

A researcher collects public social-media posts for a corpus studying political discourse. The posts are publicly accessible, but the users did not explicitly consent to academic publication of their words.

Question:

Does public accessibility automatically mean ethical research use?

Scenario 4 — The Suspicious Dataset

A doctoral researcher notices that several numerical results in a published article appear statistically improbable. The researcher cannot yet establish misconduct.

Question:

Should the researcher remain silent, investigate privately, contact the author, consult a supervisor or report the concern formally?

Scenario 5 — The Excellent but Difficult Colleague

A highly productive colleague regularly humiliates junior researchers in meetings. Their research output is exceptional and the institution considers them indispensable.

Question:

Does scholarly excellence excuse unethical professional conduct?

This question should provoke serious discussion.

It introduces one of the central propositions of the entire course:

Excellence without integrity is not professional excellence.

18. Seminar Method

The instructor should avoid immediately announcing the “correct” answers.

Instead, students should defend their decisions using four prompts:

1. What is your decision?
2. What principle supports it?
3. Who might be affected?
4. What evidence would make you reconsider your position?

The fourth question is particularly important.

Ethical maturity includes the ability to revise one's judgment when new evidence appears.

19. Week 1 Reflection

At the conclusion of the session, students write a short reflective response:

Describe one professional situation in which following a rule would not necessarily be sufficient to determine the ethically best course of action. Explain what additional reasoning would be required.

The response should not be judged primarily on whether the student reaches a predetermined answer.

It should be evaluated on:

• clarity of reasoning;
• identification of stakeholders;
• recognition of competing values;
• evidence of ethical reflection;
• and willingness to acknowledge uncertainty.

20. Week 1 Take-Home Principle

Students should leave the first lecture with one proposition:

Professional ethics is not the art of avoiding punishment. It is the disciplined practice of doing what is right when rules alone cannot tell us what to do.

And one question should remain with them throughout the semester:

When nobody is watching, when the rules are incomplete, and when doing the right thing costs me something, what kind of scholar will I choose to be?

That is where Professional Ethics–II truly begins.

WEEK 2 — Theories of Ethical Reasoning

Major Traditions

• Virtue ethics
• Deontology
• Consequentialism
• Utilitarianism
• Ethics of care
• Justice ethics
• Rights-based ethics
• Professional ethics

Central Question

Is an action ethical because of the intention, the rule, the consequence, or the character of the person performing it?

Activity

One case, five ethical theories.

WEEK 2 — THEORIES OF ETHICAL REASONING

From Moral Intuition to Defensible Judgment

2.1 The Intellectual Purpose of the Week

Professional ethics becomes meaningful only when a scholar encounters a situation in which two or more legitimate values collide.

It is easy to say that honesty is good, justice is important, students deserve respect, research participants must be protected, and scholars should act responsibly. The difficult question begins when these principles point in different directions.

A doctoral researcher may discover that a close colleague has manipulated data. Reporting the misconduct protects research integrity but may seriously damage a colleague's career. A supervisor may believe that a student's research should be published, while the student believes that the supervisor has taken too much intellectual credit. A researcher may possess valuable naturally occurring linguistic data that could produce an important publication, but publishing it may expose the identity of vulnerable participants.

Ethics begins where easy answers end.

The purpose of this week is therefore not to teach students a catalogue of ethical theories. It is to give them different lenses for reasoning about difficult decisions.

The central question is:

Is an action ethical because of the intention behind it, the rule governing it, the consequences it produces, the character of the person performing it, the rights it protects, or the relationships and vulnerabilities it recognizes?

A mature ethical scholar learns to examine all of these dimensions before acting.

2.2 The Major Traditions of Ethical Reasoning

A. Virtue Ethics — What kind of person should I become?

Virtue ethics shifts attention from isolated actions to character.

Rather than asking only:

"Is this action permitted?"

it asks:

"What would a good scholar do?"

The emphasis is placed on qualities such as:

• honesty;
• courage;
• justice;
• humility;
• integrity;
• compassion;
• practical wisdom;
• intellectual responsibility;
• temperance.

For doctoral researchers, virtue ethics is particularly important because many professional situations cannot be resolved simply by consulting a rulebook.

A researcher's decision to correct an error in a published article, acknowledge another scholar's contribution, admit uncertainty in a viva, or refuse to manipulate results may reveal scholarly character.

Linguistics example

A researcher discovers after submission that one transcription in a corpus contains an error. The error is unlikely to be noticed by reviewers.

A purely instrumental thinker might ask:

"Will anyone discover it?"

A virtue ethicist asks:

"What does intellectual honesty require of me?"

The answer is obvious: correct the error.

Islamic parallel

Virtue ethics has a particularly productive dialogue with Islamic concepts such as sidq (truthfulness), amanah (trustworthiness), taqwa (consciousness of accountability), tawadu' (humility) and ihsan (excellence).

The ethical scholar therefore does not merely follow rules.

The scholar becomes the kind of person for whom trustworthy conduct becomes habitual.

2.3 Deontological Ethics — What is my duty?

Deontological reasoning, strongly associated with Immanuel Kant, evaluates actions primarily through duties, principles and obligations.

The fundamental question is:

What ought I to do, regardless of whether doing so is convenient or beneficial to me?

This perspective is essential to professional life because universities operate through duties.

A supervisor has duties towards students.

A researcher has duties towards participants.

A reviewer has duties towards authors.

An examiner has duties towards candidates.

A scholar has duties towards the integrity of knowledge.

Example

Suppose a doctoral student discovers that a highly influential professor has plagiarized several passages.

The professor is powerful.

The student's career may depend upon the professor's goodwill.

The easiest option may be silence.

A duty-based approach asks:

What obligation do I have to academic integrity?

The answer cannot simply depend upon personal advantage.

This introduces a crucial principle of doctoral ethics:

Ethical responsibility does not disappear when ethical action becomes costly.

2.4 Consequentialism — What will happen if I do this?

Consequentialist reasoning evaluates an action according to its outcomes.

The central question becomes:

Which available action is likely to produce the least harm and the greatest ethically defensible benefit?

This perspective is indispensable in professional decision-making because ethical decisions affect real people.

Consider a researcher studying a politically vulnerable linguistic community.

Publishing identifiable interview data might generate an important scholarly contribution. But publication could also expose participants to social consequences.

Consequentialist reasoning therefore requires the researcher to consider:

• Who may benefit?
• Who may be harmed?
• How serious is the harm?
• How probable is it?
• Are there less harmful alternatives?
• Can the research value be preserved through anonymization?

Ethics therefore requires more than good intentions.

Good intentions do not automatically produce good consequences.

2.5 Utilitarianism — What produces the greatest overall good?

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist tradition associated particularly with thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

Its classic orientation is toward maximizing overall welfare.

In academic life, however, utilitarian reasoning must be applied cautiously.

Imagine that a university wants to cancel a small specialist linguistics course because the enrolment is low. The financial savings could be redirected to courses serving hundreds of students.

A utilitarian calculation may favor cancellation.

But this immediately raises another question:

Can minority interests simply be sacrificed whenever doing so benefits the majority?

This is where utilitarian reasoning must be balanced against rights, justice and professional obligations.

A university is not merely a profit-maximizing organization.

Its responsibilities include preserving knowledge, supporting intellectual diversity and protecting educational opportunities that may not be immediately profitable.

2.6 Rights-Based Ethics — Whose rights must be protected?

Rights-based approaches focus on the legitimate claims of individuals.

In academic and research contexts, relevant rights may include:

• privacy;
• informed participation;
• intellectual ownership;
• academic freedom;
• freedom from discrimination;
• fair assessment;
• recognition of authorship;
• confidentiality;
• due process.

Consider a corpus containing publicly accessible social-media posts.

The researcher may argue:

"The material is publicly available, therefore I can use it."

But public availability does not automatically settle every ethical question.

The researcher must consider privacy expectations, contextual integrity, vulnerability, identifiability and potential harm.

Rights-based ethics therefore introduces an important corrective:

The usefulness of information does not erase the interests of the person from whom that information originated.

2.7 Justice Ethics — Is the decision fair?

Justice asks questions of fairness, equality and distribution.

In academic life, justice appears in questions such as:

• Who receives research funding?
• Who receives authorship?
• Who gets opportunities to publish?
• Are students assessed consistently?
• Are minority languages adequately represented?
• Are junior scholars exploited by senior researchers?
• Are hiring and promotion criteria transparent?
• Are certain varieties of English unfairly stigmatized?

For linguists, justice has an especially important dimension.

Language itself can become an instrument of inequality.

A university that treats one accent as inherently intelligent and another as inherently inferior is not merely making a linguistic judgment. It may be reproducing a social hierarchy.

Thus, linguistic ethics requires scholars to examine not only what language does, but also what institutions do with language.

2.8 Ethics of Care — Who is vulnerable, and what does my relationship require?

Ethics of care challenges purely abstract approaches to morality by emphasizing:

• relationships;
• dependency;
• vulnerability;
• empathy;
• responsibility;
• context.

This is particularly relevant to education.

A student is not merely an anonymous recipient of instruction. A doctoral researcher may be dependent upon a supervisor. A research participant may possess considerably less institutional power than the researcher.

Consider a student who repeatedly misses deadlines because of serious personal difficulties.

A rigid rule might say:

"The deadline applies equally to everyone."

A care-based approach asks:

"What does fairness require in this particular relationship?"

Care does not necessarily mean abandoning standards.

It means recognizing that ethical judgment must sometimes account for human vulnerability without sacrificing academic integrity.

2.9 Professional Ethics — What does my role require?

Professional ethics brings together personal morality, institutional responsibility and disciplinary standards.

A university professor simultaneously occupies several roles:

Teacher → Supervisor → Researcher → Examiner → Reviewer → Colleague → Academic citizen

Each role carries obligations.

The same action may therefore have different ethical implications depending upon one's professional position.

For example, a professor may freely criticize an idea in an academic debate. But an examiner must be particularly careful that criticism does not become humiliation.

A supervisor may offer extensive intellectual guidance. But that guidance should not become appropriation of the student's independent intellectual contribution.

Professional ethics therefore asks:

What responsibilities arise because I occupy this position of trust and authority?

2.10 The Seven-Lens Model of Ethical Reasoning

For this course, students should learn to place difficult cases through multiple ethical lenses rather than relying upon one theory.

Ethical Lens	Central Question
Virtue	What would a person of good character do?
Duty	What obligation must I fulfil?
Consequences	What outcomes will this decision produce?
Utilitarianism	Which option produces the greatest overall good?
Rights	Whose legitimate rights must be protected?
Justice	Is the decision fair and equitable?
Care	What do relationships and vulnerability require?
Professional Ethics	What does my scholarly role require?

The purpose is not to make ethical decisions mathematically complicated. It is to prevent premature certainty.

2.11 One Case, Five Ethical Theories

Case: The Questionable Dataset

A doctoral researcher discovers that approximately 8% of the data in a collaborative project contain irregularities. The project has already produced a conference paper, and a journal manuscript is under preparation. The principal investigator argues that the irregularities are statistically insignificant and removing the data would delay publication by several months.

The researcher must decide what to do.

Virtue Ethics

Question: What would an intellectually honest scholar do?

The researcher should disclose the problem because integrity matters even when misconduct is unlikely to be detected.

Deontology

Question: What is the researcher's duty?

The researcher has a duty to report potentially consequential problems in the evidence.

Consequentialism

Question: What are the consequences?

The researcher must compare the consequences of disclosure, correction, delay, publication with qualification and possible downstream misuse of unreliable findings.

Rights-Based Ethics

Question: Who has legitimate interests?

Readers, participants, co-researchers and the wider scholarly community have an interest in reliable research.

Justice Ethics

Question: Is the decision fair?

Publishing questionable evidence may give the research team an unfair advantage over scholars who have followed rigorous procedures.

Care Ethics

Question: What relationships and vulnerabilities matter?

The researcher must consider the supervisor's authority, the junior researcher's vulnerability and the possible effects on collaborators, but without allowing those relationships to erase research responsibility.

---

2.12 The Ethical Decision Is Often Multidimensional

The most important lesson of this week is that ethical theories are not competing answers to memorize.

They are intellectual instruments.

A mature scholar learns to ask:

What does virtue require?

What does duty require?

What consequences are foreseeable?

Whose rights are involved?

What would justice require?

Who is vulnerable?

What does my professional role require?

Only after considering these dimensions should a doctoral researcher reach a decision.

This approach also prepares students for the later weeks of the course, when these theories will be applied to plagiarism, authorship, supervision, human-participant research, linguistic data, publication, peer review and artificial intelligence.

2.13 Islamic Ethical Integration

Islamic ethical thought provides an additional moral vocabulary rather than a decorative supplement to Western ethical theory.

The scholar can ask:

Amanah: Have I treated knowledge as a trust?

Sidq: Have I represented the evidence truthfully?

Adl: Have I acted justly?

Ihsan: Have I pursued excellence beyond minimum compliance?

Taqwa: Would I make the same decision if there were no possibility of external detection?

Mas'uliyyah: Have I accepted responsibility for the consequences of my professional actions?

Shura: Have I consulted appropriately before making a consequential decision?

Rahmah: Have I considered human vulnerability?

Adab: Have I maintained dignity and respect in disagreement?

This creates an especially powerful distinction:

External compliance asks, "Can I get away with this?"

Internal ethics asks, "Can I live responsibly with this decision?"

The second question is the deeper foundation of scholarly integrity.

2.14 Seminar Activity: One Case, Five Theories

Task

Students work in groups.

Each group receives the same professional dilemma but must initially analyze it through a different ethical framework.

Group A: Virtue ethics

Group B: Deontology

Group C: Consequentialism

Group D: Rights and justice

Group E: Ethics of care

Each group must produce:

1. The ethical problem.
2. The relevant stakeholders.
3. The governing principle.
4. The recommended action.
5. The strongest objection to its own recommendation.

The final requirement is crucial.

Students must argue against themselves.

That exercise develops intellectual humility and prevents ethical reasoning from becoming ideological certainty.

2.15 Reflective Exercise

Write approximately 500 words responding to the following:

Describe a professional situation in which doing the ethically right thing might carry a personal, institutional or professional cost. Analyze the situation through at least three ethical frameworks and explain whether your final decision changes after considering the different perspectives.

Students should conclude with:

"My final decision is ethically defensible because..."

They must then provide explicit reasons rather than merely expressing an opinion.

2.16 Key Takeaway

The central lesson of Week 2 can be expressed in one sentence:

An ethical scholar does not merely ask whether an action is allowed; an ethical scholar learns to ask why the action is right, whom it affects, what duties it invokes, what consequences it produces, whose rights it touches, and whether the decision can withstand public scrutiny.

That is the beginning of ethical maturity.

And it is precisely why doctoral education must produce more than knowledgeable researchers.

It must produce responsible knowers.

WEEK 3 — Islamic Ethics and the Formation of Character

Themes

• Qur'anic moral reasoning
• Sunnah and ethical conduct
• Amanah
• Sidq
• Adl
• Ihsan
• Taqwa
• Adab
• Responsibility
• Intention (niyyah)
• Accountability

Classical Thinkers

• Imam al-Ghazali
• Ibn Miskawayh
• Shah Waliullah
• al-Raghib al-Isfahani

Central Question

Can professional excellence exist without moral excellence?

WEEK 3 — ISLAMIC ETHICS AND THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER

From Moral Knowledge to Moral Character

3.1 The Intellectual Purpose of the Week

If Week 1 asked what professional ethics is, and Week 2 examined how ethical decisions can be reasoned through different philosophical frameworks, Week 3 moves to a deeper question:

What kind of human being must a scholar become in order to use knowledge responsibly?

This question is fundamental to doctoral education.

A PhD can produce an exceptionally knowledgeable person without necessarily producing an exceptionally trustworthy one. A scholar may possess methodological sophistication, publish extensively, master sophisticated statistical or computational techniques, and acquire institutional authority while remaining capable of dishonesty, arrogance, exploitation or intellectual irresponsibility.

Islamic ethical thought approaches this problem by refusing to separate knowledge, character and responsibility.

Knowledge is not merely an intellectual possession. It carries an obligation.

Professional excellence therefore cannot be understood simply as technical competence. It must be accompanied by qualities such as truthfulness, justice, trustworthiness, humility, responsibility and consciousness of accountability.

The central proposition of this week is:

The highest form of professional excellence is excellence governed by moral character.

3.2 Qur'anic Moral Reasoning

Islamic ethics begins not with a professional code but with a conception of the human being as a morally responsible agent.

The Qur'anic ethical vocabulary repeatedly connects human conduct with concepts such as justice, truthfulness, trust, responsibility, moderation, compassion and accountability.

For doctoral scholars, this creates a profound shift in perspective.

Research is not ethically neutral simply because it is technically rigorous.

A researcher makes choices:

• what question to investigate;
• whose voices to include;
• whose voices to exclude;
• how evidence is collected;
• how evidence is interpreted;
• what limitations are disclosed;
• how participants are treated;
• how collaborators are acknowledged;
• how findings are communicated;
• and how knowledge is ultimately used.

Each choice carries moral significance.

The Qur'anic ethical orientation therefore encourages the scholar to view knowledge production as a form of responsible action, not merely intellectual activity.

3.3 Niyyah — The Ethics of Intention

One of the foundational concepts of Islamic moral thought is niyyah, or intention.

The ethical significance of an action cannot always be understood merely from its external appearance. Two researchers may perform the same activity while being motivated by fundamentally different purposes.

Consider two scholars publishing research.

One seeks to contribute genuinely to knowledge.

Another seeks primarily to inflate a publication record for promotion.

The observable action, publishing an article, may appear identical.

But Islamic ethical reasoning asks a deeper question:

Why am I doing this?

Intention does not make unethical conduct permissible. A good intention cannot justify plagiarism, fabrication, deception or exploitation.

Rather, intention adds an internal dimension to professional ethics.

It asks the scholar to examine the motivation behind apparently legitimate professional behavior.

This is particularly important in contemporary academia, where incentives can quietly transform scholarship into a competition for:

• publications;
• citations;
• grants;
• rankings;
• titles;
• promotions;
• prestige.

The ethical scholar must therefore ask not only:

"Is this academically successful?"

but also:

"What kind of scholarly purpose is driving this success?"

3.4 Amanah — Knowledge as Trust

Amanah is one of the most powerful concepts for a doctoral researcher.

It can be understood in terms of trustworthiness, responsibility and stewardship.

A doctoral researcher receives multiple forms of trust:

• participants trust the researcher with information;
• supervisors trust students with intellectual responsibilities;
• institutions provide access to resources;
• collaborators share data and ideas;
• journals trust authors to report research honestly;
• readers trust scholars to represent evidence accurately.

Research data therefore constitute more than files on a computer.

They are a trust relationship.

For an English linguist, this may include:

• recorded interviews;
• classroom observations;
• sociolinguistic recordings;
• speech corpora;
• participant biographies;
• online discourse;
• sensitive identity information;
• unpublished manuscripts;
• community language data.

The question is not merely:

"Can I access this data?"

It is:

"Have I been entrusted with this data, and what responsibilities follow from that trust?"

3.5 Sidq — Truthfulness in Scholarship

Sidq, truthfulness, is indispensable to research integrity.

The entire scholarly enterprise depends upon an assumption:

The researcher is telling the truth about what was observed, what was done and what was found.

Without that assumption, academic knowledge becomes structurally unstable.

Sidq therefore has implications for:

Data

Do not fabricate observations.

Analysis

Do not manipulate interpretation to manufacture a preferred result.

Publication

Do not conceal findings merely because they contradict expectations.

Citation

Do not attribute claims to sources that do not support them.

Self-representation

Do not exaggerate qualifications, expertise or contribution.

AI-assisted scholarship

Do not present machine-generated material as independently researched human scholarship when disclosure is required.

Truthfulness must extend beyond avoiding outright lies. It includes avoiding misleading representation.

3.6 Adl — Justice and Fairness

Adl, justice, provides an essential principle for academic relationships.

Justice asks whether people are being treated fairly.

This has direct implications for:

• student assessment;
• doctoral supervision;
• authorship;
• peer review;
• hiring;
• promotion;
• research funding;
• participant selection;
• linguistic representation.

Consider authorship.

Suppose a doctoral student performs most of the fieldwork, analysis and drafting of an article, while a senior academic makes a limited contribution but expects first authorship because of institutional status.

The issue is not simply etiquette. It is a question of justice.

Similarly, a reviewer who evaluates one scholar's work rigorously but another scholar's work leniently because of institutional prestige violates the principle of fairness.

Academic authority does not create ethical entitlement.

3.7 Ihsan — Excellence Beyond Compliance

One of the most important concepts for this course is ihsan.

Professional ethics is often reduced to compliance:

"Did I violate the rule?"

Ihsan asks a more demanding question:

"Did I do the best that responsible scholarship required?"

There is an enormous difference.

A researcher may technically satisfy minimum consent requirements while communicating poorly with participants.

A lecturer may technically complete the syllabus while making little effort to ensure students understand it.

A supervisor may technically meet with a student while providing inadequate intellectual guidance.

A reviewer may technically submit a review while doing so carelessly.

Compliance establishes a floor.

Ihsan raises the ceiling.

This is why the concept is particularly relevant to a doctoral course devoted to professional excellence.

3.8 Taqwa — Internal Accountability

Taqwa introduces another crucial dimension: moral consciousness and accountability before God.

For professional ethics, its significance can be expressed through a powerful thought experiment:

What would I do if no supervisor, reviewer, administrator, student or colleague could ever discover my decision?

Academic systems rely increasingly upon external mechanisms:

• plagiarism detection;
• research ethics committees;
• audit trails;
• peer review;
• institutional policies;
• data-management systems;
• AI-detection systems.

These mechanisms are important.

But no institutional system can observe everything.

A scholar who behaves ethically only when surveillance is possible possesses compliance, not necessarily character.

Taqwa introduces the possibility of internal ethical regulation.

The scholar acts responsibly because responsibility has become part of the scholar's moral identity.

3.9 Mas'uliyyah — Responsibility

Knowledge creates responsibility.

The more authority a scholar possesses, the greater the potential consequences of scholarly decisions.

A professor's public claim may influence:

• students;
• policy;
• professional practice;
• public understanding;
• communities;
• future research.

A doctoral researcher therefore cannot regard research as an isolated personal project.

Every scholarly decision participates in a wider intellectual ecosystem.

Mas'uliyyah asks the scholar to accept responsibility for that participation.

3.10 Adab — The Ethics of Scholarly Conduct

Academic disagreement is unavoidable.

Scholarly disrespect is not.

Adab provides an important framework for intellectual conduct.

A scholar may strongly reject another researcher's theory while continuing to respect the person.

A reviewer may identify serious methodological flaws without humiliating the author.

A supervisor may correct a student's argument without destroying the student's confidence.

A doctoral student may challenge a professor without becoming disrespectful.

This produces a principle particularly valuable in contemporary academic culture:

Intellectual disagreement should be rigorous without becoming personal.

The purpose of criticism is to improve knowledge, not to establish personal superiority.

3.11 Tawadu' — Intellectual Humility

Academic achievement creates a peculiar danger.

The more a scholar knows, the easier it becomes to believe that the scholar knows enough.

Tawadu', intellectual humility, provides an antidote.

A humble scholar can say:

"I do not know."

"The evidence is insufficient."

"I was wrong."

"Another explanation is possible."

"This finding has limitations."

These statements do not weaken scholarship.

They strengthen it.

Indeed, one of the clearest indicators of intellectual maturity is the ability to distinguish confidence from certainty.

A doctoral researcher should therefore learn to treat uncertainty not as intellectual failure but as an ordinary condition of serious inquiry.

3.12 Classical Islamic Thinkers and the Formation of Character

The intellectual tradition of Islamic ethics contains a rich body of reflection on the relationship between knowledge, virtue and human character.

Imam al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali's ethical thought places considerable emphasis on the transformation of the self and the cultivation of virtues.

For doctoral education, his work invites a fundamental question:

What is the purpose of knowledge if knowledge does not improve the knower?

This question is especially relevant in an academic environment where credentials can become ends in themselves.

Ibn Miskawayh

Ibn Miskawayh's ethical philosophy is centrally concerned with character formation and the cultivation of virtue.

His work provides a useful framework for understanding ethics not simply as isolated decisions but as the development of stable dispositions.

For the academic profession, this means that honesty should not be something a researcher occasionally performs.

It should become part of scholarly character.

Al-Raghib al-Isfahani

Al-Raghib al-Isfahani offers an important conception of moral development involving the refinement of human capacities and movement toward virtuous conduct.

This provides a useful bridge between individual development and professional responsibility.

The doctoral scholar is therefore not merely accumulating knowledge.

The scholar is also forming the self that will exercise authority over that knowledge.

Shah Waliullah

Shah Waliullah's thought provides another important dimension through its concern with moral, social and religious order.

For contemporary professional ethics, this encourages students to move beyond purely individual morality and consider the ethical structures within which institutions operate.

An ethical individual working inside an unethical system may still face profound moral dilemmas.

Therefore:

Ethical scholarship requires both ethical persons and ethical institutions.

3.13 From Character to Professional Practice

The concepts studied this week should not remain abstract.

Students should translate them into concrete academic behaviours.

Islamic Ethical Principle	Doctoral Research Practice
Amanah	Protect research data and participant trust
Sidq	Report evidence accurately
Adl	Treat collaborators and participants fairly
Ihsan	Pursue excellence beyond minimum compliance
Taqwa	Maintain integrity even without surveillance
Mas'uliyyah	Accept responsibility for scholarly consequences
Shura	Consult collaborators and stakeholders appropriately
Rahmah	Protect vulnerable participants
Adab	Disagree respectfully
Tawadu'	Acknowledge limitations and uncertainty
Itqan	Work with precision and methodological care

This table should not be treated as a list to memorize.

It should become a professional vocabulary for ethical reflection.

3.14 The Central Problem: Can Excellence Exist Without Character?

Imagine two scholars.

Scholar A has:

• an extraordinary publication record;
• numerous citations;
• international conference invitations;
• prestigious affiliations;
• advanced methodological expertise.

But Scholar A routinely:

• takes credit for students' work;
• manipulates evidence;
• humiliates junior colleagues;
• exaggerates achievements;
• ignores inconvenient findings.

Scholar B has a smaller publication record but:

• reports evidence honestly;
• credits collaborators;
• protects participants;
• mentors students;
• acknowledges limitations;
• treats disagreement respectfully;
• accepts responsibility for mistakes.

Which scholar better represents professional excellence?

The question exposes a fundamental problem with purely quantitative conceptions of academic success.

Metrics can measure output. They cannot, by themselves, measure character.

A university therefore needs both:

epistemic excellence — knowing and discovering well

and

ethical excellence — using knowledge responsibly.

3.15 Seminar Case Study: The Supervisor's Publication

A doctoral student has spent two years collecting and analyzing data for a dissertation.

The supervisor substantially assisted with research design but did not participate significantly in the data collection or writing.

The supervisor now proposes a journal article based on the student's dissertation and suggests that the supervisor should be listed as first author because the research was conducted under the supervisor's institutional guidance.

Students must examine the case through:

Amanah: What responsibilities arise from the supervisory relationship?

Adl: What would constitute fair recognition?

Sidq: How should intellectual contributions be represented?

Ihsan: What would exemplary professional conduct look like?

Taqwa: What would each person do if no institutional authority could intervene?

Adab: How can disagreement be handled without destroying the supervisory relationship?

Mas'uliyyah: Who bears responsibility for the final publication?

The students must then formulate an ethically defensible authorship arrangement.

3.16 Reflective Exercise

Write approximately 750 words on:

"Can professional excellence exist without moral excellence?"

Students must develop an argument rather than merely provide a personal opinion.

The essay should:

1. define professional excellence;
2. define moral excellence;
3. explain the relationship between them;
4. engage at least two classical Islamic thinkers;
5. connect Islamic concepts to contemporary academic practice;
6. provide at least one real or hypothetical doctoral ethics case;
7. reach a reasoned conclusion.

The strongest submissions should confront the counterargument:

Can an unethical scholar nevertheless produce excellent research?

Students should distinguish between the quality of a scholarly product and the ethical quality of the scholar and research process.

3.17 The Week's Intellectual Synthesis

The deepest lesson of Islamic professional ethics is that rules alone cannot manufacture character.

A university can create policies.

It can establish committees.

It can require declarations.

It can impose penalties.

It can install plagiarism software.

But the university cannot place a moral conscience inside a scholar.

That must be cultivated.

The doctoral researcher must therefore move through three stages:

Knowing what is right → choosing what is right → becoming the kind of person who habitually does what is right.

That final transformation is the real meaning of character.

3.18 The Touchstone of Week 3

The week's central question should remain visible throughout the seminar:

Can professional excellence exist without moral excellence?

The answer this course proposes is deliberately demanding:

Technical excellence without moral responsibility may produce impressive work, but it cannot produce trustworthy scholarship.

A doctoral degree certifies advanced knowledge.

It should also signify something deeper:

that the person entrusted with advanced knowledge understands the responsibility that accompanies it.

And that is why the ultimate measure of a scholar is not simply how much the scholar knows, but what the scholar becomes responsible for because of what they know. 

WEEK 4 — The Ethical Professional

Themes

• Professional identity
• Rights and responsibilities
• Professional competence
• Integrity
• Confidentiality
• Loyalty
• Conflict of interest
• Boundaries
• Workplace relationships
• Respect and dignity
• Professional communication

Case

The brilliant professor who humiliates students.

Is intellectual brilliance sufficient for professional excellence?

WEEK 4 — THE ETHICAL PROFESSIONAL

Professional Identity, Power, Boundaries and the Moral Practice of Academic Life

Opening Proposition

A university does not become excellent merely because it employs brilliant scholars. It becomes excellent when its scholars understand that professional authority creates professional responsibility.

A professor may possess extraordinary subject knowledge, publish extensively, supervise successful dissertations and command international recognition—and still fail ethically as a professional.

The reason is simple:

Expertise answers the question, “What do I know?” Professional ethics asks, “What am I entitled to do with the authority that knowledge gives me?”

Week 4 therefore moves ethics from the abstract realm of moral theory into the everyday architecture of professional academic life. The doctoral researcher begins to see that ethical conduct is not something added to scholarship after the research is complete. It is embedded in teaching, supervision, assessment, communication, collaboration, leadership and relationships with students and colleagues.

4.1 What Is a Professional?

A profession is more than employment.

An employee may perform assigned tasks in exchange for remuneration. A professional, by contrast, belongs to a community that claims specialized knowledge and therefore accepts corresponding obligations.

Universities give academics several forms of authority:

• epistemic authority — the authority to determine, interpret and evaluate knowledge;
• pedagogical authority — the authority to teach and shape students' intellectual development;
• evaluative authority — the authority to grade, examine and judge academic performance;
• supervisory authority — the authority to guide doctoral and research students;
• institutional authority — the authority attached to academic positions and offices;
• representational authority — the ability to speak publicly as a scholar or institutional representative.

Every form of authority creates corresponding duties.

Thus:

The greater the professional power, the greater the ethical responsibility.

This principle becomes particularly important in doctoral education because supervisors and senior academics frequently occupy positions of considerable power relative to students.

4.2 Professional Identity

Professional identity concerns the answer to a deceptively difficult question:

What does it mean to become a scholar rather than merely to hold an academic position?

A professional identity is constructed through repeated choices.

A lecturer becomes recognizable as a professional through:

• preparation;
• competence;
• reliability;
• intellectual honesty;
• fairness;
• respectful communication;
• appropriate boundaries;
• accountability;
• continuous learning;
• willingness to acknowledge error;
• respect for students and colleagues;
• responsible use of institutional authority.

Professionalism is therefore not a performance for observation.

It is a pattern of conduct maintained even when nobody is watching.

This distinction is crucial. Compliance asks:

Will I be punished if I do this?

Professional ethics asks:

Is this worthy of the profession to which I belong?

4.3 Rights and Responsibilities

Professional life involves a reciprocal relationship between rights and responsibilities.

Academics may reasonably expect:

• intellectual freedom;
• academic autonomy;
• fair treatment;
• appropriate working conditions;
• recognition of scholarly contribution;
• due process;
• professional dignity;
• protection from harassment and discrimination.

But professional rights cannot be separated from professional obligations.

An academic who claims academic freedom must also accept responsibility for evidence and intellectual honesty.

A supervisor who expects students to meet deadlines must also provide reasonable guidance.

An examiner who demands rigorous scholarship must apply standards consistently.

A department head who expects collegiality must model it.

A researcher who expects participants to trust the research process must protect that trust.

Thus, rights and responsibilities should be understood not as competing concepts but as mutually reinforcing components of professional citizenship.

4.4 Professional Competence

Good intentions cannot compensate for incompetence.

An ethical professional must remain competent in the area in which they exercise authority.

For an English Linguistics scholar, professional competence may include:

• knowledge of contemporary linguistic theory;
• methodological competence;
• appropriate research design;
• statistical or qualitative competence where required;
• knowledge of research ethics;
• responsible use of digital technologies;
• accurate citation;
• familiarity with disciplinary developments;
• effective pedagogical practice;
• appropriate assessment design;
• continuing professional development.

There is an important ethical principle here:

To accept responsibility without possessing the competence necessary to discharge it is itself an ethical problem.

A supervisor who accepts a doctoral student in an area completely outside their competence, for example, may create risks even without malicious intent.

4.5 Integrity

Integrity is the coherence between what a professional claims to value and how that professional actually behaves.

An academic may publicly advocate:

"Academic integrity is essential."

But integrity is tested when:

• a colleague asks for inappropriate authorship;
• a student submits copied work;
• a reviewer requests excessive citation of their own publications;
• an administrator pressures a researcher to alter inconvenient findings;
• a senior scholar takes credit for a junior researcher's contribution.

Integrity is therefore not demonstrated by declarations.

It is demonstrated at moments when doing the right thing becomes costly.

4.6 Confidentiality

Academic professionals frequently handle sensitive information:

• student records;
• examination results;
• research-participant information;
• unpublished manuscripts;
• peer-review reports;
• doctoral research;
• institutional investigations;
• personal disclosures;
• confidential correspondence.

Confidentiality is therefore not merely an administrative courtesy.

It is a form of professional trust.

Students should understand that confidentiality is not necessarily absolute. Legal requirements, safeguarding obligations, institutional policies and serious risks may create circumstances in which information must appropriately be disclosed.

The ethical professional therefore asks:

1. What information is confidential?
2. Who has legitimate access?
3. What duty created the confidentiality?
4. Are there lawful or ethical grounds for disclosure?
5. What is the minimum necessary disclosure?
6. How can unnecessary harm be prevented?

4.7 Loyalty and Professional Responsibility

Loyalty is an important professional virtue, but loyalty is not obedience.

A scholar may feel loyalty towards:

• a supervisor;
• a department;
• colleagues;
• a university;
• a research group;
• a professional association.

But loyalty cannot ethically require a scholar to conceal misconduct.

The hierarchy should be:

Truth and professional integrity before personal convenience or institutional reputation.

A university's reputation cannot legitimately be protected by suppressing legitimate concerns about academic misconduct.

Indeed, responsible disclosure may ultimately protect the institution more effectively than concealment.

4.8 Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest arises when personal, financial, professional or relational interests could compromise, or reasonably appear to compromise, professional judgment.

Examples include:

• examining a close colleague's student;
• reviewing a paper by a close collaborator;
• supervising someone with whom the academic has a significant personal relationship;
• participating in a hiring decision involving a relative;
• evaluating research that directly affects one's financial interests;
• using institutional resources for private gain.

Importantly:

A conflict of interest does not necessarily mean misconduct.

The ethical obligation is often recognition, disclosure and appropriate management.

Transparency protects both the individual and the institution.

4.9 Professional Boundaries

The university is an environment of relationships, but professional relationships require boundaries.

Particular care is necessary where there is an imbalance of power.

A lecturer has authority over students.

A supervisor has authority over a doctoral researcher.

An examiner has authority over a candidate.

A department chair has authority over faculty members.

The more unequal the relationship, the greater the need for professional boundaries.

Boundaries protect:

• students from exploitation;
• academics from allegations of misconduct;
• institutions from conflicts of interest;
• professional relationships from inappropriate dependence.

The ethical question is not simply:

“Did I intend harm?”

It is also:

“Could my position of authority reasonably make this conduct coercive, exploitative or inappropriate?”

4.10 Workplace Relationships

Academic institutions are communities of people rather than machines for producing publications.

Professional relationships should therefore be characterized by:

Respect → Collegiality → Fairness → Communication → Accountability

Disagreement is not unethical.

Indeed, intellectual disagreement is essential to scholarship.

The ethical requirement is that disagreement should concern ideas, evidence and arguments, rather than becoming attacks upon the dignity of individuals.

A mature academic culture permits a scholar to say:

“I believe your argument is wrong.”

without saying:

“You are intellectually worthless.”

The first is scholarship.

The second is professional degradation.

4.11 Respect and Dignity

Every student enters a classroom with a history the lecturer may not know.

A student may be:

• struggling financially;
• learning in a second or third language;
• carrying family responsibilities;
• experiencing academic anxiety;
• recovering from previous educational failure;
• intellectually gifted but socially hesitant;
• unfamiliar with academic culture.

Professional ethics requires that teachers exercise authority without humiliating students.

Correction is necessary.

Rigour is necessary.

High standards are necessary.

Humiliation is not.

This distinction should become one of the foundational principles of professional teaching:

We should be demanding about standards without becoming degrading toward people.

4.12 Professional Communication

Communication itself is an ethical practice.

Academic professionals communicate through:

• lectures;
• emails;
• feedback;
• examination comments;
• research articles;
• peer reviews;
• meetings;
• social media;
• institutional reports.

The professional communicator therefore avoids:

• unnecessary humiliation;
• discriminatory language;
• personal attacks;
• careless disclosure of confidential information;
• misleading claims;
• hostile rhetoric;
• plagiarism;
• misrepresentation.

The ethical scholar should aim for communication that is:

accurate, respectful, proportionate, transparent and purposeful.

THE CENTRAL CASE

The Brilliant Professor Who Humiliates Students

Imagine a professor who is internationally renowned.

She has:

• an impressive publication record;
• an exceptional citation profile;
• several major research grants;
• extensive disciplinary knowledge;
• international awards;
• a reputation for intellectual brilliance.

But students consistently report that she:

• ridicules incorrect answers;
• publicly humiliates weak students;
• uses sarcasm as a teaching strategy;
• dismisses questions as "stupid";
• intimidates students during presentations;
• believes fear produces academic excellence.

The professor responds:

"My students achieve excellent results. I am demanding because I care about standards."

The ethical question

Is she a good professional?

The answer requires us to separate academic excellence from professional excellence.

Her subject expertise may be exceptional.

Her professional conduct may not be.

This case demonstrates one of the central propositions of the course:

Competence is necessary for professional excellence, but competence alone is insufficient.

THE FOUR-DIMENSIONAL TEST OF PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE

Students should evaluate the professor through four questions:

1. Is she competent?

Possibly.

2. Is she effective?

Her examination results may suggest effectiveness, but outcomes alone cannot settle the question.

3. Is she ethical?

This requires examining how her methods affect dignity, fairness, wellbeing and professional relationships.

4. Is she exemplary?

This is the deepest question.

A professional should not merely produce results.

A professional should model the standards that the profession seeks to cultivate.

ISLAMIC ETHICAL LENS

The case can also be examined through the Islamic ethical vocabulary developed earlier in the course.

Amanah — Trust

Teaching authority is a trust, not a personal possession.

Adl — Justice

Students deserve fair and consistent treatment.

Ihsan — Excellence

Excellence should exceed minimum compliance and include excellence of conduct.

Rahmah — Compassion

Compassion does not mean lowering academic standards. It means recognizing human dignity while maintaining those standards.

Adab — Proper conduct

Intellectual disagreement must remain compatible with dignity and respect.

Tawadu' — Intellectual humility

The professor must recognize that expertise does not make the scholar infallible.

Taqwa — Inner accountability

Ethical conduct should not depend entirely upon surveillance or punishment.

The deeper question becomes:

What kind of teacher does professional knowledge require us to become?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY: THE ETHICAL PROFESSIONALITY MATRIX

Students work in groups and rate the professor from 1–5 across the following dimensions:

Dimension	Guiding Question
Competence	Does the professor possess adequate expertise?
Integrity	Is conduct consistent with professional values?
Fairness	Are students treated equitably?
Respect	Is student dignity protected?
Accountability	Does the professor accept responsibility for mistakes?
Boundaries	Are professional relationships appropriately maintained?
Transparency	Are decisions and expectations clear?
Compassion	Does the professor recognize student vulnerability?
Intellectual humility	Can the professor acknowledge uncertainty or error?
Professional role-modelling	Would students want to become professionals like this?

Students then defend their scores.

The objective is not to produce a single numerical answer.

It is to demonstrate that ethical judgment requires reasoning rather than instinct.

---

REFLECTIVE QUESTION

Ask students to write for five minutes:

If your students described you ten years from now, what would you want them to say about the kind of professional you were—not merely how much you knew?

Then introduce the final distinction:

A successful academic produces students who pass.

A successful teacher produces students who learn.

An ethical professional produces students who learn without losing their dignity.

And an exemplary scholar does something still greater:

They leave behind not merely knowledgeable students, but better human beings and a stronger intellectual community.

WEEK 4 TAKEAWAY

Professional ethics begins when expertise encounters power.

The doctoral scholar must therefore learn to see every professional privilege as carrying a corresponding obligation:

Authority without responsibility becomes domination.

Knowledge without integrity becomes danger.

Excellence without humanity becomes performance.

Professionalism is the discipline that brings all four back into alignment.

This is the ethical professional the course seeks to cultivate.

WEEK 5 — Ethics of Teaching, Supervision and Assessment

Topics

• Teacher-student power relationships
• Supervisory responsibility
• Fair assessment
• Bias
• Confidentiality
• Academic dependency
• Harassment and inappropriate relationships
• Feedback ethics
• Examination ethics
• Recommendation letters
• Mentoring

English Linguistics Applications

• Dissertation supervision
• Oral examinations
• language assessment
• feedback on academic writing
• AI-assisted assignments

WEEK 5 — ETHICS OF TEACHING, SUPERVISION AND ASSESSMENT

Power, Trust and Responsibility in Doctoral Education

Opening Proposition

Teaching is not merely the transmission of knowledge.

Supervision is not merely the management of research.

Assessment is not merely the allocation of grades.

All three are exercises of institutional power.

And wherever power exists, ethics becomes indispensable.

Universities entrust teachers, supervisors and examiners with extraordinary authority. They shape intellectual development, influence careers, determine academic progression, write recommendations, evaluate performance, guide research trajectories and often become gatekeepers to future opportunities.

This authority creates an ethical obligation that lies at the heart of academic life:

Educational relationships must always serve learning rather than personal power.

Week 5 therefore examines one of the most important dimensions of doctoral ethics: the responsible exercise of academic authority.

The central question is deceptively simple:

How should scholars use their power so that students flourish rather than become dependent, intimidated or exploited?

This question becomes particularly significant in doctoral education, where relationships may continue for years and where the imbalance between student and supervisor is often substantial.

The ethical teacher, supervisor and examiner understand a fundamental principle:

Academic authority is not ownership. It is stewardship.

5.1 Teacher–Student Power Relationships

Teaching always involves asymmetry.

The teacher knows more.

The teacher evaluates.

The teacher controls grades, recommendations and opportunities.

The student depends upon the teacher's expertise, fairness and judgment.

This asymmetry is neither inherently good nor bad. It is necessary.

But it creates ethical responsibilities.

The ethical teacher exercises authority in ways that promote:

• intellectual growth;
• fairness;
• dignity;
• independent thinking;
• inclusion;
• academic confidence.

The unethical use of power includes:

• humiliation;
• favoritism;
• intimidation;
• coercion;
• discrimination;
• exploitation;
• inappropriate dependency;
• emotional manipulation.

Students should therefore understand an important distinction:

Authority is legitimate when it helps students become more capable. It becomes problematic when it creates fear, dependence or personal control.

Teaching is not the management of obedience.

It is the cultivation of intellectual autonomy.

5.2 Supervisory Responsibility

The doctoral supervisor occupies one of the most influential positions in academic life.

A supervisor may shape:

• research questions;
• methodological choices;
• publication opportunities;
• conference participation;
• professional networks;
• career trajectories;
• intellectual confidence.

This influence makes supervision an ethical relationship rather than merely an administrative arrangement.

An ethical supervisor:

• provides timely feedback;
• respects intellectual ownership;
• encourages independent thought;
• maintains appropriate boundaries;
• communicates clearly;
• avoids exploitation;
• acknowledges contributions honestly;
• supports student wellbeing;
• models scholarly integrity.

The supervisor is neither:

• an owner of the student's research;
• an unquestionable authority;
• a co-author by default;
• a manager of intellectual obedience.

The purpose of supervision is not to create replicas of the supervisor.

It is to cultivate independent scholars.

The ideal doctoral journey should move:

Dependence → Collaboration → Intellectual Independence

This progression is one of the hallmarks of successful doctoral education.

5.3 The Ethics of Academic Dependency

Long-term supervisory relationships may create unhealthy dependency.

Students may become:

• afraid to disagree;
• reluctant to pursue original ideas;
• dependent upon approval;
• vulnerable to pressure;
• uncertain of intellectual ownership.

The ethical supervisor recognizes these risks.

A good supervisor asks:

Am I helping this student become a scholar who can think independently?

A poor supervisor asks:

How can this student strengthen my own academic influence?

Academic dependency becomes ethically problematic when students cannot:

• question arguments;
• choose methods;
• publish independently;
• establish intellectual identity.

True mentorship should gradually reduce dependency.

The greatest supervisors do not create followers.

They create colleagues.

5.4 Fair Assessment

Assessment is one of the most powerful acts in education.

A grade may affect:

• scholarships;
• employment;
• progression;
• admissions;
• confidence;
• reputation.

Assessment therefore requires exceptional ethical care.

Ethical assessment should be:

Valid

Does the assessment measure what it claims to measure?

Reliable

Would another examiner reach a similar judgment?

Transparent

Are criteria clear?

Fair

Are standards applied consistently?

Respectful

Is feedback constructive?

Inclusive

Does assessment consider legitimate differences among learners?

Assessment becomes unethical when influenced by:

• favoritism;
• prejudice;
• personal relationships;
• ideological agreement;
• discrimination;
• inconsistency.

The examiner should assess:

The quality of the work, not the identity of the person.

5.5 Bias in Academic Decision-Making

Bias is not always intentional.

Many ethical failures arise from unconscious assumptions.

Bias may involve:

• gender;
• ethnicity;
• language background;
• religion;
• social class;
• disability;
• institutional prestige;
• accents;
• theoretical orientation.

For example:

• Does a reviewer judge work differently because it comes from a famous university?
• Are second-language writers evaluated more harshly?
• Are some accents perceived as more "intelligent"?
• Are students rewarded for agreeing with the teacher?

Doctoral scholars should understand:

Fairness requires not merely good intentions but awareness of hidden assumptions.

Ethics therefore requires self-reflection.

The scholar must ask:

What biases might influence my judgment?

5.6 Confidentiality

Teachers and supervisors often receive confidential information:

• grades;
• drafts;
• research ideas;
• participant information;
• personal disclosures;
• recommendation letters;
• examination reports.

Trust depends upon appropriate handling of this information.

Questions for ethical reflection include:

• What information is confidential?
• Who has legitimate access?
• Under what circumstances may disclosure be justified?
• How can harm be minimized?

Confidentiality is not secrecy for its own sake.

It is protection of trust.

5.7 Harassment and Inappropriate Relationships

Universities are communities of learning.

Learning cannot flourish where fear, exploitation or harassment exist.

Harassment may be:

• verbal;
• psychological;
• discriminatory;
• sexual;
• digital;
• institutional.

The imbalance of power makes teacher-student relationships particularly sensitive.

An action that appears voluntary may still involve coercion if one party controls:

• grades;
• recommendations;
• opportunities;
• progression.

The ethical principle is clear:

Power requires restraint.

Professional boundaries protect:

• students;
• teachers;
• institutions;
• the integrity of education.

Respect is not an optional virtue.

It is a professional requirement.

5.8 Feedback Ethics

Feedback is among the most influential forms of academic communication.

Feedback can:

• improve learning;
• motivate students;
• clarify thinking;
• damage confidence;
• create anxiety;
• encourage dependency.

Ethical feedback should be:

Accurate

Based on evidence.

Specific

Focused on identifiable issues.

Constructive

Aimed at improvement.

Respectful

Protecting dignity.

Timely

Given when it can still be useful.

Bad feedback says:

"This is weak."

Ethical feedback says:

"This argument needs stronger evidence because the current support does not adequately justify the claim."

Feedback should criticize work without diminishing people.

The principle is:

High standards with high respect.

5.9 Examination Ethics

Examiners occupy positions of great responsibility.

An examiner should:

• read carefully;
• apply criteria consistently;
• avoid personal bias;
• maintain confidentiality;
• justify judgments;
• distinguish disagreement from deficiency.

An examiner should not:

• punish theoretical disagreement;
• impose personal preferences;
• use examination to demonstrate superiority;
• create unnecessary intimidation.

A viva voce examination should test scholarship.

It should not become a performance of academic power.

The purpose is evaluation, not humiliation.

5.10 Recommendation Letters

Recommendation letters involve trust.

A recommendation should be:

• truthful;
• fair;
• evidence-based;
• proportionate.

Ethical dilemmas include:

• writing recommendations for weak students;
• balancing honesty and kindness;
• handling confidential information.

An ethical recommendation neither exaggerates nor unfairly harms.

The aim is:

Honest representation with professional responsibility.

5.11 Mentoring

Supervision concerns research.

Mentoring concerns the whole person.

A mentor may help with:

• academic identity;
• career planning;
• confidence;
• networking;
• professional values.

The best mentors provide:

• encouragement without dependency;
• guidance without control;
• support without appropriation.

Mentorship asks:

How can I help another scholar become more capable, more independent and more ethical?

APPLICATIONS TO ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

English Linguistics and Applied Linguistics present distinctive ethical challenges because they often involve:

• human participants;
• language learners;
• multilingual communities;
• classroom research;
• discourse data;
• digital communication;
• online corpora;
• vulnerable populations.

Dissertation Supervision

Questions include:

• Who owns the data?
• Who deserves authorship?
• Can supervisors publish student work independently?
• How should intellectual contributions be acknowledged?

The guiding principle:

Intellectual contribution deserves transparent recognition.

Oral Examinations

Examiners should distinguish:

• nervousness from lack of knowledge;
• accent from competence;
• language proficiency from conceptual understanding.

Linguists, more than many scholars, should recognize that language variation is not intellectual deficiency.

Language Assessment

Assessment in TESOL, ELT and Linguistics must consider:

• fairness;
• validity;
• cultural bias;
• accessibility;
• linguistic diversity.

The ethical question becomes:

Does the assessment measure ability, or merely privilege certain backgrounds?

Feedback on Academic Writing

Feedback should:

• improve argumentation;
• strengthen evidence;
• clarify structure.

It should not:

• appropriate student ideas;
• impose unnecessary conformity;
• erase intellectual individuality.

A supervisor should help students find their scholarly voice rather than replacing it.

AI-Assisted Assignments

Generative AI creates new ethical questions:

• When is AI support acceptable?
• What requires disclosure?
• What remains the student's responsibility?

Ethical AI use requires:

• transparency;
• human oversight;
• critical evaluation;
• acknowledgment.

Students should learn:

AI may assist thinking. It should not replace intellectual responsibility.

CASE STUDY

The Productive Supervisor

A supervisor has:

• many publications;
• high citations;
• international recognition.

However:

• students wait months for feedback;
• supervisors insist on authorship without contribution;
• students fear disagreement;
• recommendation letters depend upon personal loyalty.

The supervisor argues:

"I produce successful students."

Students should ask:

1. Is productivity sufficient?
2. Does success justify exploitation?
3. Can academic achievement compensate for unethical conduct?

The course answer is:

Academic success without ethical responsibility is incomplete professionalism.

ISLAMIC ETHICAL LENS

Amanah

Supervision is a trust.

Adl

Assessment requires fairness.

Sidq

Recommendations and evaluations require truthfulness.

Rahmah

Teaching should combine rigor with compassion.

Ihsan

Excellence includes excellence of character.

Adab

Respectful disagreement is part of scholarly culture.

Mas'uliyyah

Authority creates accountability.

Taqwa

Ethical conduct should continue even without external monitoring.

REFLECTIVE EXERCISE

Students write:

Describe the best teacher, supervisor or mentor you have ever known. What ethical qualities made that person memorable?

Then ask:

If your future students describe you twenty years from now, what kind of teacher, supervisor and examiner would you want them to remember?

WEEK 5 TAKEAWAY

Teaching gives authority.

Supervision gives influence.

Assessment gives power.

Ethics asks how these should be used.

The ethical scholar understands:

Knowledge gives authority.

Authority creates responsibility.

Responsibility requires integrity.

Integrity transforms education from instruction into trust.

That trust is one of the invisible foundations upon which universities stand.

And once trust is lost, no ranking, citation count or institutional prestige can easily restore it.

merge them into single best response

WEEK 5 — ETHICS OF TEACHING, SUPERVISION AND ASSESSMENT

Power, Trust, Fairness and Responsibility in Academic Life

Opening Proposition

Teaching is not merely the transmission of knowledge. Supervision is not merely the management of research. Assessment is not merely the allocation of grades.

All three are exercises of academic power.

A university entrusts teachers, supervisors and examiners with extraordinary authority. They shape intellectual development, influence careers, determine academic progression, write recommendations, evaluate performance, guide research trajectories and, in many cases, become gatekeepers to future opportunities.

That authority creates an ethical obligation at the heart of academic life:

Educational relationships must always serve learning rather than personal power.

Professional authority is therefore not ownership. It is stewardship.

The ethical scholar understands that a student is not a subordinate whose intellectual life belongs to the teacher. A doctoral researcher is not a source of publications for a supervisor. An examiner is not an intellectual adversary. A grade is not a reward for loyalty. A recommendation letter is not a personal favour.

These are forms of professional responsibility.

The central question of Week 5 is therefore:

How should scholars exercise academic power so that students become more capable, independent and intellectually courageous rather than fearful, dependent or exploited?

5.1 Teacher–Student Power Relationships

Every teaching relationship contains an asymmetry.

The teacher generally possesses greater disciplinary knowledge. The teacher evaluates. The teacher controls grades. The teacher may write recommendations. The student depends upon the teacher's expertise and judgment.

This asymmetry is not inherently unethical. Indeed, some asymmetry is necessary for education.

The ethical problem begins when legitimate authority becomes personal power.

A teacher may use authority to:

• cultivate intellectual independence;
• encourage curiosity;
• establish rigorous standards;
• protect academic integrity;
• create a respectful learning environment.

But authority can also be misused through:

• humiliation;
• intimidation;
• favoritism;
• discrimination;
• coercion;
• manipulation;
• exploitation;
• inappropriate dependency.

The distinction is fundamental:

Authority is legitimate when it helps students become more capable. It becomes ethically problematic when it produces fear, dependence or personal control.

The purpose of teaching is not obedience.

It is intellectual autonomy.

5.2 The Ethical Teacher

A good teacher does more than know the subject.

Professional teaching requires the integration of:

Knowledge + Competence + Fairness + Respect + Responsibility + Reflection

An ethical teacher:

• prepares adequately;
• remains intellectually current;
• explains difficult ideas clearly;
• treats students fairly;
• welcomes legitimate questions;
• provides constructive feedback;
• respects linguistic, cultural and intellectual diversity;
• maintains professional boundaries;
• acknowledges mistakes;
• evaluates students according to transparent criteria.

The teacher's authority should ultimately become unnecessary.

The highest achievement of teaching is not to make students dependent upon the teacher's knowledge but to make them capable of continuing without it.

The great teacher does not create intellectual followers. The great teacher creates independent thinkers.

5.3 Supervisory Responsibility

Doctoral supervision is one of the most ethically consequential relationships in the university.

A supervisor can influence:

• the formulation of a research question;
• methodological choices;
• access to data;
• publication opportunities;
• conference participation;
• professional networks;
• intellectual confidence;
• future employment;
• academic identity.

Supervision is therefore not simply administrative oversight.

It is a relationship of intellectual trust.

An ethical supervisor:

• provides reasonable and timely guidance;
• establishes expectations clearly;
• gives substantive feedback;
• respects the student's intellectual ownership;
• encourages independent thinking;
• acknowledges contributions honestly;
• maintains professional boundaries;
• supports responsible research practice;
• helps the student develop an independent scholarly identity.

The supervisor must never confuse mentorship with ownership.

A doctoral student is not the supervisor's research assistant by default, nor is the student's dissertation automatically the supervisor's intellectual property.

The trajectory of good supervision should be:

Dependence → Guided Independence → Collaboration → Intellectual Autonomy

The ultimate test of supervision is therefore not:

How dependent is the student upon me?

but:

Could this student eventually become my intellectual colleague?

The greatest supervisors do not manufacture followers.

They cultivate scholars.

5.4 Academic Dependency

Long-term supervisory relationships can produce unhealthy dependency when students become afraid to disagree with their supervisors or feel that academic opportunities depend upon personal loyalty.

Warning signs include:

• students being discouraged from developing independent ideas;
• pressure to adopt the supervisor's theoretical position;
• fear of disagreement;
• excessive personal control;
• dependence upon the supervisor for every intellectual decision;
• expectations of personal loyalty in exchange for professional opportunities.

Ethical supervision gradually transfers intellectual responsibility to the student.

A supervisor should therefore repeatedly ask:

Am I solving this problem for the student, or teaching the student how to solve it?

The second is almost always the deeper form of education.

5.5 Fair Assessment

Assessment is among the most powerful acts performed by an academic.

A grade can affect:

• progression;
• scholarships;
• employment;
• admissions;
• confidence;
• academic reputation.

Consequently, assessment is not simply a technical process.

It is an ethical act.

Ethical assessment should be:

Valid

It measures the intended learning outcome.

Reliable

The judgment is reasonably consistent.

Transparent

Students understand the criteria.

Fair

Comparable work receives comparable treatment.

Evidence-based

Judgments are grounded in the submitted work.

Respectful

Feedback promotes improvement rather than humiliation.

An examiner must evaluate the work rather than the identity of the person producing it.

This becomes particularly important in English Linguistics, TESOL and Applied Linguistics, where language background, accent and cultural difference can unconsciously influence judgment.

The ethical question is:

Are we assessing linguistic or intellectual ability, or are we unconsciously rewarding familiarity with our own linguistic preferences?

5.6 Bias and the Ethics of Judgment

Bias is not always conscious.

A scholar may sincerely believe in fairness while being influenced by assumptions concerning:

• gender;
• ethnicity;
• religion;
• socioeconomic background;
• disability;
• institutional prestige;
• accent;
• language proficiency;
• theoretical orientation;
• nationality.

Consider several questions:

Would the same research proposal receive the same evaluation if submitted by a famous professor?

Would a student's argument be judged differently because of their accent?

Would a second-language writer be criticized for language features that do not actually undermine the intellectual quality of the argument?

Would a student who respectfully disagrees with the lecturer receive the same evaluation as one who agrees?

Ethical assessment therefore requires not merely good intentions, but reflective awareness.

The ethical scholar asks:

What assumptions might be influencing my judgment?

5.7 Confidentiality and Academic Trust

Teachers and supervisors routinely encounter confidential information:

• student records;
• examination results;
• unpublished manuscripts;
• dissertation drafts;
• research data;
• participant identities;
• personal disclosures;
• recommendation letters;
• peer-review materials.

Confidentiality is therefore not merely an administrative requirement.

It is an expression of trust.

The ethical scholar should ask:

1. What information is confidential?
2. Who has legitimate access?
3. What duty created that confidentiality?
4. Is disclosure legally or ethically required?
5. What is the minimum necessary disclosure?
6. What harm could unnecessary disclosure cause?

Confidentiality should not be confused with absolute secrecy. Legitimate institutional, legal or safeguarding responsibilities may require disclosure in appropriate circumstances.

The principle is:

Protect information because people have entrusted it to you, not merely because a policy tells you to.

5.8 Harassment, Exploitation and Inappropriate Relationships

Academic institutions cannot claim educational excellence while tolerating environments of intimidation or exploitation.

Harassment may be:

• verbal;
• psychological;
• discriminatory;
• sexual;
• digital;
• institutional.

Teacher-student relationships require particular caution because power is unequal.

A relationship may appear voluntary while still being ethically compromised if one person controls:

• grades;
• supervision;
• recommendations;
• funding;
• examination outcomes;
• research opportunities.

The more unequal the power relationship, the greater the responsibility to maintain professional boundaries.

The ethical principle is uncompromising:

Power requires restraint.

Professional boundaries do not merely protect students.

They protect teachers, institutions and the credibility of academic relationships themselves.

5.9 Feedback as an Ethical Practice

Feedback is one of the most powerful instruments of teaching.

It can:

• clarify misunderstanding;
• strengthen argumentation;
• develop academic confidence;
• improve writing;
• encourage intellectual risk-taking.

But poorly delivered feedback can produce:

• humiliation;
• anxiety;
• silence;
• dependency;
• disengagement.

Consider the difference:

“This is a weak argument.”

and:

“The argument needs stronger evidence because the current evidence does not yet adequately support the central claim.”

The second identifies the intellectual problem without attacking the student.

Ethical feedback should be:

accurate, specific, constructive, timely, proportionate and respectful.

The principle is:

Be uncompromising about standards while remaining humane toward the person.

5.10 Examination Ethics

An examination should evaluate scholarship, not reproduce academic hierarchy.

Examiners have a responsibility to:

• prepare adequately;
• read the work carefully;
• apply relevant criteria;
• remain impartial;
• distinguish disagreement from incompetence;
• provide defensible judgments;
• preserve confidentiality.

A viva is particularly important.

The candidate may be nervous. A second-language speaker may require additional processing time. An unfamiliar accent does not indicate weak scholarship.

The examiner's role is not to demonstrate superiority.

It is to determine whether the candidate has demonstrated the required scholarly competence.

Thus:

A rigorous examination can be demanding without becoming humiliating.

5.11 Recommendation Letters

A recommendation letter is a professional act of representation.

The writer is effectively saying:

I am prepared to place my professional credibility behind this assessment of the candidate.

Ethical recommendations therefore require:

• honesty;
• evidence;
• fairness;
• appropriate confidentiality;
• proportionality.

A recommendation should neither fabricate excellence nor deliberately sabotage a candidate.

The difficult case is the weak student.

Professional ethics does not require dishonest praise.

Nor does it require unnecessary cruelty.

The responsible approach is accurate, evidence-based and professionally considerate.

5.12 Mentoring

Supervision focuses primarily on research.

Mentoring is broader.

A mentor may help a young scholar develop:

• academic identity;
• confidence;
• professional networks;
• career strategy;
• research independence;
• ethical judgment.

Good mentoring provides:

Guidance without control.

Support without dependency.

Encouragement without flattery.

Opportunity without exploitation.

The mentor's success is ultimately measured by the student's growing capacity to stand independently.

5.13 English Linguistics: Discipline-Specific Ethical Challenges

The ethical challenges become especially complex in English Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics and digital humanities.

Language researchers may work with:

• human participants;
• children;
• language learners;
• multilingual communities;
• vulnerable populations;
• classroom interactions;
• interviews;
• naturally occurring discourse;
• social-media communication;
• speech recordings;
• learner corpora;
• sensitive identities.

Consequently, doctoral researchers must consider not only whether research is methodologically sound, but whether it is ethically defensible.

Dissertation Supervision

Questions include:

• Who owns the research data?
• Who owns the intellectual contribution?
• When is co-authorship justified?
• Can a supervisor publish from a student's dissertation?
• How should contributions be acknowledged?
• Can a student refuse inappropriate authorship?

The guiding principle is:

Contribution should be recognized transparently and authorship should reflect genuine intellectual contribution.

Oral Examinations

Linguistic researchers should be especially alert to the distinction between:

language difference and intellectual deficiency.

Accent is not intelligence.

Non-native English is not evidence of weak reasoning.

Disfluency under pressure does not necessarily indicate lack of knowledge.

Ethical examination therefore requires attention to the actual construct being assessed.

Language Assessment

In TESOL and language education, assessment may unintentionally privilege particular linguistic or cultural backgrounds.

Ethical assessment therefore requires attention to:

• validity;
• reliability;
• fairness;
• accessibility;
• cultural assumptions;
• linguistic diversity.

The crucial question is:

Does the assessment measure what we claim it measures?

Academic Writing Feedback

Supervisors and teachers should strengthen students' arguments without erasing their intellectual identities.

Feedback should improve:

• reasoning;
• evidence;
• organization;
• clarity;
• methodological precision.

It should not become intellectual appropriation.

The purpose of feedback is not to make every student sound like the supervisor.

It is to help each student become a better version of their own scholarly voice.

5.14 AI-Assisted Assignments

Generative AI introduces a new layer of complexity.

A lecturer may now encounter work produced through varying degrees of AI assistance:

• brainstorming;
• translation;
• grammar correction;
• summarization;
• outlining;
• drafting;
• substantive rewriting;
• complete generation.

The ethical challenge is not simply:

“Did the student use AI?”

The better questions are:

• What did the student ask the system to do?
• What intellectual work remained with the student?
• Was AI use permitted?
• Was it disclosed where required?
• Were outputs verified?
• Did the student understand and take responsibility for the final work?

The principle should be:

AI assistance does not eliminate human responsibility.

Students must remain responsible for:

• accuracy;
• originality;
• evidence;
• interpretation;
• citations;
• argument;
• final claims.

The ethical English classroom therefore moves beyond the simplistic opposition of AI versus no AI toward a more sophisticated distinction between responsible augmentation and intellectual substitution.

5.15 CASE STUDY — THE BRILLIANT SUPERVISOR

Consider a supervisor who possesses:

• an impressive publication record;
• international recognition;
• high citation impact;
• major research grants;
• extensive disciplinary expertise.

Yet:

• students wait months for feedback;
• the supervisor demands authorship without meaningful contribution;
• students are discouraged from disagreeing;
• recommendations appear dependent upon personal loyalty;
• research ideas developed by students regularly become the supervisor's publications.

The supervisor responds:

“Look at my students' success. I produce successful scholars.”

Discussion

Students should ask:

1. Is academic productivity sufficient for ethical professionalism?
2. Can successful outcomes justify exploitative practices?
3. Does supervisory authority include intellectual ownership?
4. What constitutes legitimate authorship?
5. What should a student do when institutional power makes complaint difficult?
6. What responsibilities belong to the institution as well as the individual supervisor?

The central lesson is:

Academic success cannot compensate for ethical failure.

5.16 THE ETHICAL TEACHING MATRIX

Students can evaluate an academic practice through eight dimensions:

Dimension	Central Question
Competence	Does the teacher possess the knowledge required?
Fairness	Are people treated according to defensible criteria?
Integrity	Are claims and judgments truthful?
Respect	Is human dignity protected?
Transparency	Are expectations and decisions explainable?
Boundaries	Is professional power appropriately restrained?
Accountability	Is responsibility accepted for mistakes?
Autonomy	Does the practice develop independent scholars?

This matrix should not be treated as a mechanical scoring device.

It is a thinking instrument.

Its purpose is to force the scholar to look beyond a single question such as “Is this allowed?”

5.17 ISLAMIC ETHICAL LENS

The Islamic ethical vocabulary developed earlier in the course provides a powerful framework for examining teaching, supervision and assessment.

Amanah — Trust

Teaching and supervision are trusts.

Adl — Justice

Assessment must be fair.

Sidq — Truthfulness

Recommendations, evaluations and research judgments must be truthful.

Ihsan — Excellence

Professional excellence exceeds minimum compliance.

Rahmah — Compassion

Rigour should coexist with concern for human dignity.

Adab — Scholarly Conduct

Disagreement should remain respectful.

Tawadu' — Intellectual Humility

Expertise does not make a scholar infallible.

Mas'uliyyah — Responsibility

Authority generates accountability.

Taqwa — Inner Accountability

Ethical conduct should not depend exclusively upon surveillance.

This leads to the deeper question:

What kind of scholar does an ethical worldview seek to produce?

Not merely a competent scholar.

Not merely a productive scholar.

But a scholar whose knowledge is accompanied by character, restraint, responsibility and service.

5.18 CLASSROOM ACTIVITY — THE ETHICAL PROFESSIONALITY MATRIX

Students work in groups and evaluate the "brilliant professor" case from 1–5 across:

1. Competence
2. Integrity
3. Fairness
4. Respect
5. Accountability
6. Professional boundaries
7. Transparency
8. Compassion
9. Intellectual humility
10. Role-modelling

Groups must defend their evaluations.

The purpose is not to produce the "correct" score.

The purpose is to demonstrate that:

Ethical judgment requires argument, evidence and reflection, not merely intuition.

5.19 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Ask students to write for five minutes:

Think of the best teacher, supervisor or mentor you have encountered. What did that person do that made you trust them?

Then ask:

Think of the academic you hope to become. What should your students remember about you twenty years from now?

Finally:

If you possessed complete academic power tomorrow, what ethical principles would prevent you from abusing it?

This moves the course from ethical theory to professional self-formation.

WEEK 5 — THE DEEPER LESSON

Teaching gives authority.

Supervision gives influence.

Assessment gives power.

Mentoring gives trust.

Ethics asks how these privileges should be exercised.

The ethical scholar understands:

Knowledge gives authority.

Authority creates responsibility.

Responsibility requires integrity.

Integrity creates trust.

Trust makes education possible.

The ultimate purpose of academic power is therefore not to make students smaller.

It is to make them larger than they were before they entered our classrooms.

A successful academic may produce high grades.

A successful researcher may produce influential publications.

A successful supervisor may produce completed dissertations.

But an ethical academic does something more enduring:

They develop people capable of thinking independently without losing their sense of dignity, responsibility and humanity.

And that may be the highest definition of professional excellence:

To use knowledge not to establish one's superiority over others, but to increase the capacity of others to think, question, discover and eventually stand without you.

WEEK 6 — RESEARCH INTEGRITY

This is the intellectual center of the course.

Research Integrity

• Honesty
• Accuracy
• Transparency
• Reproducibility
• Accountability
• Methodological rigor
• Data stewardship

Major Forms of Misconduct

Fabrication

Inventing data.

Falsification

Manipulating data or procedures.

Plagiarism

Presenting another's work or ideas without appropriate attribution.

Beyond the "Big Three"

• Selective reporting
• p-hacking
• HARKing
• duplicate publication
• salami slicing
• misleading authorship
• citation manipulation
• image manipulation
• undisclosed conflicts
• predatory publishing

The 2023 ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity provides a contemporary international framework covering good research practices, research misconduct, open science, data practices, AI-related challenges and research culture.

WEEK 6 — RESEARCH INTEGRITY: THE MORAL ARCHITECTURE OF TRUSTWORTHY KNOWLEDGE

Intellectual Centre of the Course

If Week 1 asks what ethics means, and the preceding weeks examine what it means to be an ethical person and professional, Week 6 confronts the question at the heart of doctoral education:

When a scholar claims to have discovered something, why should anyone believe them?

A PhD is not merely a qualification. It is a public authorization to participate in the production of knowledge. Every thesis, article, dataset, corpus, transcription, statistical result, interview, quotation and theoretical claim therefore carries an implicit promise:

This is what I found, this is how I found it, and I have represented the evidence honestly.

Research integrity is the discipline of keeping that promise.

For doctoral researchers, particularly in English Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and language education, integrity is not an administrative requirement added after research has been completed. It must be built into the research process from the formulation of the question to data collection, analysis, interpretation, publication and preservation of the scholarly record.

6.1 Core Concept: What Is Research Integrity?

Research integrity refers to the principles and practices that make the production and communication of knowledge honest, rigorous, transparent, responsible and accountable.

It requires researchers to represent:

• what they actually observed;
• what they actually did;
• what the evidence actually supports;
• what remains uncertain;
• and what limitations qualify their conclusions.

Research integrity therefore goes beyond simply avoiding misconduct.

A researcher may never fabricate a dataset and yet still conduct questionable research through selective reporting, inappropriate statistical procedures, misleading authorship, inadequate documentation, undisclosed conflicts of interest or exaggerated claims.

The fundamental distinction is:

Research ethics asks whether research ought to be conducted in a particular way; research integrity asks whether the research has been conducted and represented truthfully and responsibly.

The two are inseparable.

6.2 The Seven Pillars of Research Integrity

Students should develop seven habits of trustworthy scholarship.

1. Honesty

Represent evidence, methods, results and sources truthfully.

A researcher must never manufacture a result simply because the expected result would make the argument stronger.

2. Accuracy

Record, analyse and report information carefully.

A transcription error, coding mistake or incorrect citation may appear insignificant, but repeated small inaccuracies can compromise an entire research record.

3. Transparency

Make methodological decisions visible.

A reader should be able to understand:

• how participants were selected;
• how data were collected;
• how categories were constructed;
• how exclusions were made;
• how analytical decisions were reached;
• and what limitations remain.

4. Methodological Rigour

Research integrity requires more than good intentions.

A researcher must use methods appropriate to the research question and apply them consistently.

5. Accountability

Researchers are responsible for the claims they make and for the consequences of how their research is used.

Authorship therefore carries responsibility, not merely academic credit.

6. Reproducibility and Verifiability

Where appropriate, research should provide sufficient documentation, data, code, analytical procedures or methodological information to allow others to evaluate or reproduce the work.

In qualitative research, reproducibility may take different forms from experimental replication, but auditability and transparency remain essential.

7. Data Stewardship

Research data are not simply material to be collected and forgotten.

Researchers have responsibilities concerning:

• privacy;
• confidentiality;
• secure storage;
• consent;
• access;
• preservation;
• ownership;
• and appropriate reuse.

6.3 The "Big Three" Forms of Research Misconduct

Doctoral researchers must know the classical triad of serious research misconduct.

Fabrication

Fabrication is inventing data, results, participants, observations or research records that never existed.

Example:

A researcher claims to have interviewed 60 participants when only 38 interviews were actually conducted.

Fabrication does not become acceptable because the invented data happen to support the researcher's hypothesis.

An inconvenient finding is still a finding.

Falsification

Falsification involves manipulating research materials, processes or data so that the research record no longer accurately represents what occurred.

Examples may include:

• altering measurements;
• manipulating coding;
• selectively modifying procedures;
• removing inconvenient observations without justification;
• or presenting manipulated results as genuine.

The central ethical violation is the distortion of evidence.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is presenting another person's words, ideas, intellectual contributions or other scholarly material as one's own without appropriate attribution.

It includes more than copying sentences.

Doctoral researchers must understand:

• direct plagiarism;
• inadequate paraphrasing;
• patchwriting;
• unattributed ideas;
• inappropriate reuse of one's own previously published material;
• and forms of source appropriation involving digital and AI-mediated writing.

The essential principle is simple:

Changing the words does not transfer ownership of the idea.

6.4 Beyond Fabrication, Falsification and Plagiarism

A mature conception of research integrity cannot stop with the "big three".

Contemporary research environments contain subtler practices that can distort the scholarly record without fitting neatly into the classical categories of misconduct.

Students should therefore examine:

Selective Reporting

Reporting only the findings that support the desired conclusion while ignoring relevant contrary results.

P-hacking

Repeatedly manipulating analytical decisions or testing strategies until statistically significant findings appear.

HARKing

Hypothesizing After the Results are Known—presenting an explanation developed after seeing the data as though it had been predicted beforehand.

Duplicate Publication

Publishing substantially overlapping material as though it were genuinely independent scholarly work.

Salami Slicing

Dividing one substantive research project into multiple minimally differentiated publications primarily to inflate publication counts.

Citation Manipulation

Adding citations for strategic rather than scholarly reasons, including coercive or irrelevant citation practices.

Misleading Authorship

Giving authorship to individuals who did not make an appropriate intellectual contribution, excluding legitimate contributors, or treating authorship merely as an institutional favour.

Image or Data Manipulation

Altering visual or research materials in ways that misrepresent the underlying evidence.

Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest

Failing to disclose financial, professional, personal or institutional interests that could reasonably influence—or appear to influence—the research.

Predatory Publishing

Engaging with deceptive or exploitative publishing operations that mimic legitimate scholarly journals while failing to provide credible editorial and peer-review practices.

6.5 Research Integrity in English Linguistics

Research integrity takes distinctive forms in language research.

Consider a linguist working with a corpus of political speeches.

The ethical questions begin before analysis:

• Who owns the recordings?
• Were they lawfully obtained?
• Are speakers identifiable?
• Can quotations be published?
• Has context been preserved?
• Were data selectively sampled?
• Were contradictory examples excluded?
• Were transcription conventions documented?
• Were translations faithful?
• Could coding decisions be independently evaluated?

Similarly, a researcher conducting interviews with language learners must consider:

Consent → privacy → confidentiality → data storage → anonymisation → analysis → quotation → publication → future reuse.

A corpus is therefore not merely a collection of words.

It may contain people's identities, experiences, beliefs, vulnerabilities and intellectual contributions.

6.6 The Doctoral Researcher's Data Responsibility

Students should adopt the principle:

Collect only what you can ethically justify, store what you are responsible for protecting, and publish only what you have the right to disclose.

For every dataset, doctoral researchers should be able to answer:

1. Where did the data come from?
2. Why were these data collected?
3. What permissions or consent apply?
4. Who owns or controls the data?
5. Who can access them?
6. How are they protected?
7. What information has been anonymised?
8. How long will they be retained?
9. Can they be reused?
10. What ethical restrictions govern publication?

These are not bureaucratic questions.

They are questions of scholarly responsibility.

6.7 Research Integrity and Generative AI

The emergence of generative AI has made research integrity substantially more complicated.

A doctoral researcher may now use AI to:

• brainstorm research questions;
• improve language;
• translate text;
• summarize literature;
• generate code;
• assist with transcription;
• classify or analyse text;
• identify patterns;
• draft passages;
• or assist with data processing.

The ethical question is not simply:

"Did you use AI?"

It is:

"What did you use it for, what responsibility did you retain, and can you transparently account for its contribution?"

AI does not become an author merely because it generates prose.

Nor does the use of AI transfer scholarly responsibility away from the researcher.

A researcher remains responsible for:

• factual accuracy;
• citations;
• interpretation;
• methodological validity;
• confidentiality;
• intellectual property;
• and the integrity of the final research record.

The governing principle should therefore be:

AI may assist scholarly production; it cannot assume scholarly responsibility.

6.8 The Integrity of the Research Record

Students should understand that research is cumulative.

One inaccurate article does not exist in isolation.

A fabricated participant, an invented citation, a manipulated dataset or an exaggerated conclusion can enter subsequent literature. Other scholars may cite it, build experiments around it, incorporate it into reviews, teach it to students and eventually reproduce its errors.

The research record therefore resembles an intellectual ecosystem.

To corrupt one part of the record is potentially to contaminate knowledge downstream.

This is why research integrity is a collective responsibility.

6.9 The ALLEA Framework

The 2023 ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity provides an important contemporary framework for understanding responsible research practice. It emphasizes principles and standards of good research practice alongside approaches to research misconduct and responsibilities shared by researchers, institutions and other actors in the research ecosystem.

Students should use the framework comparatively rather than merely memorizing its provisions.

The central question is:

What institutional and professional conditions make trustworthy research possible?

This shifts the discussion beyond the simplistic idea that misconduct is merely the result of "bad individuals".

Research culture matters.

Publication pressure matters.

Incentive structures matter.

Supervision matters.

Institutional leadership matters.

Journal practices matter.

Funding structures matter.

The ethical researcher therefore operates within an ethical ecosystem.

6.10 The Research Integrity Case Laboratory

Case: "The Perfect Result"

A doctoral researcher investigates code-switching among multilingual university students.

The original dataset produces mixed findings. The researcher's supervisor believes that a strong relationship should exist between language proficiency and switching frequency.

The student discovers that several analyses produce no statistically meaningful relationship.

Under pressure to produce a publishable paper, the student:

• removes several "outlier" participants without a clearly established methodological justification;
• changes the coding criteria after seeing the results;
• runs additional analyses until one produces a desirable result;
• reports only the successful analysis;
• and writes the paper as though the final hypothesis had been predicted before data collection.

Nothing has been physically invented.

But is the research trustworthy?

Students must diagnose:

Fabrication?

No clear fabrication is present.

Falsification?

Potentially, depending on the nature and effect of the data manipulation.

P-hacking?

Potentially.

HARKing?

Yes, if post hoc reasoning is represented as an a priori hypothesis.

Selective reporting?

Yes.

Supervisory responsibility?

Potentially.

Publication responsibility?

Yes.

The important lesson is that research integrity is rarely a simple question of:

"Did you cheat?"

The more sophisticated question is:

"Did your research process preserve the integrity of the evidence?"

6.11 The Researcher's Integrity Audit

Before submitting a thesis or article, students should conduct an Integrity Audit.

Evidence

• Have I reported the evidence accurately?
• Have I concealed inconvenient findings?

Methods

• Have I documented methodological decisions?
• Did I change procedures after seeing results?

Data

• Can I account for the origin and handling of my data?
• Are privacy and consent requirements satisfied?

Sources

• Have all borrowed ideas and words been appropriately acknowledged?
• Have I verified every important citation?

Authorship

• Does authorship accurately reflect intellectual contribution?

AI

• Have I disclosed AI use where required?
• Have I independently verified AI-generated material?

Interpretation

• Am I claiming more than my evidence supports?

Transparency

• Could another competent scholar understand how I reached my conclusions?

Accountability

• Would I be prepared to defend every major decision in my doctoral viva?

And finally:

If another researcher examined my complete research process, would I still be comfortable defending it?

6.12 The Week 6 Intellectual Challenge

Students should leave this week understanding one foundational distinction:

Research integrity is not simply the absence of fraud. It is the presence of disciplined intellectual honesty.

A trustworthy researcher does not ask only:

"Can I publish this?"

The researcher asks:

"Is this true?"

Then:

"How do I know?"

Then:

"Can I show others how I know?"

And finally:

"Have I represented what I know, and what I do not know, with sufficient honesty?"

That is the beginning of doctoral maturity.

WEEK 6 — CENTRAL TAKEAWAY

The purpose of research integrity is not to make researchers afraid of misconduct. It is to make them worthy of trust.

A PhD ultimately confers the authority to make knowledge claims.

Research integrity determines whether that authority has been earned.

Suggested Core Reading

• ALLEA. (2023). The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.
• Relevant institutional research-integrity and responsible-conduct-of-research policies.
• Current guidance on publication ethics, authorship, peer review and responsible use of AI.
• Discipline-specific ethical guidance relevant to linguistic and human-participant research.

Preparation for Week 7

Students should bring one real or hypothetical ethical problem from their own research area—preferably involving data, authorship, methodology, publication, AI, participants or supervision.

They will be required to analyse it using the course's emerging architecture:

VALUES → PRINCIPLES → DUTIES → DECISIONS → ACTION → CONSEQUENCES → ACCOUNTABILITY

The objective is no longer merely to identify misconduct.

It is to learn how a doctoral scholar reasons when the ethically correct path is not immediately obvious.

WEEK 7 — ACADEMIC AUTHORSHIP AND PUBLICATION ETHICS

Questions

Who is an author?

Who is not?

Topics

• Authorship criteria
• Order of authors
• Corresponding authors
• Ghost authorship
• Gift authorship
• Honorary authorship
• Supervisors and students
• Acknowledgements
• Peer review
• Editorial responsibility
• Retractions
• Corrections
• Duplicate publication
• Predatory journals

Case

A supervisor contributes little to a paper but demands first authorship.

Students must construct an ethically defensible response.

WEEK 7 — ACADEMIC AUTHORSHIP AND PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Ethics of Intellectual Credit, Scholarly Ownership and the Integrity of the Academic Record

If Week 6 established that research integrity is the foundation of trustworthy knowledge, Week 7 confronts one of its most consequential questions:

Who has the right to claim credit for knowledge?

Few questions in academic life are more deceptively simple and more ethically complicated.

A research paper may contain months or years of intellectual labour, but its final form compresses that labour into a small number of names on a title page. Those names carry professional consequences: citations, promotions, grants, appointments, reputation and academic authority.

Authorship is therefore not merely a matter of courtesy.

Authorship is the public allocation of intellectual responsibility and academic credit.

This becomes especially important in doctoral education, where power relationships between supervisors and students can complicate decisions about ownership, contribution and recognition.

A doctoral researcher must learn a principle that should govern every publication:

Credit should follow genuine intellectual contribution, and authorship should carry corresponding responsibility.

7.1 What Is Authorship?

Authorship normally signifies that an individual has made a substantial intellectual contribution to a scholarly work and accepts responsibility for the work attributed to them.

It is therefore a dual concept:

Credit + Responsibility

The first is often emphasized.

The second is frequently forgotten.

A person who insists on being an author because they want academic credit should also be prepared to accept responsibility for the accuracy, integrity and scholarly claims of the publication.

This immediately exposes the weakness of purely hierarchical approaches to authorship.

Being senior does not automatically make someone an author.

Nor does being junior automatically make someone less entitled to authorship.

7.2 Authorship Is Not Employment

One of the most important distinctions doctoral students should understand is:

Supervision, employment, institutional affiliation and authorship are not synonymous.

A supervisor may supervise a thesis without automatically becoming an author of every article derived from it.

A department chair may manage a research program without automatically qualifying for authorship on every paper produced within that program.

A university may provide laboratory facilities without becoming an author.

Likewise, a research assistant who makes a substantial intellectual contribution may deserve authorship even if they occupy a junior institutional position.

The ethical question is therefore not:

"Who is senior?"

It is:

"Who contributed intellectually, and what responsibility will each contributor accept?"

7.3 Who Should Be an Author?

Students should evaluate authorship according to contribution rather than status.

Potentially qualifying contributions may include substantial involvement in:

• conception of the research;
• formulation of research questions;
• research design;
• acquisition of important research data;
• analysis or interpretation;
• development of substantial theoretical arguments;
• drafting substantial portions of the manuscript;
• critical revision involving significant intellectual contribution;
• and responsibility for the integrity of the final publication.

The exact criteria should be determined according to the relevant disciplinary and institutional standards.

The crucial principle is:

Authorship must represent meaningful intellectual contribution, not institutional rank.

7.4 Who Is Not Automatically an Author?

A person does not ordinarily become an author merely because they:

• occupy a senior administrative position;
• supervise the researcher;
• provide office space;
• provide routine administrative assistance;
• secure institutional permission;
• provide general encouragement;
• proofread minor language errors;
• or happen to be the head of the department.

Such contributions may deserve acknowledgement where appropriate.

But acknowledgement and authorship are not interchangeable forms of recognition.

7.5 The Four Dangerous Forms of Improper Authorship

1. Gift or Honorary Authorship

Adding someone as an author despite insufficient contribution, often because of their status, influence or relationship with the research team.

2. Guest Authorship

Including a prestigious name to make a manuscript appear more credible or influential.

3. Ghost Authorship

A person makes a substantial contribution to the work but is not appropriately identified as an author.

4. Coercive Authorship

A person uses institutional power to obtain authorship they have not ethically earned.

The fourth category is particularly important in doctoral education.

A student may feel unable to challenge a supervisor because the supervisor controls:

• thesis progression;
• recommendations;
• examination arrangements;
• research access;
• publication opportunities;
• or future employment.

This creates an ethical asymmetry.

Consent obtained under academic coercion is not the same thing as ethically negotiated authorship.

7.6 The Supervisor–Student Authorship Problem

Doctoral research creates a particularly delicate environment.

A supervisor may legitimately make major intellectual contributions to a student's publication and therefore qualify for authorship.

But supervision itself is not an automatic entitlement to authorship.

Consider two contrasting situations.

Scenario A

A supervisor merely monitors the student's progress, reads drafts as part of normal supervision and provides routine academic guidance.

Automatic authorship would not necessarily follow.

Scenario B

The supervisor substantially redesigns the theoretical framework, contributes to the research methodology, analyses the data, substantially rewrites the argument and participates in the intellectual development of the paper.

Here, authorship may be ethically appropriate.

The principle is:

A supervisor should earn authorship through contribution, just as any other researcher does.

At the same time, students must not erase legitimate intellectual contributions simply because they want sole ownership of their work.

Ethical authorship protects both directions of fairness.

7.7 Authorship Order

Another difficult question is:

Who should appear first?

In many disciplines, first authorship carries particular significance, but conventions vary considerably across fields.

Students should therefore never assume that one universal ordering system exists.

Possible considerations include:

• relative intellectual contribution;
• contribution to research design;
• data analysis;
• manuscript preparation;
• leadership of the project;
• disciplinary conventions;
• and agreed responsibility for the work.

The most important practice is to discuss authorship and ordering early, rather than waiting until publication becomes imminent.

A useful research-team document can record:

Contributor	Contribution	Proposed Credit
Researcher A	Research design + analysis + manuscript	First author
Researcher B	Data collection + analysis	Co-author
Researcher C	Theoretical framework + revision	Co-author
Research assistant	Transcription	Acknowledgement, unless broader contribution qualifies

Such agreements should remain revisable because research contributions can change during a project.

7.8 The Corresponding Author

The corresponding author carries important administrative and scholarly responsibilities, which may include communication with the journal and coordination of publication-related matters.

Students should understand:

Corresponding author does not necessarily mean "most senior author."

The role should be assigned to someone who can responsibly manage communication and accept the associated obligations.

7.9 Authorship and Acknowledgement

Not every valuable contribution constitutes authorship.

Acknowledgements may appropriately recognize contributions such as:

• technical assistance;
• administrative support;
• transcription;
• language assistance;
• access to facilities;
• limited editorial assistance;
• or other forms of support that do not meet authorship requirements.

This distinction protects the meaning of authorship.

If everyone receives authorship, authorship ceases to communicate meaningful information about intellectual contribution.

7.10 Peer Review as an Ethical Responsibility

Publication ethics extends beyond authors.

Peer reviewers possess temporary access to unpublished intellectual work.

That creates obligations.

A reviewer should:

• maintain confidentiality;
• provide fair and constructive criticism;
• disclose relevant conflicts of interest;
• avoid using privileged information for personal advantage;
• avoid deliberately delaying publication;
• and evaluate the work rather than the identity or institutional prestige of the authors.

A reviewer must never transform confidential access to another scholar's ideas into an opportunity for intellectual appropriation.

A peer review report is not a licence to borrow the unpublished research one has been entrusted to evaluate.

7.11 Editorial Responsibility

Editors occupy another position of considerable academic power.

Ethical editorial practice requires attention to:

• fair evaluation;
• confidentiality;
• conflicts of interest;
• appropriate peer review;
• transparent editorial decisions;
• correction of errors;
• and appropriate responses to credible concerns about published work.

The integrity of a journal is not determined only by the quality of its articles.

It is determined by the integrity of the process through which those articles enter the scholarly record.

7.12 Corrections and Retractions

A mature research culture does not treat correction as humiliation.

Science and scholarship are cumulative human enterprises. Errors will occur.

The ethical response is not concealment.

It is correction.

Correction

An identified error is formally amended while the publication remains part of the scholarly record.

Retraction

A publication is withdrawn from the reliable research record because serious problems undermine its validity or integrity.

The deeper principle is:

Protecting the integrity of the scholarly record is more important than protecting the reputation of an individual publication.

A scholar who voluntarily corrects a genuine error demonstrates intellectual responsibility, not weakness.

7.13 Duplicate Publication and Salami Slicing

Students should distinguish legitimate reuse from unethical publication practices.

Duplicate Publication

Publishing substantially the same work more than once without appropriate disclosure or justification can distort the scholarly record.

Salami Slicing

Dividing one research project into multiple minimally differentiated papers primarily to inflate publication numbers can similarly misrepresent scholarly productivity.

The doctoral researcher should therefore resist the publication-count mentality:

Ten fragmented papers do not necessarily constitute greater scholarship than one intellectually substantial paper.

The objective of publication is to advance knowledge, not merely to increase the length of a CV.

7.14 Predatory Journals

The expansion of open-access publishing has created legitimate opportunities for researchers, but it has also been accompanied by exploitative publishing practices.

Students should learn to evaluate journals critically rather than relying on attractive websites or claims of prestigious indexing.

Questions include:

• Is the journal's editorial board authentic and relevant?
• Is its peer-review process transparent?
• Are publication fees clearly disclosed?
• Is the publisher identifiable?
• Are indexing claims verifiable?
• Is the journal recognized by appropriate disciplinary or institutional authorities?
• Does the journal have credible publication policies?
• Does its scope make scholarly sense?

The fundamental lesson is:

A journal is not credible merely because it accepts your paper.

Indeed, effortless acceptance can sometimes be a reason for greater scrutiny.

7.15 The Ethics of Citation

Citation is not merely a formatting exercise.

It is the infrastructure of intellectual attribution.

When we cite another scholar, we acknowledge:

This idea did not originate with me.

Students must therefore avoid:

• fabricated references;
• irrelevant citation padding;
• citation manipulation;
• misrepresenting what a source actually argues;
• citing papers they have not meaningfully examined;
• and relying on AI-generated references without verification.

A reference list containing impressive-looking but nonexistent sources is not scholarly decoration.

It is a corruption of the academic record.

7.16 The Generative AI Problem

Generative AI creates new authorship questions.

Who is responsible for an AI-assisted paragraph?

Who verifies its citations?

Who checks whether its interpretation is accurate?

Who owns the underlying intellectual contribution?

The answer cannot be:

"The AI did it."

A machine cannot assume scholarly accountability in the human sense required of authors.

Therefore, students should treat AI output as material requiring human verification, not as an epistemic authority.

The relevant question is not merely:

"Was AI used?"

but:

"Did the researcher remain intellectually responsible for the final work?"

7.17 THE CENTRAL CASE: THE SUPERVISOR WHO DEMANDS FIRST AUTHORSHIP

Scenario

A doctoral student develops a paper from her dissertation.

She formulates the research question, collects the data, conducts the analysis and writes the first complete manuscript.

Her supervisor reads the manuscript and makes several useful suggestions.

The supervisor then says:

"I am your supervisor. Put me first author. Without me, you would never have completed this research."

The student feels unable to refuse because the supervisor controls her dissertation progression and may later write her recommendation letter.

The ethical problem

This is not merely a disagreement over author order.

It involves:

• intellectual contribution;
• power asymmetry;
• academic dependency;
• coercion;
• fairness;
• professional responsibility;
• and potentially institutional policy.

7.18 The Seven-Question Analysis

Students should apply the course's emerging ethical decision-making framework.

1. What is happening?

A supervisor is requesting first authorship despite apparently limited intellectual contribution.

2. Who is affected?

• doctoral student;
• supervisor;
• other contributors;
• department;
• journal;
• future readers;
• and the integrity of the academic record.

3. What principles are involved?

• fairness;
• authorship integrity;
• academic freedom;
• honesty;
• responsibility;
• respect;
• non-coercion.

4. What duties apply?

Relevant institutional, disciplinary and journal authorship standards must be examined.

5. What alternatives exist?

The student need not immediately choose between silent compliance and confrontation.

Possible approaches include:

• documenting contributions;
• discussing authorship criteria;
• consulting institutional policy;
• seeking independent advice;
• involving an appropriate research-integrity or graduate-school mechanism where necessary.

6. What are the consequences?

Consider both immediate and long-term consequences of:

• accepting unjustified authorship;
• refusing without discussion;
• escalating the matter;
• or negotiating a contribution-based arrangement.

7. Can the decision be publicly defended?

This is the Public Defensibility Test.

Could every contributor explain the authorship arrangement to a journal editor, examination committee or research-integrity panel?

If not, the arrangement deserves reconsideration.

7.19 The Ethical Resolution

The ethically defensible response is neither automatic submission nor reckless confrontation.

The student should proceed professionally, respectfully and evidence-based.

A possible response:

"I would like us to determine authorship and author order according to our respective intellectual contributions and the relevant journal and institutional guidelines. I would be very happy to recognize your substantive contributions and revise the authorship arrangement accordingly. To avoid misunderstanding, perhaps we could document each person's contribution before submission."

This response does three things:

It respects the supervisor.

It protects the student's rights.

It moves the discussion from hierarchy to evidence.

That is precisely what ethical scholarship should do.

7.20 The Authorship Contribution Charter

As a practical doctoral exercise, every student should create an Authorship Contribution Charter for major collaborative research.

Before submission, contributors should record:

• conception;
• methodology;
• data collection;
• analysis;
• theoretical development;
• drafting;
• revision;
• supervision;
• project administration;
• funding acquisition;
• and responsibility for the final work.

The document should be revisited as contributions evolve.

Its purpose is not to create bureaucracy.

Its purpose is to prevent memory, hierarchy and personality from becoming substitutes for evidence.

7.21 WEEK 7 MASTER PRINCIPLE

Students should leave this week with one proposition:

Authorship is not a reward for seniority. It is a declaration of intellectual contribution and responsibility.

And one further principle should remain above the discussion:

The ethical scholar does not ask, "How much credit can I obtain?" but "What credit have I genuinely earned, and what responsibility am I prepared to accept?"

That distinction separates academic careerism from academic character.

A university that protects ethical authorship does more than prevent disputes.

It teaches the next generation of scholars that knowledge has owners, contributors, custodians and responsibilities—and that the integrity of scholarship begins with something as apparently small as a name on the first page of a paper.

WEEK 8 — MID-SEMESTER INTEGRITY AUDIT

Instead of a conventional memory-based midterm, students complete:

The Doctoral Integrity Audit

Each student audits a hypothetical research project for:

• research question
• participants
• consent
• data collection
• confidentiality
• analysis
• authorship
• AI use
• citation
• publication
• conflicts of interest

Assessment

20% Midterm Ethical Case Portfolio

WEEK 8 — MID-SEMESTER INTEGRITY AUDIT

The Doctoral Integrity Audit: From Knowing Ethical Principles to Auditing Ethical Practice

The midpoint of a doctoral course in professional ethics should not be marked by a conventional examination in which students reproduce definitions, memorize ethical theories or list forms of academic misconduct.

That would test ethical vocabulary.

It would not necessarily test ethical judgment.

Week 8 therefore functions as a deliberate transition in the course. The first seven weeks have introduced students to ethical concepts, moral traditions, professional responsibility, research integrity and publication ethics. Students must now demonstrate whether they can integrate these principles into the evaluation of an actual research process.

The central question becomes:

Can you recognize an ethical problem before it becomes an ethical failure?

This is the purpose of the Doctoral Integrity Audit.

8.1 The Philosophy of the Integrity Audit

A doctoral researcher should not encounter ethics only when an institutional review board, supervisor, journal editor or research-integrity committee raises a concern.

Ethical thinking must occur before the problem occurs.

The Integrity Audit therefore treats ethics as a form of scholarly quality assurance.

Students are given a hypothetical research project containing a series of apparently ordinary academic decisions. Some are ethically sound. Others are questionable. Some are ambiguous and require contextual judgment.

The student's task is not simply to label each decision ethical or unethical.

They must determine:

1. What is happening?
2. What makes the situation ethically significant?
3. Who may be affected?
4. Which principles and duties apply?
5. What risks are present?
6. What alternative action should have been taken?
7. How should the researcher justify the decision?

Thus the audit transforms ethics from a subject students know about into a practice they perform.

8.2 The Hypothetical Research Project

Students receive a research scenario appropriate to their discipline.

For example:

A doctoral researcher in English Linguistics investigates code-switching among university students. The researcher recruits participants from classes taught by a close colleague, collects recorded interviews, stores transcripts on a personal cloud account, uses an AI system to assist with transcription and coding, removes several participants whose responses complicate the hypothesis, prepares a manuscript with the supervisor, and submits it to a journal. The supervisor expects first authorship despite limited involvement in the research design and analysis.

The scenario should deliberately contain multiple ethical dimensions.

Students must audit the entire research lifecycle rather than focusing on one obvious violation.

8.3 THE TEN-DOMAIN DOCTORAL INTEGRITY AUDIT

Each student evaluates ten domains.

DOMAIN 1 — Research Question

Students ask:

• Is the research question intellectually legitimate?
• Is it appropriately framed?
• Does it unnecessarily stigmatize a population?
• Are potentially harmful assumptions embedded within the question?
• Is the research question being shaped by evidence or by a predetermined desired conclusion?

Key principle

Ethical research begins before data collection, with the questions we choose to ask.

DOMAIN 2 — Participants

Students examine:

• Who participates?
• Why were these participants selected?
• Are they vulnerable?
• Is recruitment genuinely voluntary?
• Does the researcher possess institutional or personal power over participants?

For English Linguistics, this might involve:

• students;
• teachers;
• migrants;
• refugees;
• children;
• minority-language communities;
• patients;
• online communities;
• or speakers discussing sensitive experiences.

DOMAIN 3 — Informed Consent

Students evaluate:

• Was consent obtained?
• Was it genuinely informed?
• Was participation voluntary?
• Could participants withdraw?
• Were they informed about recording?
• Were they told how their data would be used?
• Did they understand potential publication and data-sharing implications?

The central question is:

Did the participant consent to participate, or merely agree because refusing was difficult?

DOMAIN 4 — Data Collection and Stewardship

Students audit:

• recording procedures;
• transcription;
• storage;
• access;
• anonymisation;
• preservation;
• data sharing;
• ownership;
• and future reuse.

For linguistic research, students should consider a particularly important issue:

A corpus may contain identifiable human voices, identities and experiences even when it appears to be "just language data".

DOMAIN 5 — Confidentiality and Privacy

Students should ask:

• Can participants be identified?
• Are quotations sufficiently anonymised?
• Could contextual information reveal identity?
• Is sensitive linguistic or biographical information being exposed?
• Does the researcher have permission to reproduce material publicly?

This becomes especially important in:

• discourse analysis;
• sociolinguistics;
• digital ethnography;
• social-media research;
• political discourse;
• and research involving small or identifiable communities.

DOMAIN 6 — Analysis

Students investigate whether the analysis preserves the integrity of the evidence.

They should look for:

• selective reporting;
• exclusion of inconvenient data;
• arbitrary coding;
• post hoc changes;
• confirmation bias;
• inappropriate statistical procedures;
• HARKing;
• p-hacking;
• manipulated interpretation;
• or claims exceeding the evidence.

The central principle is:

The researcher must follow the evidence even when the evidence refuses to support the hypothesis.

DOMAIN 7 — Authorship

Students determine:

• Who contributed intellectually?
• Who deserves authorship?
• Who does not?
• Is author order justified?
• Is the supervisor entitled to authorship?
• Is anyone being excluded?
• Are acknowledgements being confused with authorship?

They should apply the principles developed in Week 7.

DOMAIN 8 — Artificial Intelligence

Students audit every use of AI.

Questions include:

• Was AI used?
• For what purpose?
• Was sensitive data entered into an external system?
• Was participant confidentiality protected?
• Was AI-generated material verified?
• Were citations checked?
• Was AI use disclosed where required?
• Did the researcher retain intellectual responsibility?

The governing principle remains:

AI may assist research; it cannot inherit the researcher's responsibility.

DOMAIN 9 — Citation and Publication

Students evaluate:

• citation accuracy;
• plagiarism;
• source verification;
• duplicate publication;
• salami slicing;
• journal selection;
• peer review;
• conflicts of interest;
• disclosure requirements;
• and publication claims.

They should also identify whether the proposed journal appears legitimate and appropriate.

DOMAIN 10 — Conflicts of Interest

Students identify personal, financial, professional or institutional interests that could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, the research.

Examples include:

• supervisor–student dependency;
• funding relationships;
• institutional interests;
• competing research teams;
• personal relationships with participants;
• editorial relationships;
• commercial interests.

The key principle is:

A conflict of interest does not necessarily make research unethical; concealing a relevant conflict can.

8.4 THE AUDIT MATRIX

Students should complete an analytical matrix such as:

Domain	Ethical Issue	Stakeholders	Principle/Duty	Risk	Recommended Action	Justification
Research question	Possible stigmatization	Community, researcher	Respect, justice	Social harm	Reframe question	Avoid deficit assumptions
Participants	Power imbalance	Students/researcher	Voluntariness	Coercion	Independent recruitment	Protect autonomy
Data	Identifiable recordings	Participants	Privacy	Disclosure	Anonymise securely	Protect confidentiality
AI	External processing	Participants/researcher	Privacy, accountability	Data exposure	Use approved system	Maintain stewardship
Authorship	Supervisor demands credit	Student/supervisor	Fair attribution	Exploitation	Contribution-based agreement	Protect integrity

This matrix ensures that students move beyond descriptive commentary toward ethical reasoning.

8.5 THE PUBLIC DEFENSIBILITY TEST

Every major decision must pass the course's central question:

Could I publicly defend this decision?

Students should imagine that their decision is examined by:

• a doctoral viva committee;
• a journal editor;
• an ethics committee;
• their participants;
• their colleagues;
• or the general public.

If the answer is no, the decision requires reconsideration.

This is not a simplistic test of popularity.

A decision may be ethically defensible even when unpopular.

The question is whether it can be defended through evidence, principle, duty and reason.

8.6 THE DOCTORAL INTEGRITY AUDIT REPORT

Students should submit a structured portfolio containing:

Part I — Executive Ethical Diagnosis

A concise overview of the major ethical problems.

Part II — Ten-Domain Audit

Detailed analysis of each research domain.

Part III — Stakeholder Map

Identification of all individuals and groups affected.

Part IV — Ethical Decision Matrix

Comparison of possible courses of action.

Part V — Corrective Research Protocol

A revised version of the research design demonstrating how the ethical problems could be prevented.

Part VI — Researcher's Reflection

Students explain:

Which ethical problem would be easiest to overlook, and why?

Part VII — Personal Integrity Commitment

A preliminary version of the student's Doctoral Research Ethics Charter, which will be developed further during the second half of the course.

8.7 ASSESSMENT: 20% MID-SEMESTER ETHICAL CASE PORTFOLIO

The mid-semester assessment should reward ethical reasoning, not memorization.

Suggested Rubric

Criterion	Weight
Identification of ethical issues	20%
Application of ethical principles	20%
Stakeholder and risk analysis	15%
Quality of proposed solutions	15%
Integration of research-integrity principles	10%
Discipline-specific application to English Linguistics	10%
Ethical reflection and intellectual maturity	5%
Academic presentation, evidence and referencing	5%
Total	100%

8.8 Performance Standards

Excellent — 85–100%

The student identifies explicit and implicit ethical problems, distinguishes competing principles, recognizes power relationships, evaluates alternatives and proposes proportionate, evidence-based solutions. The analysis demonstrates doctoral-level independent judgment.

Very Good — 75–84%

The student identifies most significant ethical issues and applies relevant principles effectively, although some complexities or alternative interpretations may be underdeveloped.

Satisfactory — 65–74%

The student identifies obvious ethical concerns but relies partly on description, with limited engagement with competing principles or consequences.

Developing — 50–64%

The student recognizes selected problems but demonstrates weak integration of ethical frameworks and limited ability to construct defensible solutions.

Unsatisfactory — Below 50%

The student primarily summarizes the case, misunderstands central ethical concepts or fails to justify recommendations adequately.

8.9 THE MID-SEMESTER VIVA

To strengthen assessment validity, the written portfolio may be followed by a brief individual viva or oral defence.

Students may be asked:

"Why did you classify this action as unethical?"

"What evidence supports your judgment?"

"What if the supervisor disagreed?"

"Would your answer change if the participants were minors?"

"What if the data were publicly available online?"

"Would your decision remain defensible if the journal rejected the paper?"

This introduces an important principle:

An ethical scholar should be able to explain not only what decision they made, but why they made it.

8.10 THE DEEPER PURPOSE OF WEEK 8

The Doctoral Integrity Audit is deliberately positioned at the midpoint of the course because it marks a transition.

Weeks 1–7

Students have been learning:

What ethics is.

Week 8

They must demonstrate:

What ethical reasoning looks like in practice.

Weeks 9–15

They will increasingly move toward:

How ethical responsibility operates within institutions, disciplines, technologies and society.

Thus the mid-semester assessment is not simply an examination.

It is a diagnostic mirror.

It reveals whether the doctoral researcher can recognize ethical complexity before being confronted with it in real academic life.

WEEK 8 — THE TOUCHSTONE

The most important lesson of the Integrity Audit is this:

Ethical scholarship is not the ability to recognize misconduct after it happens. It is the ability to design research in such a way that integrity is built into the process from the beginning.

A mature doctoral researcher does not wait for someone else to ask:

"Is this ethical?"

The researcher learns to ask it first.

Before collecting the data.

Before analysing the evidence.

Before submitting the article.

Before accepting authorship.

Before using AI.

Before publishing the quotation.

Before making the claim.

And before putting their name on the final page.

The highest form of research ethics is not compliance under supervision. It is integrity under autonomy.

WEEK 9 — ETHICS OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH

This week differentiates the course from generic professional-ethics courses.

English Linguistics and Language Research

• Sociolinguistic interviews
• discourse analysis
• corpus research
• psycholinguistics
• language documentation
• endangered languages
• multilingual communities
• vulnerable populations
• classroom research
• child language
• online discourse
• social-media data
• linguistic profiling
• accent and dialect research

Central Question

Does publicly accessible language automatically become ethically usable research data?

Answer: No.

Accessibility and ethical permissibility are not identical concepts.

WEEK 9 — ETHICS OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH

From “Available Data” to Ethically Justifiable Data

Week 9 marks a decisive transition in the course. Up to this point, students have examined ethics as a general professional and research responsibility. This week asks them to confront a question specific to their own disciplinary practice:

What makes linguistic data ethically usable?

For students of English Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, language documentation and digital humanities, this question is fundamental. Language is not merely data. Language is human behaviour. It carries identity, emotion, social position, cultural affiliation, political beliefs, personal experience and, sometimes, highly sensitive information.

A doctoral researcher therefore cannot assume that because a linguistic expression can be accessed, recorded, downloaded or observed, it automatically becomes ethically available for research.

Accessibility is not the same thing as ethical permissibility.

9.1 The Central Ethical Problem

Traditional research ethics often begins with an apparently straightforward distinction:

private information requires protection; public information is available.

Linguistic research complicates this distinction.

A person may post a comment publicly on social media, participate in an online discussion, speak in a classroom, appear in a publicly accessible video, or contribute to a naturally occurring conversation. Yet the fact that material is technically accessible does not necessarily mean that the speaker anticipated its extraction, archiving, analysis, publication or redistribution as research data.

The doctoral researcher must therefore move beyond the question:

“Can I access this data?”

and ask the more demanding question:

“Can I ethically use this data, for this purpose, in this context, in this form, with these consequences?”

That distinction is the intellectual centre of this week.

9.2 The Linguistic Researcher and Human Subjects

Linguistic research frequently involves human participants either directly or indirectly.

Examples include:

• sociolinguistic interviews;
• questionnaires;
• classroom observations;
• language-learning experiments;
• psycholinguistic experiments;
• elicitation tasks;
• interviews about language attitudes;
• discourse analysis;
• accent and dialect studies;
• language documentation;
• studies of endangered languages;
• child-language research;
• multilingual communities;
• corpus construction;
• online discourse;
• social-media communication.

In some projects, the researcher interacts directly with participants. In others, the researcher works with naturally occurring language that was produced without any intention of participating in a research project.

The ethical obligations may therefore differ, but they do not disappear merely because the researcher did not personally collect the original utterance.

9.3 Sociolinguistic Interviews

Sociolinguistic interviews can generate extraordinarily valuable data about:

• dialect;
• accent;
• code-switching;
• language attitudes;
• identity;
• social class;
• ethnicity;
• gender;
• migration;
• multilingualism;
• language change.

But the interview is also a relationship of trust.

Researchers should consider:

• informed consent;
• voluntary participation;
• withdrawal;
• confidentiality;
• anonymization;
• secure data storage;
• recording procedures;
• future use of recordings;
• publication of quotations;
• potential identification through linguistic features.

Anonymization is particularly complicated in linguistic research because a person's linguistic identity can itself become an identifying feature.

A name can be removed while the combination of occupation, locality, dialect, biography and quoted speech still makes an individual recognizable.

9.4 Discourse Analysis and Naturally Occurring Language

Discourse analysts often work with naturally occurring conversations, interviews, political speeches, institutional interactions, media discourse and online communication.

The methodological attraction is obvious: naturally occurring language can reveal patterns that elicited responses may conceal.

But naturalness does not eliminate ethics.

Researchers should ask:

1. How was the discourse produced?
2. In what context?
3. Who produced it?
4. Who might be identifiable?
5. Was the communication intended for a limited audience?
6. What was the original expectation of privacy?
7. Could publication cause harm?
8. Is quotation necessary, or could paraphrase protect identity?
9. Does the research benefit justify the potential risk?

The ethical researcher therefore distinguishes methodological availability from ethical entitlement.

9.5 Corpus Linguistics: Who Owns the Corpus?

Corpus research creates another set of difficult questions.

A corpus may contain:

• newspaper articles;
• books;
• classroom interaction;
• interviews;
• transcribed conversations;
• institutional documents;
• websites;
• social-media posts;
• learner writing;
• recorded speech.

The researcher must consider not only whether the material is accessible but also:

• copyright;
• licensing;
• consent;
• privacy;
• data ownership;
• redistribution rights;
• anonymization;
• storage;
• secondary use;
• institutional permissions.

A corpus is not simply a container of words.

It is an ethical infrastructure of human linguistic behaviour.

The question is therefore not merely:

“Can I build this corpus?”

but:

“Under what conditions can this corpus be responsibly created, maintained, shared and reused?”

9.6 Vulnerable Communities and Linguistic Research

Some linguistic communities require heightened ethical sensitivity.

These may include:

• children;
• refugees;
• migrants;
• displaced populations;
• people with disabilities;
• endangered-language communities;
• politically vulnerable groups;
• marginalized linguistic minorities;
• people in institutional settings;
• communities whose language is stigmatized.

Researchers must avoid treating vulnerability as merely an obstacle to data collection.

The central principle should be:

The more vulnerable the participant, the greater the researcher's responsibility.

Research should not extract linguistic knowledge from communities while returning little or nothing to them.

This introduces the principle of reciprocity.

A language community should ideally be treated not merely as a source of data but as a partner in knowledge production.

9.7 Child Language Research

Research involving children requires particularly careful consideration.

A child may produce valuable linguistic data without fully understanding:

• what research is;
• why recording is taking place;
• how data may be used;
• who may see the material;
• how long it may be retained.

Consequently, researchers must consider appropriate consent and assent procedures, institutional requirements and the child's welfare.

The ethical question is not simply whether the child can provide interesting data.

It is:

Does the research respect the child as a person rather than treating the child merely as a linguistic informant?

9.8 Online and Social-Media Language

Digital communication has radically expanded the linguistic research environment.

Researchers can now study:

• tweets/posts;
• comments;
• online communities;
• discussion forums;
• blogs;
• YouTube comments;
• digital conversations;
• memes;
• multilingual code-switching;
• online political discourse.

But the internet has created an ethical illusion:

Publicly visible does not necessarily mean ethically consequence-free.

A user may understand a post as public communication while never anticipating that a researcher will:

1. collect it;
2. archive it;
3. analyse it;
4. reproduce it verbatim;
5. publish it in an academic article;
6. make it searchable through quotation.

A seemingly harmless quotation can sometimes be copied into a search engine and traced directly to its author.

Therefore, ethical digital research requires consideration of contextual privacy, identifiability and potential harm.

9.9 Linguistic Profiling

Language can reveal or suggest information about:

• geographical origin;
• ethnicity;
• social class;
• educational background;
• gender identity;
• age;
• migration history;
• community membership.

This creates a serious ethical problem.

A researcher who classifies speakers according to linguistic features may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes.

For example, an accent should not automatically be treated as evidence of:

• intelligence;
• competence;
• honesty;
• social worth;
• educational ability;
• employability.

The ethical linguist must distinguish linguistic description from social judgment.

9.10 The Ethics of Representation

Researchers do not merely collect data.

They represent people through data.

This is especially important when studying marginalized communities.

A dissertation might accurately report that a particular linguistic feature occurs frequently within a community. Yet the surrounding interpretation could still stigmatize that community.

Ethical scholarship therefore requires researchers to ask:

How might my analytical language shape the way others understand the people I study?

The problem is not only methodological validity.

It is representational responsibility.

9.11 The Ethical Data Lifecycle

Students should conceptualize linguistic research ethics across the entire data lifecycle:

Collection → Consent → Storage → Anonymization → Analysis → Interpretation → Publication → Sharing → Archiving → Reuse

An ethical failure at any stage can compromise the entire project.

For example:

• ethically collected data can be irresponsibly stored;
• securely stored data can be improperly anonymized;
• properly anonymized data can be misleadingly interpreted;
• responsibly analysed data can be irresponsibly published.

Ethics is therefore not a form to complete before data collection.

Ethics is a responsibility that follows the data from its first collection to its final reuse.

9.12 The English Linguistics Ethical Checklist

Before collecting or using linguistic data, the doctoral researcher should ask:

The Seven Data Questions

1. Who produced this language?

Identify the person, community or population behind the data.

2. Under what circumstances was it produced?

Understand the communicative context.

3. Did the person reasonably expect privacy?

Do not confuse technical accessibility with contextual openness.

4. What permissions or consent are required?

Consider institutional, legal and ethical requirements.

5. Could the person or community be identified?

Consider direct and indirect identification.

6. Could publication cause harm?

Consider reputational, psychological, social, political or professional consequences.

7. Can I defend my use of this data ethically before the participants themselves?

This is the ultimate test.

9.13 Case Study: The Public Post

Scenario

A doctoral researcher discovers hundreds of publicly accessible social-media posts containing code-switching between English and Urdu. The posts are highly relevant to the research question.

The researcher argues:

“The posts are public. Therefore, I do not need permission.”

Ethical Questions

Students must determine:

• Is public accessibility sufficient?
• Does the platform's context matter?
• Should usernames be removed?
• Should quotations be paraphrased?
• Could the original post be located through a search engine?
• Does the potential scholarly benefit outweigh possible harm?
• Does the researcher need institutional ethical review?
• Would the ethical analysis change if the users were minors?
• Would it change if the posts concerned political, religious or health-related matters?

The objective is not to produce a simplistic yes/no answer.

The objective is to demonstrate ethical reasoning under uncertainty.

9.14 Central Principle of the Week

Students should leave Week 9 with one proposition:

Linguistic data are never merely linguistic. Behind every utterance is a speaker, a community, a context and a set of human consequences.

The ethical linguist therefore does not ask only whether data are valid.

The researcher asks whether they are:

valid, lawfully and ethically obtained, responsibly handled, appropriately interpreted, fairly represented and defensibly published.

9.15 Seminar Activity: Ethical Data Court

Students are divided into four roles:

• Researcher
• Participant/community representative
• Ethics-review committee
• Journal editor

The researcher proposes a study using publicly available online linguistic data.

Each group evaluates the proposal from its assigned perspective.

The researcher must then defend the project before the “Ethics Court”.

The final decision must identify:

1. the ethical problem;
2. the affected stakeholders;
3. competing principles;
4. relevant duties;
5. possible alternatives;
6. potential consequences;
7. safeguards;
8. the final ethically defensible decision.

This activity directly prepares students for the course's larger Ethical Decision-Making Framework.

The Week 9 Takeaway

The strongest linguistic research is not simply research that obtains interesting data.

It is research that can answer a more difficult question:

“Was I entitled to know what I now know, and have I treated responsibly the people whose language made that knowledge possible?”

That question transforms the linguist from a collector of linguistic material into a steward of human knowledge.

And that is precisely where professional ethics becomes inseparable from scholarly excellence.

WEEK 10 — DATA, PRIVACY, CONSENT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Topics

• Informed consent
• anonymity
• confidentiality
• pseudonymization
• data storage
• data sharing
• secondary data
• copyright
• fair dealing/fair use
• Creative Commons
• licensing
• corpus ownership
• Indigenous/community knowledge
• research data management

Practical Exercise

Students create a Research Data Management and Ethics Plan for their own PhD research.

WEEK 10 — DATA, PRIVACY, CONSENT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

From Data Ownership to Data Stewardship

Week 10 moves the course from the ethics of collecting linguistic data to the ethics of possessing, protecting, interpreting, sharing and publishing it.

For the doctoral researcher, data are never merely files stored on a computer. They may contain voices, identities, experiences, intellectual contributions, cultural knowledge and traces of private life. The ethical responsibility of the researcher therefore does not end when data collection is complete.

It becomes more demanding.

To collect data is to receive a form of trust. To manage data ethically is to honour that trust.

This principle is particularly important in English Linguistics and related fields because doctoral researchers increasingly work with interviews, recordings, learner writing, classroom discourse, social-media communication, corpora, multilingual communities and digitally archived materials.

The central question of Week 10 is therefore:

What responsibilities does a researcher acquire when another person’s language, information or knowledge enters a research project?

10.1 From Consent to Continuing Responsibility

Informed consent is often treated as a document: the researcher gives a participant a form, obtains a signature and proceeds.

At doctoral level, this understanding is inadequate.

Consent should be understood as an ethical process, not merely an administrative event.

Participants should have an appropriate understanding of:

• what the research is about;
• why their participation matters;
• what information will be collected;
• whether audio or video will be recorded;
• how data will be stored;
• who may access the data;
• whether data may be reused;
• whether anonymized data may be shared;
• how findings may be published;
• what risks may arise;
• whether participation is voluntary;
• and what withdrawal means within the approved research design.

The researcher must also recognize that consent can become complicated when research circumstances change.

A participant may have agreed to participate in a study of classroom interaction without anticipating that a recording might later be reused for a different research question.

The ethical principle is therefore:

Consent should correspond, as far as reasonably possible, to the actual use of the data.

10.2 Anonymity Is Not the Same as Confidentiality

These concepts are frequently confused.

Anonymity

Anonymity means that the identity of a participant is not known or cannot reasonably be linked to the research data.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality means that identifying information may be known to the researcher but is protected from unauthorized disclosure.

Pseudonymization

Pseudonymization involves replacing identifying information with pseudonyms or codes while retaining a mechanism that may allow re-identification under controlled circumstances.

For linguistic researchers, this distinction is crucial.

Removing a participant's name does not necessarily make a dataset anonymous.

Consider a participant described as:

“A 43-year-old female Saraiki-speaking school principal from a particular village who participated in a recorded interview about language attitudes.”

Even without a name, the combination of characteristics might make the individual identifiable within the community.

Thus:

Anonymization is not simply deleting names. It is managing the possibility of identification.

10.3 The Problem of Linguistic Fingerprints

Language itself can identify people.

A distinctive:

• accent;
• dialect;
• vocabulary;
• speech pattern;
• professional terminology;
• autobiographical reference;
• code-switching pattern;
• geographical reference

may function as a linguistic fingerprint.

This creates particular challenges for researchers working with audio and video data.

A transcript may be anonymized while the original recording remains identifiable.

Researchers must therefore distinguish between:

anonymizing text

and

protecting the identity embedded in the underlying communicative material.

10.4 Confidentiality as a Researcher's Duty

Confidentiality is not merely a courtesy.

It is part of the researcher's professional responsibility.

Researchers should consider:

• who has access to raw data;
• where files are stored;
• whether devices are protected;
• whether recordings are encrypted where appropriate;
• how identifiers are separated from research data;
• how long information will be retained;
• how data will eventually be destroyed or archived;
• whether research assistants have access;
• whether cloud services are being used;
• and what institutional policies govern the project.

A doctoral student should be able to answer a deceptively simple question:

“Where is my participant's data right now, and who could access it?”

If the answer is uncertain, the data-management system requires attention.

10.5 Data Storage Is an Ethical Issue

Research ethics does not end with methodological validity.

A beautifully designed study can become ethically defective through careless data management.

Students should therefore develop a data lifecycle:

Collection → Transfer → Storage → Access → Processing → Analysis → Publication → Sharing/Archiving → Retention/Deletion

At every stage, the researcher should identify:

• risks;
• responsible persons;
• security measures;
• access controls;
• retention periods;
• permitted uses.

The doctoral researcher should regard data management as part of research design rather than an administrative task added after the research has begun.

10.6 Secondary Data: “Someone Else Collected It”

Secondary data create a particularly important ethical misconception.

A researcher may assume:

“I did not collect the data, therefore I have no ethical responsibility for it.”

The opposite is closer to the truth.

Before using secondary data, researchers should ask:

• Where did the data originate?
• For what purpose were they collected?
• Was consent obtained?
• What uses were participants told about?
• Are the data identifiable?
• Are there restrictions on reuse?
• Who owns or controls the dataset?
• Does the new research purpose fit the original ethical framework?
• Does institutional review apply?

Secondary data do not mean secondary ethical responsibility.

10.7 Copyright: Access Is Not Ownership

One of the most important distinctions in contemporary scholarship is:

Being able to access something does not mean that you own the right to reproduce it.

Researchers may encounter:

• books;
• journal articles;
• newspaper reports;
• websites;
• photographs;
• recordings;
• videos;
• software;
• datasets;
• corpus materials;
• teaching materials.

The fact that something can be downloaded does not automatically establish permission to reproduce, redistribute or republish it.

Students must therefore distinguish among:

• copyright;
• licensing;
• permission;
• quotation;
• fair dealing/fair use where applicable;
• Creative Commons licensing;
• institutional access rights.

The exact legal rules vary by jurisdiction, so doctoral researchers must not treat copyright as a universal formula.

10.8 Creative Commons and Licensing

Open access does not necessarily mean unrestricted use.

A Creative Commons licence may permit particular forms of reuse while imposing conditions such as:

• attribution;
• non-commercial use;
• restrictions on derivatives;
• sharing under the same licence.

Researchers must therefore learn to ask:

“Under what licence is this material available?”

rather than simply:

“Is this material online?”

This distinction is particularly important for digital humanities and corpus-based research.

10.9 Who Owns a Corpus?

Corpus linguistics raises a deceptively difficult question:

Who owns a corpus?

Possible stakeholders may include:

• participants;
• researchers;
• research teams;
• universities;
• archives;
• funding bodies;
• publishers;
• communities;
• institutions from which the data originated.

Ownership, control, access and ethical stewardship are not necessarily the same thing.

A university may hold a dataset while participants retain privacy interests.

A researcher may construct a corpus while copyright remains with original creators.

A community may possess cultural knowledge that cannot ethically be treated as ordinary research material merely because a researcher has documented it.

The doctoral researcher must therefore distinguish:

ownership ≠ access ≠ control ≠ permission ≠ ethical entitlement.

10.10 Indigenous and Community Knowledge

Language documentation and community-based linguistic research require particular sensitivity.

Researchers working with Indigenous, minority or endangered-language communities should avoid an extractive model in which:

community → provides data → researcher → publishes → academic career advances

while the community receives little meaningful benefit.

A more ethical model emphasizes:

participation → reciprocity → shared responsibility → community benefit → responsible preservation

The researcher should consider whether communities have meaningful opportunities to influence:

• what is documented;
• what may be shared;
• how materials are represented;
• who can access them;
• how knowledge is interpreted;
• and how research findings return to the community.

The ethical question becomes:

Am I researching a community, or am I building knowledge with a community?

That distinction can transform the entire research relationship.

10.11 Data Sharing: Open by Default, But Not Blindly

Open science has created powerful opportunities for transparency, replication and scholarly collaboration.

But openness is not an absolute ethical principle.

Some data may require restrictions because of:

• privacy;
• participant consent;
• safety;
• confidentiality;
• copyright;
• cultural sensitivity;
• community expectations;
• legal requirements.

The responsible researcher therefore avoids both extremes:

“Everything must be open.”

and

“Nothing should ever be shared.”

Instead, the principle should be:

Share as openly as ethically and legally possible, and restrict only what genuinely requires protection.

10.12 Intellectual Property and the Doctoral Researcher

Doctoral students should understand that intellectual property can arise from:

• original datasets;
• software;
• corpus construction;
• research instruments;
• translations;
• analytical frameworks;
• teaching materials;
• publications;
• digital resources.

But intellectual contribution does not automatically translate into exclusive ownership.

Students should understand institutional policies, research agreements, funding conditions and applicable law before assuming that a particular research output belongs exclusively to them.

This becomes particularly important in collaborative doctoral projects.

10.13 Case Study: The “Anonymous” Interview

Scenario

A doctoral student conducts interviews with ten English teachers about institutional pressures.

The researcher removes names and replaces them with pseudonyms.

One participant says:

“At my university, I am the only lecturer teaching this particular course.”

The dissertation includes the quotation together with the participant's age, department, city and professional position.

The researcher argues:

“The participant is anonymous because I removed the name.”

Ethical Court

Students must determine:

1. Is the participant truly anonymous?
2. Could colleagues identify the individual?
3. Does the quotation need to appear verbatim?
4. Could paraphrasing reduce risk?
5. Should contextual details be generalized?
6. What did the original consent process permit?
7. What responsibility does the researcher have to protect the participant after publication?

The lesson:

Removing a name is a technique. Protecting a person is an ethical responsibility.

10.14 Practical Exercise

The Doctoral Research Data Management and Ethics Plan

Each student will prepare a Research Data Management and Ethics Plan specifically for their own PhD project.

The plan should address:

A. Data Description

What data will be collected or used?

B. Data Source

Who or what is the source of the data?

C. Consent

What form of consent is required?

D. Identification

Could participants or communities be identified?

E. Confidentiality

What procedures will protect sensitive information?

F. Storage

Where will data be stored and who will have access?

G. Security

What safeguards will protect the data?

H. Retention

How long will data be retained?

I. Sharing

Will data be shared? If so, with whom and under what conditions?

J. Intellectual Property

Who owns or controls the materials?

K. Copyright and Licensing

What permissions or licences apply?

L. Secondary Use

Could the data be reused for future research?

M. Community Responsibility

Could individuals or communities experience harm through publication?

N. Publication

How will quotations, recordings, images or other materials be presented?

O. Disposal or Archiving

What happens to the data when the project ends?

10.15 The Data Stewardship Test

At the end of the exercise, every student must answer five questions:

1. Would my participants understand how I intend to use their data?
2. Would they consider my treatment of their data fair?
3. Could an outsider identify them despite my safeguards?
4. Could my publication cause avoidable harm?
5. If my entire data-management system were publicly examined, could I defend every decision?

If the answer to any question is no, the researcher must redesign the relevant part of the project.

10.16 The Week 10 Principle

The deepest lesson of this week can be expressed in one sentence:

Research data are not possessions to be accumulated; they are responsibilities to be stewarded.

A doctoral researcher may collect thousands of words, hours of recordings or millions of corpus tokens.

But behind every token may stand a human being.

Behind every recording may stand a life.

Behind every dataset may stand a community.

And behind every piece of intellectual property may stand another person's creative labour.

The ethically mature scholar therefore understands that knowledge acquisition creates obligations.

The ultimate question is not:

“How much data can I collect?”

It is:

“How responsibly can I transform the data entrusted to me into knowledge?”

That is the transition from researcher to scholar, and from data ownership to intellectual stewardship.

WEEK 11 — AI, GENERATIVE AI AND THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARSHIP

This becomes one of the course's defining contemporary components.

Topics

• ChatGPT and generative AI
• AI-assisted writing
• AI translation
• AI coding
• AI-generated references
• hallucinated citations
• authorship
• disclosure
• AI-assisted peer review
• synthetic data
• deepfakes
• algorithmic bias
• privacy
• intellectual property
• automation and academic labour
• human accountability

UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI places human dignity, human rights, transparency, fairness, human oversight, accountability and sustainability at the centre of responsible AI governance.

UNESCO's 2024 AI Competency Framework for Teachers further identifies competencies across human-centred thinking, AI ethics, AI foundations and applications, AI pedagogy and AI-enabled professional learning.

Central Principle

AI may assist scholarly work; it cannot inherit scholarly responsibility.

WEEK 11 — AI, GENERATIVE AI AND THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARSHIP

From AI-Assisted Knowledge Production to Human-Accountable Scholarship

Week 11 brings the course to one of the most consequential ethical transformations in contemporary higher education. Generative artificial intelligence has altered not simply how scholars write, but how knowledge can be produced, translated, analysed, evaluated, disseminated and even imagined.

For doctoral researchers, the ethical question is therefore no longer:

“Should I use AI?”

That question is too narrow.

The more important questions are:

What may AI legitimately do in scholarly work?

What must remain the responsibility of the human researcher?

When does assistance become substitution?

When does efficiency become intellectual dependency?

And how can a scholar remain accountable for work produced with the assistance of a system whose internal operations may be opaque, probabilistic and fallible?

UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence places human dignity and human rights, transparency and explainability, fairness, human oversight, accountability and sustainability among the central principles for responsible AI governance. UNESCO's AI Competency Framework for Teachers likewise emphasizes human-centred thinking, AI ethics, AI foundations and applications, AI pedagogy and AI-enabled professional learning. These principles provide an important foundation for thinking about AI not merely as a technological tool but as an ethical component of contemporary education and scholarship.

The central proposition of this week is therefore:

AI may assist scholarly work; it cannot inherit scholarly responsibility.

11.1 The Fundamental Distinction: Assistance Versus Substitution

The first task of an ethical AI policy is to distinguish assistance from substitution.

A researcher may use AI to:

• brainstorm possible research questions;
• generate alternative formulations;
• improve grammar;
• translate material;
• organize notes;
• explain unfamiliar concepts;
• assist with coding;
• identify possible analytical patterns;
• develop teaching materials;
• simulate counterarguments;
• assist with data processing.

But none of these uses transfers intellectual responsibility away from the researcher.

The scholar remains responsible for:

• accuracy;
• interpretation;
• evidence;
• originality;
• citations;
• methodological decisions;
• ethical compliance;
• intellectual-property obligations;
• confidentiality;
• conclusions.

The crucial principle is:

The more consequential the intellectual decision, the greater the requirement for human judgment and verification.

11.2 AI Does Not Know Whether a Claim Is True

One of the most important misconceptions about generative AI is that fluent language implies reliable knowledge.

It does not.

Large language models generate outputs through computational prediction. Their ability to produce coherent prose should never be confused with an independent guarantee of factual accuracy.

This becomes particularly dangerous in doctoral research.

An AI system may produce:

• a plausible but incorrect claim;
• an invented quotation;
• a nonexistent article;
• an incorrect DOI;
• a misattributed theory;
• a distorted interpretation of a scholar's argument;
• a citation that exists but does not support the claim attached to it.

Such outputs may look scholarly.

That is precisely why they are dangerous.

Fluency is not evidence.

11.3 The Hallucinated Citation Problem

Consider the following scenario.

A doctoral researcher asks an AI system:

“Give me ten recent studies on code-switching and executive control.”

The system produces ten beautifully formatted references.

The researcher copies them into the literature review.

Later, several references turn out to be nonexistent.

The researcher cannot defend the literature review because the citations were never independently verified.

The ethical failure did not occur because AI was used.

It occurred because verification was abandoned.

The correct doctoral principle is:

Every AI-generated factual claim, citation and reference that enters scholarly work must be independently verified against an authoritative source.

AI can help locate possibilities.

It cannot certify scholarship.

11.4 AI-Assisted Writing and Intellectual Ownership

AI-assisted writing creates a particularly difficult question for English Linguistics and language education:

When does editing become authorship?

There is no single answer applicable to every institutional or publication context. Policies differ, and students must follow the requirements of their university, supervisor, examination body and target journal.

But an ethical distinction can nevertheless be established.

Using an AI system to correct grammar in a paragraph whose argument belongs to the researcher is fundamentally different from asking AI to:

• formulate the central argument;
• construct the literature review;
• invent the theoretical framework;
• interpret findings;
• write the discussion;
• formulate conclusions.

The second situation raises a much more serious question:

Whose intellectual work is the thesis actually expressing?

A doctoral dissertation is not merely a polished document.

It is evidence of doctoral-level intellectual agency.

11.5 AI Translation

AI translation has enormous potential for multilingual scholarship.

It can help researchers:

• compare multilingual sources;
• prepare preliminary translations;
• explore unfamiliar linguistic material;
• communicate research findings across languages;
• accelerate repetitive translation tasks.

But translation is not always a mechanical substitution of one word for another.

Meaning can depend on:

• context;
• culture;
• pragmatics;
• register;
• metaphor;
• ideology;
• politeness;
• discourse structure;
• historical context.

This is especially important for linguists.

A machine may produce a grammatically plausible translation while erasing precisely the linguistic phenomenon that the researcher is studying.

Therefore:

The more linguistically consequential the translation, the greater the need for expert human verification.

11.6 AI and Linguistic Research

AI presents unusual opportunities for English Linguistics.

Researchers can use computational systems to assist with:

• corpus annotation;
• transcription;
• coding;
• classification;
• sentiment analysis;
• discourse analysis;
• language identification;
• qualitative coding support;
• text comparison;
• translation;
• computational modelling.

But every automated procedure introduces potential error.

Researchers must therefore ask:

1. What did the system actually do?
2. What assumptions were built into it?
3. What training or algorithmic limitations might matter?
4. What errors could it introduce?
5. How were outputs validated?
6. Could another researcher reproduce the procedure?
7. Did automation influence the interpretation?

The ethical researcher does not hide automation.

The researcher makes it methodologically visible.

11.7 AI-Generated References and the Verification Chain

Students should adopt a simple scholarly protocol:

AI suggestion → Original source → Independent verification → Accurate citation → Human interpretation

Never:

AI suggestion → Copy → Publish

The first process creates scholarship.

The second creates citation theatre.

11.8 Generative AI and Peer Review

AI-assisted peer review introduces another layer of ethical complexity.

A reviewer may be tempted to paste a confidential manuscript into an AI system and ask:

“Summarize this paper and identify its weaknesses.”

This may expose confidential intellectual property to an external system and may violate the journal's policies or the reviewer's obligations.

The reviewer therefore has to consider:

• confidentiality;
• manuscript ownership;
• journal policy;
• data privacy;
• intellectual property;
• disclosure;
• human responsibility for the review.

A peer reviewer is not simply evaluating text.

The reviewer has been entrusted with another researcher's unpublished intellectual work.

That trust must be protected.

11.9 AI and Student Assessment

The same dilemma appears in teaching.

A student may use AI to:

• brainstorm;
• obtain feedback;
• improve language;
• generate examples;
• practise examination questions.

But if the student submits AI-generated work as evidence of independent intellectual achievement, the assessment may no longer measure what the instructor intended to measure.

This requires universities to move beyond a simplistic binary:

AI = cheating

versus

AI = harmless technology

Neither position is adequate.

The better question is:

What form of AI use is compatible with the learning outcome being assessed?

If the outcome is independent argumentation, undisclosed outsourcing of argumentation undermines the assessment.

If the outcome is revision and editing, appropriately disclosed AI feedback may be educationally useful.

The ethical principle is therefore assessment-purpose alignment.

11.10 Synthetic Data

Generative systems can also produce synthetic text, speech, images and other forms of simulated data.

Synthetic data may have legitimate research applications, particularly where real-world data are difficult to obtain or raise privacy concerns.

But synthetic data must never be presented deceptively as naturally occurring human data.

A researcher must clearly distinguish:

observed data

from

generated data

and

simulated data.

Otherwise, the boundary between modelling and fabrication collapses.

This distinction is fundamental to research integrity.

11.11 Deepfakes and the Crisis of Evidence

Generative AI also challenges one of scholarship's oldest assumptions:

If we can see or hear it, it probably happened.

Synthetic audio, video and images increasingly complicate that assumption.

For linguists and discourse researchers, this creates new questions concerning:

• voice cloning;
• synthetic speech;
• fabricated interviews;
• manipulated recordings;
• identity impersonation;
• misinformation;
• evidentiary authenticity.

The future researcher may therefore need to establish not only:

“What does this recording say?”

but also:

“Is this recording authentic?”

Digital literacy is becoming part of research integrity.

11.12 Algorithmic Bias

AI systems are not automatically neutral.

Their outputs may reflect limitations arising from:

• training data;
• language imbalance;
• cultural assumptions;
• historical inequalities;
• representation gaps;
• model design.

This has particular significance for linguistics.

Systems trained disproportionately on dominant languages and varieties may perform differently across:

• English varieties;
• minority languages;
• regional accents;
• code-switched speech;
• non-standard dialects.

A researcher must therefore avoid treating AI performance as a neutral measure of linguistic reality.

A model's output is also evidence about the model.

11.13 Privacy and Confidential Data

One of the most serious doctoral mistakes is entering confidential research material into an AI system without considering the relevant privacy and institutional requirements.

Researchers should never assume that an AI tool is appropriate for sensitive research data merely because it is technically capable of processing them.

Before using AI with research material, ask:

• Does the material contain personal information?
• Does it contain identifiable participant data?
• Does the ethics approval permit this use?
• Does institutional policy permit it?
• What happens to submitted data?
• Who controls the processing environment?
• Is confidential material being transferred to a third party?
• Are there contractual or legal restrictions?

The principle is simple:

Convenience never automatically overrides confidentiality.

11.14 AI and Intellectual Property

Generative AI also complicates traditional assumptions about intellectual property.

Researchers may use AI to assist with:

• text;
• images;
• code;
• translations;
• presentations;
• educational resources.

But questions remain concerning:

• ownership;
• licensing;
• attribution;
• reuse;
• third-party material;
• institutional policies;
• publisher requirements.

The responsible doctoral researcher must therefore understand that AI use does not erase intellectual-property obligations.

11.15 The Human-in-the-Loop Principle

The course adopts a stronger formulation than simply “use AI responsibly.”

It adopts the principle of human intellectual accountability.

The human researcher must remain capable of explaining:

• what was done;
• why it was done;
• what AI contributed;
• what the researcher contributed;
• what was verified;
• what was rejected;
• what limitations remain.

A doctoral scholar should never be placed in the embarrassing position of saying:

“The AI produced it, so I assumed it was correct.”

That is not scholarly responsibility.

---

11.16 The AI Disclosure Principle

Where AI use is permitted, students should develop a habit of transparent disclosure consistent with the requirements of their institution, journal or publisher.

A responsible disclosure may identify:

• the system used;
• the purpose for which it was used;
• the stage of research at which it was used;
• the extent of human verification;
• any substantive AI contribution.

The exact disclosure format should follow the applicable institutional or publication policy.

Transparency protects both the researcher and the credibility of the research.

11.17 Case Study: The AI Literature Review

Scenario

A doctoral student asks an AI system to produce a 3,000-word literature review.

The AI generates a coherent discussion with 40 references.

The student checks that the papers exist but does not read all of them.

The literature review is submitted.

Ethical Court

Students must determine:

1. Which intellectual tasks were delegated?
2. Which responsibilities remained with the student?
3. Is merely verifying that references exist sufficient?
4. Must each source be read?
5. Who is responsible for misinterpretation?
6. Should AI use be disclosed?
7. Has the student's doctoral-level intellectual contribution been demonstrated?
8. What would constitute legitimate AI assistance instead?

The goal is not to produce a simplistic prohibition.

The goal is to determine where legitimate assistance ends and intellectual substitution begins.

11.18 The Doctoral AI Accountability Protocol

Every doctoral researcher should be able to answer six questions before using AI:

1. Purpose

Why am I using AI?

2. Permission

Is this use permitted by my university, supervisor, ethics approval, examination body or publisher?

3. Privacy

Am I exposing confidential, personal or restricted information?

4. Verification

How will I independently verify the output?

5. Disclosure

Do I need to disclose this use?

6. Responsibility

Can I personally defend every substantive claim that results from this interaction?

If the answer to the final question is no, the researcher should not submit the material as scholarly work.

11.19 Practical Activity

The AI Ethics Laboratory

Students receive five research scenarios:

Scenario A — AI Writing

A student asks AI to rewrite a weak literature review.

Scenario B — AI Translation

A researcher translates interview data using an AI system.

Scenario C — AI Coding

A researcher uses AI to generate Python code for corpus analysis.

Scenario D — AI References

A researcher asks AI to identify recent sources.

Scenario E — AI Peer Review

A reviewer uploads a confidential manuscript into an AI system.

For each scenario, students must classify the use as:

Permissible → Permissible with safeguards → Requires disclosure → Ethically problematic → Unacceptable

They must then justify the classification using:

facts → stakeholders → principles → duties → risks → alternatives → safeguards → decision

This directly connects Week 11 to the course's Seven Questions of Ethical Scholarship.

11.20 The Five-Level AI Responsibility Model

The course can establish a practical model for doctoral researchers:

Level 1 — AI as Tool

AI assists with routine tasks.

Level 2 — AI as Assistant

AI helps generate possibilities that the researcher evaluates.

Level 3 — AI as Collaborator

AI contributes substantially to an intellectual workflow, requiring heightened transparency and verification.

Level 4 — AI as Risk

AI introduces significant concerns involving accuracy, privacy, authorship or integrity.

Level 5 — AI as Substitute

AI performs the very intellectual task that the researcher is required to demonstrate.

The fifth level is where the greatest ethical danger lies.

A doctoral degree cannot certify intellectual independence if the intellectual work has been outsourced.

11.21 The Deeper Question: What Is Scholarship After AI?

The arrival of generative AI forces universities to reconsider what they mean by scholarship.

If machines can produce competent prose, then grammatical fluency alone becomes a weaker indicator of intellectual achievement.

If machines can summarize hundreds of papers, memorizing summaries becomes less valuable.

If machines can generate code, coding alone may no longer demonstrate deep computational understanding.

If machines can translate, translation itself becomes less scarce.

What becomes more valuable?

Judgment.

Question formation.

Evidence evaluation.

Theoretical reasoning.

Methodological discipline.

Original interpretation.

Intellectual courage.

Ethical responsibility.

And above all:

The capacity to know when the machine is wrong.

11.22 The Week 11 Touchstone

Students should leave the session with a proposition that captures the ethical architecture of AI-assisted scholarship:

The future of scholarship is not human versus machine. It is human judgment augmented by machines without surrendering human responsibility.

Generative AI may become an extraordinary intellectual instrument.

But instruments do not possess academic conscience.

They do not stand before an examination committee.

They do not defend a thesis.

They do not answer participants whose data have been misused.

They do not retract a paper.

They do not apologize for a fabricated citation.

They do not bear the moral consequences of a research decision.

The scholar does.

Therefore, the defining competency of the AI-era doctoral researcher is not simply AI literacy.

It is AI accountability.

And that leads to the final principle of Week 11:

Use AI to extend human intelligence, not to outsource human responsibility.

That is the ethical threshold between AI-assisted scholarship and scholarship without a scholar.

WEEK 12 — ACADEMIC FREEDOM, POWER AND INSTITUTIONAL ETHICS

Topics

• Academic freedom
• Freedom of inquiry
• Freedom of expression
• Institutional authority
• Political pressure
• censorship
• ideological conformity
• institutional retaliation
• discrimination
• harassment
• academic hierarchy
• whistleblowing

Central Question

When should loyalty to an institution yield to responsibility toward truth?

WEEK 12 — ACADEMIC FREEDOM, POWER AND INSTITUTIONAL ETHICS

If Weeks 1–11 have asked how an individual scholar should behave, Week 12 asks a more difficult question:

What should a scholar do when the institution itself becomes the source of the ethical problem?

This distinction is fundamental. Professional ethics cannot be reduced to individual courtesy, personal integrity or compliance with institutional regulations. Universities are powerful organizations. They allocate positions, promotions, research funding, grades, supervisory authority, publication opportunities and intellectual legitimacy. Because power can be exercised responsibly or irresponsibly, doctoral researchers must learn to recognize the ethical dimensions of institutional life.

The ethically mature scholar is therefore not merely someone who follows rules. It is someone who can distinguish legitimate institutional authority from illegitimate pressure and professional loyalty from complicity.

12.1 Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is the principle that scholars should be able to pursue legitimate intellectual inquiry, research, teaching and scholarly expression without inappropriate interference.

For a doctoral researcher, this means the freedom to:

• formulate research questions;
• investigate evidence;
• challenge established interpretations;
• disagree with supervisors or colleagues respectfully;
• publish defensible findings;
• engage with competing theoretical perspectives;
• revise one's position when evidence requires it;
• participate in scholarly debate;
• pursue unpopular or unconventional research questions within legitimate ethical and professional boundaries.

Academic freedom, however, should not be misunderstood as unlimited personal freedom.

A scholar's freedom is accompanied by responsibilities concerning evidence, accuracy, professional conduct, research integrity, human dignity and the rights of others.

Thus:

Academic freedom protects inquiry; it does not protect intellectual irresponsibility.

A researcher cannot invoke academic freedom to justify fabrication, plagiarism, harassment, discrimination, defamation or unethical treatment of research participants.

12.2 Freedom of Inquiry and Freedom of Expression

These concepts overlap but should not be treated as identical.

Freedom of inquiry concerns the ability to investigate questions and pursue knowledge.

Freedom of expression concerns the ability to communicate ideas and arguments.

A university must create an environment in which disagreement is possible without disagreement automatically becoming misconduct.

This is particularly important in disciplines such as English Linguistics, where scholars may disagree profoundly about:

• theoretical frameworks;
• language policy;
• linguistic identity;
• sociolinguistic classification;
• discourse and ideology;
• language variation;
• educational policy;
• AI and language;
• controversial interpretations of data.

The purpose of scholarship is not to eliminate disagreement.

It is to make disagreement intellectually productive.

A doctoral researcher should therefore learn the difference between:

"I disagree with your conclusion."

and

"You should not be permitted to investigate this question."

The first may be scholarship.

The second may become a question of academic freedom.

12.3 Power in the University

Every academic institution contains hierarchies.

A professor may supervise a doctoral student.

A department chair may evaluate a lecturer.

An editor may determine whether a manuscript enters peer review.

An examiner may influence the outcome of a doctoral examination.

A dean may influence promotion.

A funding body may determine which projects receive resources.

These relationships are not inherently unethical. Institutions require legitimate authority.

The ethical problem arises when authority becomes coercion.

A supervisor who provides rigorous criticism is exercising professional responsibility.

A supervisor who threatens a student's academic future because the student refuses an inappropriate demand is abusing institutional power.

The distinction is crucial.

Ethical authority

• provides legitimate guidance;
• explains decisions;
• applies standards consistently;
• allows disagreement;
• protects confidentiality;
• recognizes dependency;
• avoids retaliation.

Unethical authority

• intimidates;
• retaliates;
• discriminates;
• exploits dependency;
• demands personal loyalty;
• suppresses legitimate criticism;
• appropriates intellectual work;
• manipulates assessment;
• uses institutional position for personal advantage.

The central principle is therefore:

The existence of power does not make its exercise ethical.

12.4 The Supervisor–Student Ethical Relationship

Doctoral education creates an unusually asymmetric relationship.

The supervisor possesses knowledge, institutional authority and often considerable influence over the student's academic future.

The student may therefore hesitate to challenge inappropriate conduct even when they recognize it.

This creates a special ethical responsibility for supervisors.

A supervisor should not treat a doctoral student as:

• unpaid research labour;
• a personal assistant;
• a source of publications;
• a subordinate whose intellectual independence is irrelevant;
• a convenient data collector;
• a future academic dependent.

The doctoral researcher is becoming an independent member of the scholarly community.

The ultimate objective of supervision is therefore not dependency but intellectual independence.

A successful supervisor should eventually be able to say:

"I helped this researcher become capable of disagreeing with me."

That may be one of the highest forms of academic mentorship.

12.5 Institutional Loyalty

Universities often encourage employees and students to demonstrate institutional loyalty.

Loyalty has legitimate functions. Institutions cannot operate without trust, cooperation and collective responsibility.

But loyalty has ethical limits.

A scholar should never confuse:

loyalty to an institution

with

loyalty to every decision made by the institution.

These are not the same.

A university may be worthy of loyalty precisely because its members are willing to identify its weaknesses and correct them.

Thus:

Constructive criticism can be a form of institutional loyalty.

Silence is not necessarily loyalty.

Compliance is not necessarily integrity.

And disagreement is not necessarily disloyalty.

12.6 When Truth Conflicts with Institutional Convenience

Consider a hypothetical case.

A doctoral researcher discovers that a widely cited institutional report contains a serious methodological error. Correcting the error could embarrass the department because the report has been publicly celebrated.

The researcher is informally advised:

"It would be better not to make an issue of this."

What should the researcher do?

The answer cannot simply be:

"Protect the university."

Nor should it automatically be:

"Expose the university."

Ethical reasoning requires a more disciplined process:

1. Verify the evidence.
2. Determine whether the alleged error is genuine.
3. Assess its significance.
4. Consider whether correction is possible through ordinary channels.
5. Document the evidence.
6. Seek appropriate scholarly or institutional advice.
7. Avoid unnecessary personal accusations.
8. Escalate only when proportionate and necessary.

Ethical scholarship is not reckless confrontation.

It is principled courage combined with procedural responsibility.

12.7 Censorship and Intellectual Conformity

A university can suppress inquiry without formally banning a topic.

Pressure may operate through subtler mechanisms:

• discouraging certain research questions;
• withholding opportunities;
• manipulating assessment;
• denying access to resources;
• threatening professional consequences;
• informal blacklisting;
• selective enforcement of institutional rules;
• creating an atmosphere in which scholars learn what they are "not supposed" to investigate.

This is why ethical institutional culture matters.

A healthy university does not require intellectual uniformity.

It creates conditions in which scholars can disagree without fearing illegitimate retaliation.

The goal is not ideological chaos.

The goal is epistemic pluralism disciplined by evidence.

12.8 Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing represents one of the most difficult areas of professional ethics because it involves competing obligations.

A researcher may owe duties to:

• the institution;
• colleagues;
• research participants;
• professional bodies;
• the public;
• the integrity of knowledge.

Suppose a scholar discovers serious research misconduct.

Remaining silent may protect colleagues but compromise research integrity.

Reporting the misconduct may protect scholarship but expose the whistleblower to professional consequences.

Therefore, whistleblowing should not be reduced to either heroism or betrayal.

An ethically responsible approach normally requires:

Evidence → Documentation → Internal Resolution Where Appropriate → Proportionate Escalation → Protection of Confidentiality → Protection Against Retaliation

Students should also understand that allegations must be made responsibly. Ethical reporting requires good-faith concern supported by credible evidence, not personal rivalry disguised as moral accusation.

12.9 Discrimination, Harassment and Institutional Responsibility

Academic ethics also encompasses dignity.

Universities must be environments in which students and employees can participate without discrimination or harassment.

Relevant concerns may involve:

• gender;
• disability;
• ethnicity;
• religion;
• nationality;
• language;
• socioeconomic background;
• academic status;
• political or intellectual disagreement.

The doctoral researcher should learn to distinguish scholarly criticism from personal degradation.

A supervisor may say:

"Your argument is methodologically weak."

That is legitimate academic criticism.

A supervisor may not ethically convert intellectual disagreement into humiliation, intimidation or discriminatory treatment.

The distinction between criticizing an idea and degrading a person should become part of every doctoral scholar's professional vocabulary.

12.10 The Institutional Ethics Test

Students should apply the following questions when evaluating an institutional ethical dilemma:

The Institutional Power Test

1. Who possesses power?

Identify the decision-maker and the dependent party.

2. What kind of power is being exercised?

Academic, supervisory, administrative, financial, reputational or disciplinary?

3. Is the exercise of power legitimate?

Does the person have the authority to make the decision?

4. Is the power being exercised proportionately?

Does the response exceed what the situation requires?

5. Is there retaliation?

Has disagreement produced an inappropriate penalty?

6. Are standards being applied consistently?

Would another person in the same situation receive the same treatment?

7. What rights and duties are involved?

8. What evidence exists?

9. What institutional mechanisms are available?

10. What response protects both truth and human dignity?

12.11 English Linguistics Applications

For students of English Linguistics, these questions can be applied to concrete disciplinary situations.

Case 1: Research Suppression

A student produces findings that challenge a widely accepted theory within the department.

Question:

Is the student being intellectually challenged, or institutionally discouraged?

Case 2: Supervisor Retaliation

A doctoral researcher refuses to include an unsupported claim requested by a supervisor.

The supervisor subsequently threatens to delay approval of the dissertation.

Question:

Where does legitimate supervision end and abuse of power begin?

Case 3: Linguistic Identity

A researcher studying a minority language discovers findings that contradict an influential political narrative.

Question:

Should political sensitivity alter scholarly conclusions?

Case 4: Institutional Reputation

A university discovers an error in one of its published research reports.

Question:

Should reputational concerns influence whether the error is corrected?

Case 5: Whistleblowing

A researcher discovers evidence suggesting systematic manipulation of research data.

Question:

What obligations arise when institutional loyalty conflicts with research integrity?

12.12 Seminar Activity — The University on Trial

Students are divided into four groups:

Group A: The researcher

Group B: The supervisor

Group C: The university administration

Group D: The independent ethics committee

Each group receives the same institutional dilemma.

They must determine:

• What happened?
• Who holds power?
• Which rights are involved?
• Which duties apply?
• What evidence is required?
• What constitutes legitimate institutional authority?
• What constitutes abuse?
• What action should be taken?
• How should retaliation be prevented?

The ethics committee then evaluates all four positions.

The objective is not to identify a "winning" side.

The objective is to demonstrate that ethical reasoning must survive competing interests.

12.13 Reflective Question

Students respond to the following:

If an institution asks you to choose between protecting its reputation and protecting the integrity of knowledge, what should you do, and how would you justify your decision?

The answer should not be based merely on personal emotion.

Students must support their position through:

• ethical theory;
• Islamic ethical principles;
• professional responsibility;
• research-integrity standards;
• institutional obligations;
• consequences;
• rights;
• proportionality.

12.14 The Principle of Week 12

The week's central proposition should be placed prominently on the lecture slide:

A university deserves loyalty not because it is an institution, but because it is committed to the pursuit of truth.

And beneath it:

When institutional convenience conflicts with intellectual integrity, the ethical scholar must protect the integrity of knowledge, carefully, proportionately, and courageously.

This is the point at which Professional Ethics–II moves beyond personal morality into the ethics of institutions themselves.

A doctoral scholar is not merely learning how to behave inside a university.

The scholar is learning how to help build the kind of university in which truth can be pursued without fear, authority can be exercised without abuse, disagreement can occur without retaliation, and knowledge can remain more important than institutional vanity.

WEEK 13 — EQUITY, INCLUSION AND THE ETHICS OF ACADEMIC POWER

Topics

• Gender
• disability
• socioeconomic inequality
• linguistic discrimination
• ethnicity
• religion
• international students
• Global South scholarship
• epistemic injustice
• unequal access to publishing
• citation inequality
• English-language dominance

Linguistic Application

Who gets published?

Whose English counts as "academic"?

Whose language becomes data?

Who becomes the object of research?

Who becomes the producer of theory?

WEEK 13 — EQUITY, INCLUSION AND THE ETHICS OF ACADEMIC POWER

If Week 12 asks what happens when institutional power conflicts with truth, Week 13 asks a still deeper question:

Who gets to participate in the production of knowledge in the first place?

A university may declare itself meritocratic while reproducing profound inequalities through its admission systems, hiring practices, research networks, publication cultures, language policies, citation practices and definitions of scholarly excellence.

This is why equity is not an optional addition to professional ethics. It is a question of epistemic justice.

An ethically serious university must ask not only whether knowledge is produced honestly, but also:

Whose knowledge is being produced, whose knowledge is being recognized, and whose knowledge remains invisible?

13.1 From Equality to Equity

Equality and equity are related but not identical.

Equality asks whether people are treated according to the same formal rules.

Equity asks whether those rules operate fairly when individuals begin from substantially different circumstances.

Consider two doctoral researchers.

One has:

• unlimited access to international journals;
• high-speed internet;
• extensive research funding;
• English as a first language;
• experienced academic mentors;
• the ability to attend international conferences.

The other has:

• limited institutional resources;
• restricted access to databases;
• unreliable internet;
• English as an additional language;
• little access to research networks;
• substantial financial constraints.

Giving both researchers exactly the same formal deadline may constitute equality.

But asking whether both have genuinely comparable opportunities to succeed is an equity question.

The ethical university therefore does not abandon standards.

It asks whether standards are being applied through fair structures.

Equity does not mean lowering standards. It means removing irrelevant barriers to meeting legitimate standards.

13.2 Academic Merit and the Myth of Neutrality

Universities frequently speak the language of merit.

But merit is never completely independent of opportunity.

Academic achievement is influenced by:

• educational background;
• financial resources;
• language;
• mentoring;
• institutional reputation;
• access to research infrastructure;
• geographical location;
• professional networks;
• publication opportunities;
• time available for research.

This does not mean that individual achievement is meaningless.

It means that an ethical academic system must distinguish between:

achievement

and

the conditions under which achievement becomes possible.

A university committed to merit should therefore examine whether its definition of merit inadvertently rewards privilege disguised as excellence.

13.3 Gender and Academic Power

Gender can shape academic experience through unequal expectations, opportunities and institutional power.

Ethical questions include:

• Who receives mentoring?
• Who is encouraged to apply for leadership positions?
• Who receives research opportunities?
• Who performs disproportionate administrative or pastoral labour?
• Whose authority is questioned?
• Who receives credit for collaborative work?
• How are complaints of harassment handled?
• Are professional boundaries applied consistently?

The ethical principle is straightforward:

Professional opportunity should not depend upon gender, nor should professional vulnerability be ignored because of it.

Equity therefore requires both equal opportunity and protection from discriminatory or exploitative practices.

13.4 Disability and the Ethics of Academic Participation

Disability raises another fundamental question:

What does it mean for a university to provide genuine access to knowledge?

An institution may technically admit a student while still creating barriers that make meaningful participation difficult.

Ethical inclusion may require attention to:

• accessible teaching materials;
• physical accessibility;
• digital accessibility;
• assessment accommodations;
• communication needs;
• reasonable flexibility;
• assistive technologies;
• inclusive research participation.

The objective is not to create an easier intellectual environment.

It is to ensure that disability does not become an irrelevant barrier to demonstrating intellectual ability.

13.5 Socioeconomic Inequality

Academic success often carries hidden costs.

Conference travel, books, software, language editing, publication charges, internet access, research assistance and unpaid internships can all create unequal opportunities.

This produces an uncomfortable question:

How much of academic excellence is actually purchased by invisible resources?

An ethically responsible university should therefore examine the economic architecture surrounding scholarship.

A student's intellectual potential should not be determined by whether their family can finance the infrastructure required to display it.

13.6 Linguistic Discrimination

For a course in English Linguistics, this is perhaps the most important dimension of the week.

Academic institutions frequently operate through powerful linguistic hierarchies.

English has become the dominant language of much international scholarship. This creates enormous advantages for fluent English users while placing additional linguistic labour on researchers who work in English as an additional language.

The ethical question is not whether scholars should develop strong academic English.

They should.

The deeper question is:

Should linguistic difference be mistaken for intellectual deficiency?

A researcher may have an excellent theoretical argument expressed in imperfect English.

Another may produce elegant English containing a weak argument.

If academic evaluation rewards the second solely because the prose sounds more authoritative, the institution may be confusing linguistic fluency with intellectual merit.

13.7 The Global South and Epistemic Inequality

The geography of knowledge production matters.

Universities in wealthy research systems often possess greater access to:

• funding;
• laboratories;
• international databases;
• prestigious publishers;
• research networks;
• citation infrastructure;
• conference participation;
• editorial influence.

Researchers in the Global South may therefore contribute valuable empirical knowledge while remaining comparatively invisible in theory-building.

This produces a troubling asymmetry:

Some communities become data; others become theorists.

A Pakistani, African, South Asian or Indigenous community may be extensively studied by international researchers while scholars from that community struggle to have their own theoretical interpretations recognized.

The ethical question becomes:

Who has the authority to interpret whom?

13.8 Epistemic Injustice

The concept of epistemic injustice provides an important framework for understanding these problems.

In simplified terms, epistemic injustice occurs when individuals or communities are unfairly disadvantaged in their capacity to participate as knowers.

Two forms are particularly relevant.

Testimonial injustice

A person's testimony receives less credibility because of prejudice concerning their identity, language, social position or background.

Hermeneutical injustice

A community lacks the conceptual resources or institutional recognition necessary to make its experiences adequately understood within dominant knowledge systems.

For linguists, these concepts are especially powerful.

A speaker of a marginalized language is not merely a source of linguistic data.

They are a knower.

That distinction should transform research methodology.

13.9 Who Gets Published?

Publication is one of the most consequential gatekeeping mechanisms in modern academia.

Students should examine:

• Who sits on editorial boards?
• Which institutions dominate prestigious journals?
• Which languages are accepted?
• What citation practices are expected?
• What kinds of research questions are considered theoretically significant?
• Which methodological traditions are treated as legitimate?
• Are Global South scholars cited as theorists or primarily as local sources?
• How do publication fees affect participation?
• Does academic writing style become a proxy for intellectual quality?

The objective is not to declare every editorial decision biased.

It is to recognize that gatekeeping itself is an ethical responsibility.

Editors, reviewers and publishers possess power over whose ideas enter the scholarly record.

That power must be exercised transparently and fairly.

13.10 Citation as an Ethical Practice

Citation is often taught as a technical requirement.

At doctoral level, it should also be understood as an ethical act of intellectual recognition.

To cite someone is to acknowledge that their work contributed to one's intellectual position.

To systematically ignore scholars because they come from less prestigious institutions, less dominant regions or different linguistic traditions can reproduce intellectual inequality.

Students should therefore ask:

Whom does my bibliography make visible?

A strong literature review should not become a census of famous Western scholars.

It should be an intellectually justified representation of the scholarship relevant to the research problem.

The criterion should be relevance and quality, not geography or prestige.

13.11 Whose English Counts as Academic?

This question deserves particular attention in English Linguistics.

Academic English is not a single natural linguistic object. It is a set of historically developed conventions shaped by particular scholarly communities.

Students should therefore distinguish between:

clarity

and

conformity.

A manuscript should be clear, precise and comprehensible.

But clarity should not require the erasure of legitimate linguistic identities.

This becomes especially important when reviewing work by multilingual scholars.

The ethical reviewer should ask:

Is the argument unclear?

rather than:

Does this sound sufficiently like me?

That distinction can determine whether peer review becomes quality control or linguistic gatekeeping.

13.12 Who Becomes Data?

Language research frequently involves communities whose speech, writing or online communication becomes research material.

Consider:

• minority-language speakers;
• migrants;
• children;
• refugees;
• patients;
• students;
• Indigenous communities;
• online communities;
• speakers of stigmatized dialects.

The ethical danger is reducing human beings to datasets.

A corpus may contain thousands of utterances.

Behind every utterance may be a person with:

• an identity;
• a history;
• a community;
• a reputation;
• a vulnerability;
• expectations concerning privacy.

Therefore:

Data may be analyzable without being morally ownerless.

13.13 Who Becomes the Producer of Theory?

This is perhaps the deepest question of the entire week.

Historically, academic knowledge has often followed a particular pattern:

Local community → data

External researcher → interpretation

Prestigious institution → theory

International publisher → validation

An ethically transformative research culture should challenge this hierarchy.

A community whose language is being documented should, where appropriate, participate in determining:

• what is documented;
• how it is represented;
• what is published;
• how materials are stored;
• who has access;
• how findings are returned to the community.

The researcher should not simply extract knowledge.

The researcher should build an ethical relationship in which knowledge can be shared, reciprocated and returned.

13.14 English Linguistics Case Study

The Language That Became a Dataset

A doctoral researcher investigates an endangered regional language.

The researcher:

• records speakers;
• creates a corpus;
• publishes several articles;
• receives international recognition;
• builds a strong academic profile.

The community, however:

• receives no accessible copy of the corpus;
• has little control over how its language is represented;
• is rarely acknowledged as a knowledge-producing community;
• cannot easily access the published research because it is behind a paywall.

The ethical questions

1. Was informed consent sufficient?
2. Was consent genuinely informed?
3. Did participants understand future uses of their data?
4. Who owns or controls the corpus?
5. Should the community receive access?
6. Was the community merely a source of data?
7. Should community members receive intellectual acknowledgement?
8. How should the researcher balance individual privacy with preservation?
9. What obligations arise after publication?
10. What would an equitable research partnership look like?

The important realization is:

Ethical research does not end when the data have been collected.

13.15 Seminar Exercise — The Epistemic Justice Audit

Students select a published linguistics article and conduct an Epistemic Justice Audit.

They examine:

Representation

Who is represented in the literature?

Geography

Where are the cited researchers located?

Language

Which languages are treated as legitimate scholarly sources?

Theory

Who is presented as producing theoretical knowledge?

Data

Who provides the empirical material?

Citation

Which scholars receive intellectual recognition?

Access

Who can actually read the published research?

Reciprocity

Does the research return anything meaningful to the community studied?

Students then answer:

Does this article merely study a community, or does it create an ethically responsible relationship with that community?

13.16 The Equity–Excellence Relationship

One of the most persistent misunderstandings about inclusion is that equity necessarily compromises excellence.

The opposite may often be true.

If universities systematically exclude capable people because of irrelevant barriers, they lose intellectual capacity.

If they restrict scholarship to a narrow linguistic, geographical or socioeconomic elite, they narrow the range of questions being asked.

If they study only dominant languages, they lose evidence about linguistic diversity.

If they treat local scholars as data collectors rather than intellectual partners, they waste theoretical insight.

Thus:

Equity is not the enemy of excellence. Unnecessary exclusion is.

A university becomes intellectually stronger when more capable minds can participate meaningfully in knowledge production.

13.17 Reflective Questions

Students should consider:

1. Have I ever confused English fluency with intelligence?
2. Have I assumed that a scholar from a prestigious university is automatically more authoritative?
3. Whose scholarship dominates my bibliography?
4. Which scholars are missing?
5. Have I treated participants as sources of data rather than collaborators or knowledge holders?
6. What barriers might exist between my research community and the academic institutions publishing its knowledge?
7. Does my research provide any meaningful reciprocity?
8. What does "merit" mean in my academic environment?
9. Can a university be formally equal but substantively unjust?
10. What would epistemically just English Linguistics look like?

13.18 The Principle of Week 13

The central proposition should appear on the final lecture slide:

A university does not achieve excellence by deciding who deserves to belong. It achieves excellence by creating conditions in which intellectual excellence can emerge wherever human ability exists.

And for English Linguistics:

Do not merely ask who speaks the language you study. Ask who has the power to define what that language means.

The deepest ethical challenge is therefore not simply who gets access to the university.

It is:

Who gets to become a knower?

Who is cited.

Who is published.

Who is believed.

Who becomes a theorist.

Who becomes a dataset.

Who defines the research question.

Who interprets the evidence.

And who receives the intellectual authority generated from it.

A truly ethical university must eventually make these boundaries less rigid.

Because the highest form of academic inclusion is not simply allowing more people into the production of knowledge.

It is ensuring that more people are recognized as capable of producing knowledge worth hearing.

WEEK 14 — ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING

Students learn the complete model:

THE 8-STEP ETHICAL DECISION MODEL

Step 1 — Establish the facts

Step 2 — Identify stakeholders

Step 3 — Identify ethical principles

Step 4 — Identify duties and institutional rules

Step 5 — Identify competing values

Step 6 — Generate alternative actions

Step 7 — Evaluate consequences

Step 8 — Document and defend the decision

Students apply the framework to complex cases.

WEEK 14 — ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING

From Ethical Principles to Defensible Action

Week 14 represents the practical culmination of the course. Having examined moral theory, Islamic ethics, professional responsibility, research integrity, authorship, human-participant research, data governance, artificial intelligence, academic freedom, institutional power and equity, doctoral researchers now move from knowing ethical principles to exercising ethical judgement.

The central premise is simple but demanding:

Ethical scholarship is not demonstrated by knowing the rules. It is demonstrated by making responsible decisions when important values, interests and obligations collide.

Real academic life rarely presents ethical problems in neat categories. A researcher may simultaneously face obligations to a participant, a supervisor, an institution, a journal, a professional code, the law and the integrity of knowledge. These obligations may point in different directions. A doctoral scholar therefore needs more than a catalogue of rules. They need a repeatable method of ethical reasoning.

14.1 The Central Problem: Ethical Dilemmas Are Rarely Simple

Consider a linguistics researcher who discovers that a participant's interview contains information that could significantly strengthen the argument of a doctoral thesis.

The data are scientifically valuable.

The participant has already signed a consent form.

The participant, however, belongs to a small linguistic community in which anonymity is difficult to guarantee.

Publishing the quotation could strengthen the research.

It could also make the participant identifiable.

What should the researcher do?

There is no responsible answer that begins and ends with:

"The participant signed the consent form."

The ethical researcher must ask what was actually consented to, whether the participant understood the potential consequences, whether anonymity remains meaningful, whether the research benefit justifies the risk, whether the quotation can be modified without destroying its analytical value, and whether the researcher has additional duties toward a vulnerable or identifiable participant.

Ethical reasoning begins where mechanical rule-following becomes insufficient.

14.2 The Eight-Step Ethical Decision Model

Students will learn and repeatedly practise the following model:

STEP 1 — Establish the Facts

Before making a moral judgement, determine what actually happened.

Students should distinguish:

• established facts;
• assumptions;
• interpretations;
• missing information;
• disputed claims;
• relevant contextual information.

The first ethical discipline is therefore epistemic discipline.

Do not make an ethical decision on the basis of facts you have not established.

For a research case, students should ask:

• What was done?
• Who did it?
• When?
• Under what circumstances?
• What evidence exists?
• What information is still missing?

STEP 2 — Identify the Stakeholders

Ethical decisions rarely affect only the person making the decision.

Students identify:

• researcher;
• participants;
• students;
• supervisors;
• co-authors;
• research assistants;
• institutions;
• publishers;
• wider communities;
• professional bodies;
• future researchers;
• society.

Particular attention should be given to power asymmetries and vulnerability.

A participant may formally have a choice while practically possessing very little power.

A doctoral student may technically be able to refuse a supervisor's request while fearing academic retaliation.

An ethical analysis must therefore ask not merely:

Who is involved?

but:

Who has power, who bears risk, and who benefits?

14.3 STEP 3 — Identify the Ethical Principles

Students identify the values that are at stake.

These may include:

• honesty;
• autonomy;
• justice;
• beneficence;
• non-maleficence;
• confidentiality;
• privacy;
• fairness;
• academic freedom;
• professional responsibility;
• transparency;
• dignity;
• intellectual property;
• accountability.

The Islamic ethical vocabulary developed throughout the course should also be brought into the analysis:

• Amanah — trust and responsibility;
• Sidq — truthfulness;
• Adl — justice;
• Ihsan — excellence;
• Taqwa — internal moral accountability;
• Mas'uliyyah — responsibility;
• Rahmah — compassion;
• Adab — ethical scholarly conduct;
• Tawadu' — intellectual humility;
• Itqan — precision and excellence.

The purpose is not to produce two disconnected systems of ethics.

The purpose is to enable students to reason ethically across complementary intellectual traditions.

14.4 STEP 4 — Identify Duties, Rules and Institutional Obligations

Students must distinguish between:

What I want to do

and

What I am professionally obliged to do.

Relevant sources may include:

• university regulations;
• research ethics approval;
• informed-consent agreements;
• professional codes;
• journal policies;
• authorship standards;
• copyright law;
• data-protection requirements;
• doctoral regulations;
• institutional policies;
• applicable national law.

But students should also confront a crucial principle:

Rules establish minimum obligations; ethical professionalism may require more.

Something can satisfy a procedural requirement while remaining ethically questionable.

14.5 STEP 5 — Identify Competing Values

This is where genuine ethical reasoning begins.

Students should identify the tension between competing goods.

For example:

Scientific value vs participant privacy

Loyalty vs truth

Efficiency vs fairness

Institutional reputation vs transparency

Academic freedom vs institutional responsibility

Research benefit vs participant risk

Supervisor authority vs student autonomy

Publication speed vs methodological integrity

Innovation vs accountability

The objective is not to pretend that ethical dilemmas are easy.

It is to make the moral conflict visible.

14.6 STEP 6 — Generate Alternative Actions

Students must resist binary thinking.

An ethical dilemma is rarely:

Option A or Option B.

They should deliberately generate multiple possible responses.

For example:

1. publish the data unchanged;
2. remove identifying information;
3. modify the quotation;
4. seek renewed consent;
5. consult the ethics committee;
6. exclude the sensitive material;
7. publish only aggregated findings;
8. postpone publication pending further safeguards.

This stage develops ethical creativity.

The best ethical decision may not be the most obvious one.

14.7 STEP 7 — Evaluate Consequences

Each alternative is evaluated against:

• immediate consequences;
• long-term consequences;
• intended consequences;
• unintended consequences;
• benefits;
• harms;
• risks;
• reversibility;
• distribution of benefits and burdens.

Students should ask:

Who benefits?

Who bears the risk?

What happens if my assumption is wrong?

Can the harm be reversed?

What precedent would this decision establish?

This reconnects ethical decision-making with consequentialist reasoning while preventing consequences from becoming the only ethical criterion.

14.8 STEP 8 — Document and Defend the Decision

The final step transforms private judgement into accountable scholarship.

Students must document:

• the facts considered;
• stakeholders identified;
• principles invoked;
• duties considered;
• alternatives rejected;
• consequences evaluated;
• final decision;
• justification;
• safeguards adopted.

They must then be able to defend the decision before:

• a supervisor;
• an ethics committee;
• an examiner;
• a journal editor;
• a professional body;
• their research participants;
• or the public.

This creates the course's ultimate standard:

The Public Defensibility Test

Could I explain and defend this decision honestly if it were made public?

If the answer is no, the scholar should stop and reconsider.

14.9 The Ethical Decision Matrix

Students can operationalize the model through the following matrix:

Dimension	Guiding Question
Facts	What do I actually know?
Stakeholders	Who is affected?
Power	Who has authority or vulnerability?
Principles	Which ethical values are involved?
Duties	What rules and professional obligations apply?
Alternatives	What choices are genuinely available?
Consequences	What harms and benefits may follow?
Accountability	Can I justify my decision publicly?

This matrix should become a portable professional tool, not merely an examination exercise.

14.10 English Linguistics Case Laboratory

Students will apply the model to disciplinary cases such as:

Case 1 — The Anonymous Interview

A researcher promises anonymity but later discovers that quotations make participants identifiable within a small speech community.

Case 2 — The Supervisor's Authorship

A supervisor demands authorship despite making only minimal contributions to the paper.

Case 3 — The AI-Generated Literature Review

A doctoral researcher uses an AI system to produce a literature review and discovers that several cited articles do not exist.

Case 4 — The Public Social-Media Corpus

A researcher argues that publicly available posts require no ethical consideration because they are accessible to everyone.

Case 5 — The Linguistic Stereotype

A study produces statistically significant evidence linking a particular accent with negative social characteristics. The researcher is pressured to publish the result without discussing potential social consequences.

Case 6 — Institutional Pressure

A researcher discovers that inconvenient findings contradict the interests of an institution funding the research.

Students must not merely state whether each action is "ethical" or "unethical". They must construct and defend an ethical decision using the eight-step model.

14.11 The Doctoral Scholar's Ethical Decision Protocol

By the end of the week, every student should be capable of reducing the entire framework to eight questions:

1. What are the facts?

2. Who is affected?

3. Who has power and who is vulnerable?

4. What principles are at stake?

5. What duties and rules apply?

6. What alternatives are available?

7. What consequences might follow?

8. Can I defend my decision publicly?

The sequence is deliberately memorable.

It is intended to become part of the student's professional reflex.

14.12 Week 14 Learning Activity — The Ethical Case Conference

Students work in small groups.

Each group receives a complex doctoral-level case with incomplete information and competing ethical obligations.

They must:

1. establish the facts;
2. identify stakeholders;
3. identify power relations;
4. identify ethical principles;
5. identify institutional and professional duties;
6. generate at least three alternatives;
7. evaluate consequences;
8. recommend one course of action;
9. identify safeguards;
10. prepare a written ethical justification.

Each group then presents its decision to the class.

Other students are permitted, and expected, to challenge the decision.

The presenting group must defend its reasoning.

This transforms the classroom from a place where students learn ethical rules into a forum where they practise ethical judgement.

14.13 Assessment Standard

Students should be assessed not primarily on whether they reach the instructor's preferred conclusion, but on the quality of their reasoning.

A strong ethical response should demonstrate:

• factual accuracy;
• recognition of uncertainty;
• stakeholder awareness;
• sensitivity to power;
• principled reasoning;
• awareness of competing values;
• consideration of alternatives;
• consequence analysis;
• appropriate use of institutional rules;
• transparency;
• intellectual humility;
• defensible justification.

This is crucial.

Ethical education should not train students to guess what the teacher thinks is the correct answer.

It should train them to reason responsibly when reasonable people may disagree.

14.14 The Deeper Lesson of Week 14

The mature scholar is not the person who never encounters an ethical dilemma.

The mature scholar is the person who recognizes the dilemma before acting.

That distinction is fundamental.

Professional ethics begins with awareness, develops through disciplined reasoning, and becomes meaningful only through action.

A doctoral degree gives a scholar greater intellectual power: the power to produce knowledge, publish claims, influence students, shape debates, represent communities and potentially affect policy and public understanding.

Greater intellectual power creates greater responsibility.

Therefore, the ultimate question of doctoral ethics is not:

"Do I know the rules?"

It is:

"When the rules are incomplete, competing, or silent, can I still be trusted to do what is right?"

That is the transition from ethical knowledge to ethical judgement.

And that is why Week 14 is not simply another week in Professional Ethics–II.

It is the point at which the doctoral researcher begins to understand what the entire course has been preparing them to become:

not merely a producer of knowledge, but a trustworthy steward of knowledge.

WEEK 15 — THE ETHICAL SCHOLAR

The final week moves from compliance to professional identity.

The question:

What kind of scholar do I want to become?

Students present their:

PERSONAL DOCTORAL ETHICS CHARTER

A 1,500-word statement containing:

• scholarly values
• research-integrity commitments
• AI-use policy
• authorship principles
• data-ethics commitments
• teaching principles
• supervisory principles
• professional responsibilities
• social responsibilities
• Islamic ethical commitments
• five non-negotiable personal principles

The course ends not with memorization, but with a professional ethical commitment.

WEEK 15 — THE ETHICAL SCHOLAR

From Compliance to Character, From Knowledge to Responsibility

Week 15 is the culmination of Professional Ethics–II.

The course began with a deceptively simple question, What is ethics? and moved progressively through moral theory, Islamic ethical thought, professional identity, teaching, supervision, assessment, research integrity, authorship, publication, linguistic research, data governance, artificial intelligence, academic freedom, institutional power, equity and inclusion, and ethical decision-making.

The final week therefore asks a different and more personal question:

What kind of scholar do I want to become?

This question marks the transition from ethical knowledge to ethical identity.

A doctoral program can teach a researcher how to formulate a research question, construct a methodology, analyse data, write an article and defend a thesis. Professional ethics must ask something deeper:

What kind of person should possess the authority to produce, interpret, publish, teach and supervise knowledge?

A PhD is not merely an academic qualification. It is an entry into a community whose members exercise intellectual authority. With that authority comes responsibility—to evidence, participants, students, colleagues, institutions, disciplines and society.

The final week therefore moves beyond compliance.

Compliance asks:

What must I do to avoid violating the rules?

Professional ethics asks:

What should I do when nobody is watching?

Scholarly character begins precisely at that point.

15.1 From the Ethical Researcher to the Ethical Scholar

Throughout the course, students have examined ethics as a series of professional obligations. In the final week, these obligations are integrated into a coherent scholarly identity.

The ethical scholar is:

• truthful in representing evidence;
• rigorous in conducting research;
• transparent about limitations and uncertainty;
• fair in dealing with students and colleagues;
• responsible toward research participants;
• humble about the limits of personal knowledge;
• respectful toward intellectual disagreement;
• accountable for the consequences of scholarly decisions;
• careful in the use of data and technology;
• courageous when integrity conflicts with convenience or institutional pressure.

The goal is not to manufacture morally perfect scholars.

It is to cultivate scholars capable of ethical self-correction.

15.2 The Personal Doctoral Ethics Charter

The principal culminating assessment is the:

PERSONAL DOCTORAL ETHICS CHARTER

Each student will prepare a 1,500-word scholarly ethics statement articulating the principles that will govern their professional life as a researcher, teacher and academic.

This is deliberately different from an ordinary examination.

Students are not being asked to reproduce definitions from the course.

They are being asked to declare the standards by which they intend to conduct their scholarly life.

The Charter should become a document students can revisit throughout their doctoral careers.

15.3 Required Components of the Charter

Each student must address the following dimensions.

1. Scholarly Values

Students identify the intellectual values they consider fundamental to scholarship.

Possible values include:

• truthfulness;
• intellectual curiosity;
• rigour;
• openness;
• humility;
• independence;
• fairness;
• responsibility;
• respect;
• excellence.

Students should explain why these values matter rather than merely listing them.

2. Research-Integrity Commitments

Students articulate their personal commitments regarding:

• accurate data representation;
• methodological transparency;
• appropriate citation;
• avoidance of plagiarism;
• avoidance of fabrication and falsification;
• transparent reporting;
• acknowledgement of limitations;
• responsible data management;
• correction of errors;
• honest reporting of negative or unexpected findings.

The guiding principle is:

I will not manipulate knowledge to produce a more attractive result.

3. Personal AI-Use Policy

Given the transformation of scholarship by generative AI, every doctoral researcher should explicitly define how they will use AI.

Students should address:

• AI-assisted brainstorming;
• language editing;
• translation;
• coding;
• literature discovery;
• summarisation;
• data analysis;
• citation verification;
• AI-generated text;
• AI-generated references;
• disclosure;
• confidentiality;
• privacy;
• intellectual property;
• verification of AI outputs.

The student must distinguish between:

using AI as an instrument

and

delegating scholarly responsibility to AI.

The Charter should explicitly acknowledge the course's central principle:

AI may assist scholarly work; it cannot inherit scholarly responsibility.

15.4 Authorship Principles

Students establish their personal position on:

• authorship;
• contribution;
• author order;
• supervisory relationships;
• acknowledgements;
• ghost authorship;
• honorary authorship;
• collaborative research;
• AI-assisted contributions.

They should answer a difficult question:

If someone has institutional power over me but has not made a genuine scholarly contribution, do they deserve authorship? Why or why not?

This forces the student to translate abstract principles of fairness and integrity into professional practice.

15.5 Data-Ethics Commitments

Students formulate principles governing their treatment of research data.

These should address:

• informed consent;
• confidentiality;
• anonymity;
• pseudonymisation;
• secure storage;
• responsible sharing;
• secondary use;
• participant dignity;
• community ownership;
• intellectual property;
• sensitive linguistic data.

For English Linguistics researchers, the Charter should specifically consider the ethical status of:

• interviews;
• recordings;
• classroom discourse;
• social-media language;
• online communities;
• corpus data;
• endangered-language documentation;
• child language;
• multilingual communities.

The student should commit to treating data not merely as research material, but as something entrusted to the researcher.

15.6 Teaching Principles

The doctoral scholar is also potentially a teacher.

Students therefore articulate commitments regarding:

• fairness in assessment;
• respectful feedback;
• student dignity;
• accessibility;
• academic honesty;
• confidentiality;
• responsible AI use;
• avoidance of discrimination;
• professional boundaries;
• mentoring.

The central question becomes:

How will I use the authority of the teacher without abusing the power of the teacher?

15.7 Supervisory Principles

Future academics may become supervisors themselves.

Students should therefore establish principles concerning:

• intellectual ownership;
• student autonomy;
• constructive criticism;
• timely feedback;
• authorship;
• confidentiality;
• professional boundaries;
• career mentorship;
• recognition of student contributions;
• avoidance of exploitation.

A powerful principle may be expressed as:

A supervisor's authority exists to develop the student's intellectual independence, not to manufacture dependence.

15.8 Professional Responsibilities

Students should identify their obligations as members of the academic community.

These may include responsibilities toward:

• colleagues;
• reviewers;
• editors;
• students;
• institutions;
• professional associations;
• research participants;
• disciplinary communities;
• the wider public.

They should consider how they will respond to:

• conflicts of interest;
• academic misconduct;
• discriminatory behaviour;
• harassment;
• questionable research practices;
• institutional pressure;
• errors in published work;
• unethical requests from people in authority.

15.9 Social Responsibilities

Knowledge does not remain inside the university.

Research can influence:

• public policy;
• education;
• healthcare;
• language planning;
• social attitudes;
• minority communities;
• technological systems;
• public discourse.

Students therefore consider:

What responsibilities do I have for the consequences of the knowledge I produce?

For linguists, this may include responsibilities concerning:

• linguistic discrimination;
• language rights;
• endangered languages;
• linguistic profiling;
• representation of communities;
• responsible dissemination of research findings.

The ethical scholar therefore recognizes that epistemic responsibility can become social responsibility.

15.10 Islamic Ethical Commitments

Islamic ethics should appear here not as a decorative conclusion but as the culmination of the ethical vocabulary developed throughout the course.

Students should explain how they intend to embody principles such as:

Amanah — I will treat knowledge and research participants as trusts.

Sidq — I will represent evidence truthfully.

Adl — I will strive for fairness.

Ihsan — I will pursue excellence beyond minimum compliance.

Taqwa — I will maintain moral accountability even in the absence of external supervision.

Mas'uliyyah — I will accept responsibility for my professional decisions.

Rahmah — I will protect dignity and avoid unnecessary harm.

Adab — I will disagree intellectually without degrading others.

Tawadu' — I will remain intellectually humble.

Itqan — I will pursue precision and excellence in scholarly work.

The deeper question is:

What happens to scholarship when ethical principles become internal character rather than external rules?

15.11 The Five Non-Negotiables

The Charter must conclude with five personal non-negotiable principles.

These are commitments the student refuses to sacrifice even under pressure.

For example:

1. I will not fabricate the truth.

2. I will not claim another person's intellectual labour as my own.

3. I will not knowingly place vulnerable participants at unjustifiable risk.

4. I will not surrender scholarly judgement to technology, authority or institutional pressure.

5. I will remain accountable for what I publish, teach and endorse.

Students should be encouraged to formulate their own five principles rather than simply reproduce these examples.

15.12 The Final Defence

The Charter should not simply be submitted.

Each student presents a 5–7 minute Ethical Scholar Statement to the class.

The presentation should answer:

What kind of scholar do you intend to become, and what principles will prevent you from becoming the kind of scholar you do not want to become?

Peers may ask questions.

The instructor may challenge inconsistencies.

Students should be prepared to explain how their principles would operate under real professional pressure.

This transforms the final assessment from a written exercise into a public intellectual commitment.

15.13 Assessment: The Ethical Scholar Portfolio

The final assessment may therefore consist of:

Component	Weight
Personal Doctoral Ethics Charter	60%
Oral Ethical Scholar Statement	20%
Reflective response to ethical cases	20%
Total	100%

The Charter should be assessed for:

• conceptual depth;
• ethical reasoning;
• integration of course principles;
• disciplinary relevance;
• Islamic ethical integration;
• practical applicability;
• intellectual originality;
• self-reflection;
• clarity;
• coherence;
• authenticity.

The objective is not rhetorical perfection.

It is ethical seriousness.

15.14 The Final Reflection

At the conclusion of the course, students should return to the touchstone proposition with which the course began:

A university does not merely produce people who know more. It produces people who become responsible for what they know.

A PhD increases knowledge.

But it also increases epistemic authority.

The scholar acquires the authority to say:

This is what the evidence shows.

That sentence carries enormous responsibility.

For a linguist, it may shape how a community's language is represented.

For an educator, it may shape how hundreds of students understand knowledge.

For a researcher, it may enter the permanent scholarly record.

For a supervisor, it may influence another person's academic future.

For a writer, it may shape public understanding.

For an AI-enabled scholar, it may determine whether technology becomes an instrument of intellectual empowerment or an engine of intellectual irresponsibility.

The ethical scholar therefore understands that every scholarly privilege carries a corresponding obligation.

THE FINAL MOMENT

The course should end with no conventional lecture.

No final list of definitions.

No final memorisation exercise.

Instead, the instructor should place one proposition on the screen:

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

SCHOLARSHIP IS RESPONSIBILITY.

TRUST IS THE HIGHEST CREDENTIAL OF A SCHOLAR.

Then the final question:

When your PhD is finished, what will you be trusted to do with what you know?

That question is larger than the course.

It is larger than the dissertation.

It is larger than the university.

It is the question that should follow a scholar into every classroom, laboratory, archive, conference, journal, research project, supervisory meeting and digital environment thereafter.

And that is where Professional Ethics–II should end, not with a certificate of compliance, but with the beginning of a professional identity.

The final achievement of doctoral education is not that a scholar has learned how to produce knowledge. It is that the scholar has become worthy of being trusted with it.

9. TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGY

The course should explicitly reject a lecture-only model.

Recommended pedagogical architecture

20% — Mini-lectures

20% — Case analysis

20% — Structured discussion

15% — Research ethics workshops

10% — Debate

10% — Reflective writing

5% — Student-led ethical roundtables

The instructor's role is therefore not merely to explain ethics but to create situations in which students must reason ethically under uncertainty.

TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGY

From Teaching Ethics to Practising Ethical Judgment

The pedagogical architecture of Professional Ethics–II must reflect the very nature of the subject.

Ethics cannot be adequately learned through memorisation.

A doctoral researcher may be able to define plagiarism, conflict of interest, informed consent, academic freedom or research integrity and still fail to recognize an ethical problem when confronted with one in real academic life.

The purpose of this course is therefore not simply to transfer ethical information. It is to develop the capacity to recognize, analyse, deliberate and act responsibly when values, interests, duties and consequences collide.

For this reason, the course should explicitly reject a lecture-dominated model.

Students should not merely be told what ethical scholarship looks like. They should repeatedly be placed in situations in which they have to decide what ethical scholarship requires.

The classroom consequently becomes an ethical laboratory.

1. The Pedagogical Principle

The central teaching principle is:

Ethics is learned through disciplined practice, not passive exposure.

Mini-lectures remain important. Doctoral students require conceptual frameworks, theoretical vocabulary, historical context and knowledge of professional standards.

But explanation must be followed by application.

The movement of every major topic should therefore be:

CONCEPT → CASE → CONFLICT → DELIBERATION → DECISION → DEFENCE → REFLECTION

A session on authorship, for example, should not end when students can define gift authorship.

It should end when students can confront a supervisor demanding undeserved authorship, identify the competing interests, consider institutional realities, generate alternatives, defend a course of action and explain its ethical consequences.

That is the difference between knowing ethics and being ethically competent.

2. Recommended Pedagogical Architecture

The course should distribute learning activities approximately as follows:

Teaching–Learning Mode	Proportion
Mini-lectures	20%
Case analysis	20%
Structured discussion	20%
Research ethics workshops	15%
Debate	10%
Reflective writing	10%
Student-led ethical roundtables	5%
Total	100%

These proportions should not be interpreted as mechanically fixed minutes. They represent the pedagogical philosophy of the course: no single instructional method should dominate.

3. Mini-Lectures — 20%

Mini-lectures provide the intellectual foundations necessary for serious ethical reasoning.

They should normally be concise, conceptually dense and problem-oriented rather than hour-long information dumps.

Lectures may introduce:

• ethical theories;
• Islamic ethical concepts;
• research-integrity frameworks;
• professional codes;
• authorship standards;
• human-participant ethics;
• data governance;
• AI ethics;
• academic freedom;
• epistemic justice;
• ethical decision-making models.

The instructor should consistently distinguish between:

What is the principle?

and

Why does the principle matter in practice?

A lecture should therefore create a problem to be solved, rather than close the discussion.

4. Case Analysis — 20%

Case analysis is the intellectual engine of the course.

Students should encounter realistic situations involving ambiguity, competing obligations and incomplete information.

Cases should preferably be drawn from doctoral and professional life:

• plagiarism;
• authorship disputes;
• supervisor–student conflicts;
• research misconduct;
• questionable data practices;
• participant confidentiality;
• AI-generated references;
• peer-review conflicts;
• institutional pressure;
• discriminatory practices;
• academic retaliation;
• misuse of linguistic data.

Students should be prohibited from answering complex cases merely with:

"This is ethical."

or

"This is unethical."

Instead, they must explain:

What happened?

Who is affected?

What principles are involved?

What duties apply?

What alternatives exist?

What consequences might follow?

What decision can be defended?

This directly prepares students to use the Eight-Step Ethical Decision Model developed in Week 14.

5. Structured Discussion — 20%

Ethical reasoning requires dialogue because difficult professional decisions often contain legitimate competing perspectives.

The instructor should therefore create structured discussions in which students are expected to:

• articulate a position;
• provide reasons;
• identify assumptions;
• listen to opposing arguments;
• revise their position when warranted;
• distinguish disagreement from personal attack.

The classroom should model the principle of Adab al-Ikhtilaf, ethical disagreement.

Students should learn that intellectual disagreement is not a failure of collegiality.

Indeed:

A scholarly community in which nobody can disagree safely is not intellectually healthy.

Discussion should therefore cultivate both intellectual courage and intellectual humility.

6. Research Ethics Workshops — 15%

Workshops should transform ethical principles into professional instruments.

Students may develop:

• informed-consent forms;
• participant-information sheets;
• confidentiality protocols;
• research data-management plans;
• authorship agreements;
• AI-disclosure statements;
• publication-ethics checklists;
• conflict-of-interest declarations;
• ethical risk assessments;
• research-integrity audits.

For English Linguistics students, workshops should involve disciplinary materials such as:

• interview transcripts;
• sociolinguistic recordings;
• classroom discourse;
• corpus datasets;
• social-media posts;
• multilingual data;
• sensitive identity-related language;
• child-language materials.

The objective is practical competence.

A doctoral student should leave the course capable of asking not merely "Is this research interesting?", but also:

"Is this research ethically designed?"

7. Debate — 10%

Some ethical questions have no universally uncontested answer.

Debate allows students to experience the tension between competing principles.

Possible propositions include:

"Publicly available social-media data should be considered ethically usable research data."

"AI-generated language editing should always be disclosed in academic writing."

"A supervisor should never receive authorship merely because they supervise a doctoral student."

"Academic freedom should protect offensive scholarly arguments."

"Universities should permit AI-assisted assessment."

"Research participants should have greater control over the future use of their linguistic data."

Debate should not reward rhetorical aggression.

It should reward:

• evidence;
• conceptual clarity;
• ethical reasoning;
• listening;
• rebuttal;
• intellectual fairness.

8. Reflective Writing — 10%

Ethics ultimately becomes meaningful when students connect abstract principles to their own professional identities.

Short reflective exercises may ask:

• What ethical principle would I find hardest to uphold under institutional pressure?
• Have I ever witnessed an academic practice that seemed normal but was ethically questionable?
• When does loyalty become complicity?
• What would I do if my supervisor asked me to do something I considered unethical?
• What responsibilities accompany academic freedom?
• How should I use AI without surrendering intellectual responsibility?
• What does amanah mean in my own research?
• What kind of teacher do I want to become?

Reflection should not become confessional writing.

Its purpose is ethical self-awareness.

9. Student-Led Ethical Roundtables — 5%

Doctoral students should occasionally become the intellectual leaders of the classroom.

Small groups may select a contemporary ethical problem, prepare a short briefing and lead a structured roundtable.

Possible themes include:

• AI and authorship;
• predatory publishing;
• linguistic discrimination;
• research involving vulnerable communities;
• academic freedom;
• gender and power in academia;
• Global South knowledge production;
• open science;
• research transparency.

The instructor becomes a facilitator rather than the sole source of authority.

This is especially appropriate at doctoral level because doctoral education should progressively cultivate intellectual independence.

10. The Instructor's Role

The instructor's role is consequently transformed.

The instructor is not merely:

the person who knows the ethical rules.

The instructor becomes:

the architect of situations in which students must exercise ethical judgement.

This requires creating carefully designed uncertainty.

Students should sometimes receive:

• incomplete information;
• conflicting testimony;
• competing principles;
• institutional pressure;
• unequal power relations;
• uncertain consequences.

The instructor should resist the temptation to resolve every dilemma immediately.

Instead, ask:

What makes you say that?

What evidence would change your decision?

Whose interests have you overlooked?

Who has the least power in this situation?

What alternative have you not considered?

What happens if your assumption is wrong?

Could you defend this decision publicly?

These questions teach students how to think ethically, rather than what conclusion to memorize.

11. The Classroom as an Ethical Laboratory

The entire course should operate according to a simple pedagogical cycle:

ENCOUNTER

Students encounter a difficult professional situation.

↓

ANALYSE

They identify facts, stakeholders, principles and duties.

↓

DELIBERATE

They consider competing values and alternative responses.

↓

DECIDE

They reach a provisional ethical judgement.

↓

DEFEND

They justify their decision before others.

↓

RECONSIDER

They respond to criticism and new information.

↓

REFLECT

They identify what the case reveals about their own professional values.

This final stage is essential.

The purpose is not merely to solve Case 7.

It is to become better at recognizing Case 8, which will arrive years later in an entirely different form.

12. The Touchstone of the Pedagogy

The ultimate success of Professional Ethics–II should therefore not be measured by how many ethical definitions students can reproduce in an examination.

It should be measured by whether they become more capable of:

recognizing ethical complexity,

reasoning under uncertainty,

identifying hidden power,

protecting vulnerable people,

questioning questionable practices,

acknowledging uncertainty,

resisting intellectual shortcuts,

accepting responsibility for decisions,

and acting with integrity when convenience points elsewhere.

The course therefore adopts one final pedagogical proposition:

Do not teach ethics merely as a subject. Teach it as a way of making decisions.

And perhaps the most important transformation occurs here:

A student who can define ethics has acquired knowledge about ethics.

A student who can analyse an ethical dilemma has acquired ethical reasoning.

But a doctoral scholar who can act ethically under pressure, justify the decision, accept accountability and revise it when new evidence emerges has begun to acquire something far more valuable:

professional character.

That is the real pedagogical purpose of Professional Ethics–II.

Not compliance. Not memorisation. Not moral performance.

Judgement. Character. Responsibility. Trust.

10. SIGNATURE PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITIES

The Ethics Court

Students argue opposing sides of a controversial academic case.

The Ethics Lab

Students diagnose ethical problems in a fictional research project.

The Supervisor's Dilemma

Students examine power relations between supervisor and doctoral student.

The AI Tribunal

Students debate whether a hypothetical AI-assisted paper should be accepted.

The Publication Board

Students decide whether a manuscript containing questionable practices should be published.

The Research Ethics Committee

Students evaluate a proposed linguistics research project.

The Ethical Autopsy

Students analyse a real-world research-integrity failure and identify where the system broke down.

SIGNATURE PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITIES

The Ethical Laboratory of Doctoral Education

The distinctive strength of Professional Ethics–II should lie not merely in what it teaches, but in how it makes doctoral researchers experience ethical reasoning.

Ethical competence cannot be developed through definitions alone. A researcher may know what plagiarism, conflict of interest, informed consent or research misconduct means and still fail to recognize a subtle ethical violation when confronted with one in professional life.

The signature activities of this course therefore transform the classroom into a series of simulated professional environments.

Students do not simply discuss ethical problems.

They become:

• judges;
• researchers;
• supervisors;
• editors;
• reviewers;
• ethics committee members;
• authors;
• institutional decision-makers;
• and, ultimately, accountable scholars.

The governing principle is:

The course should make students practise the ethical decisions they will one day have to make without the protection of a classroom.

1. THE ETHICS COURT

When scholarly disagreement becomes an ethical judgement

The Ethics Court places students in a simulated academic courtroom.

A controversial case is presented, for example:

A doctoral student discovers serious methodological problems in a supervisor's published research. The supervisor is highly influential, controls the student's dissertation progress and has recently recommended the student for a fellowship. Should the student report the problem?

Students are divided into opposing roles:

• prosecution/complainant;
• respondent;
• legal or policy adviser;
• ethics panel;
• witnesses;
• institutional representative.

Each side must construct an evidence-based ethical argument.

The objective is not theatrical performance.

Students must demonstrate:

• factual reasoning;
• ethical principles;
• professional obligations;
• power analysis;
• institutional responsibilities;
• competing interests;
• proportionality;
• and defensible judgement.

The Ethics Court teaches a crucial lesson:

Ethical courage becomes meaningful precisely when the person doing the right thing has something to lose.

2. THE ETHICS LAB

Diagnosing a research project before it becomes an ethical failure

The Ethics Lab places students inside a fictional research project containing multiple hidden ethical problems.

For example, an English Linguistics project might involve:

• interviews with vulnerable participants;
• inadequate consent procedures;
• identifiable recordings;
• insecure data storage;
• questionable recruitment;
• selective reporting;
• undisclosed AI assistance;
• inappropriate authorship;
• fabricated references;
• and plans to publish sensitive quotations.

Students receive the research proposal, consent form, data-management plan and publication strategy.

Their task is to perform an ethical diagnostic audit.

They must identify:

1. the ethical problem;
2. the affected stakeholder;
3. the relevant principle;
4. the potential harm;
5. the applicable rule or professional obligation;
6. the severity of the problem;
7. the corrective action required.

The activity culminates in an Ethics Laboratory Report.

The deeper lesson is:

Good research ethics begins before data collection, not after something goes wrong.

3. THE SUPERVISOR'S DILEMMA

Power, dependency and the ethics of academic mentorship

Few academic relationships contain as much asymmetrical power as the supervisor–doctoral researcher relationship.

Students receive a case in which a supervisor:

• demands authorship;
• delays feedback;
• appropriates a student's research idea;
• pressures the student to modify inconvenient findings;
• uses a student's work without acknowledgement;
• or threatens academic consequences when challenged.

Students analyse the case from both sides.

They must ask:

What authority does a supervisor legitimately possess?

Where does legitimate supervision end and exploitation begin?

What responsibilities does the student have?

What protections should the institution provide?

When does loyalty become complicity?

How can a student challenge authority without unnecessarily escalating conflict?

The exercise should culminate in the development of a Supervisor–Student Ethical Compact.

The principle underlying the activity is:

Academic authority should increase the responsibility to develop another scholar, not the opportunity to control one.

4. THE AI TRIBUNAL

Can a machine participate in scholarship without becoming responsible for it?

The AI Tribunal confronts one of the defining ethical questions of contemporary higher education.

Students receive a hypothetical manuscript prepared with substantial AI assistance.

The paper contains:

• AI-generated prose;
• several inaccurate claims;
• unverifiable references;
• undisclosed machine assistance;
• translated material;
• AI-generated analysis;
• and potentially legitimate human intellectual contributions.

The question before the Tribunal is:

Should the manuscript be accepted, rejected, returned for revision, or accepted with disclosure and verification requirements?

Students assume different roles:

• author;
• journal editor;
• peer reviewer;
• AI-ethics specialist;
• research-integrity officer;
• institutional representative;
• public-interest advocate.

The Tribunal must reach a reasoned decision.

The exercise forces students to distinguish between:

AI assistance

and

AI substitution.

It also introduces a principle that should echo throughout the course:

A tool may participate in the production of scholarly work without inheriting responsibility for the truth of that work.

5. THE PUBLICATION BOARD

When should a journal say no?

Students become an editorial board evaluating a manuscript containing questionable practices.

The manuscript might involve:

• selective reporting;
• inappropriate statistical claims;
• duplicate publication;
• citation manipulation;
• undisclosed conflicts of interest;
• questionable authorship;
• inadequate participant consent;
• or suspicious data.

Students must decide among:

Accept

Minor revision

Major revision

Reject

Investigate before decision

Refer to the institution

They must justify the decision using principles of:

• research integrity;
• editorial independence;
• fairness;
• transparency;
• proportionality;
• confidentiality;
• and accountability.

The activity also introduces students to the ethical responsibility of editors and reviewers.

A journal is not merely a gatekeeper of academic prestige.

It is part of the infrastructure through which society decides which claims deserve to enter the permanent scholarly record.

6. THE RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE

Would you approve this study?

Students become members of a simulated Research Ethics Committee.

They receive a proposed English Linguistics research project involving human participants.

Possible projects include:

• a sociolinguistic study of a marginalized community;
• classroom observation involving students;
• child-language research;
• online discourse analysis;
• research involving sensitive identities;
• linguistic profiling;
• or documentation of an endangered language.

The committee evaluates:

• research purpose;
• participant selection;
• vulnerability;
• informed consent;
• privacy;
• confidentiality;
• risk;
• benefits;
• data storage;
• withdrawal procedures;
• dissemination;
• community interests.

The committee may issue:

Approved

Approved with conditions

Major revisions required

Not ethically approvable

Students must provide written reasons.

This activity teaches an essential distinction:

Scientifically interesting does not automatically mean ethically permissible.

7. THE ETHICAL AUTOPSY

How did the system fail?

The Ethical Autopsy is perhaps the most intellectually demanding activity in the course.

Students examine a documented case of research-integrity failure and reconstruct the sequence of events that produced the breakdown.

Rather than asking only:

Who was guilty?

students ask:

Where did the system fail?

They investigate:

• individual decisions;
• institutional incentives;
• supervisory structures;
• publication pressures;
• reward systems;
• inadequate oversight;
• conflicts of interest;
• normalization of questionable practices;
• failures of reporting;
• failures of accountability.

Students construct an Ethical Failure Map:

Pressure → Decision → Rationalisation → Missed Warning → Institutional Failure → Consequence

They then identify intervention points:

Where could the failure have been prevented?

This shifts ethics from a simplistic morality tale about "bad people" toward a more sophisticated understanding of ethical systems and research culture.

8. The Signature Activity Architecture

Together, these activities create a progression:

Activity	Student Becomes	Core Competency
Ethics Court	Ethical advocate/judge	Argument and judgement
Ethics Lab	Research ethics auditor	Ethical diagnosis
Supervisor's Dilemma	Mentor/student	Power analysis
AI Tribunal	Editor/ethics authority	AI governance
Publication Board	Journal editor	Publication ethics
Research Ethics Committee	Ethics reviewer	Risk and participant protection
Ethical Autopsy	Institutional investigator	Systems thinking

The sequence moves students from individual dilemmas toward institutional ethics.

That progression matters.

Ethical failure is rarely produced by one decision alone. It often emerges from the interaction of:

individual character + institutional incentives + professional culture + power + technology + weak accountability.

9. The Final Challenge: The Ethical Scholar in Action

These activities should ultimately converge on the student's Personal Doctoral Ethics Charter.

By the end of the course, the student should be able to say:

I know what I believe.

I know why I believe it.

I know how I would act when the situation becomes difficult.

And I am prepared to be accountable for that action.

That is the point at which Professional Ethics–II becomes more than a course.

It becomes a professional formation experience.

The deepest pedagogical principle is therefore:

Do not give doctoral researchers only ethical rules. Give them ethical situations.

Because the real test of professional ethics will never arrive as a multiple-choice question.

It will arrive as a supervisor's request.

A student's complaint.

A participant's vulnerability.

A suspicious dataset.

A tempting authorship offer.

A questionable editorial decision.

An AI-generated reference.

An institutional pressure.

A conflict between truth and convenience.

And, in that moment, the scholar will have to decide.

The purpose of this course is to make that scholar ready.

11. ASSESSMENT ARCHITECTURE

The assessment ought to reward ethical reasoning, not memorization.

Component	Weight
Ethical Case Analyses	15%
Research Integrity Audit	15%
Research Ethics/Data Management Plan	15%
AI & Academic Integrity Position Paper	10%
Class Participation & Ethical Debates	10%
Midterm Case Portfolio	10%
Doctoral Ethics Charter	10%
Final Examination	15%
Total	100%

12. MASTER RUBRIC FOR ETHICAL CASE ANALYSIS

Criterion	Excellent	Good	Developing	Weak
Identification of ethical issue	Precisely identifies multiple dimensions	Identifies central issue	Partial identification	Misidentifies issue
Evidence	Uses authoritative evidence	Adequate support	Limited support	Unsupported
Ethical reasoning	Sophisticated and systematic	Clear	Basic	Superficial
Application	Applies principles convincingly	Generally appropriate	Inconsistent	Minimal
Alternatives	Generates nuanced alternatives	Identifies alternatives	Limited	None
Consequences	Evaluates stakeholders and consequences	Addresses major consequences	Partial	Neglects consequences
Islamic integration	Sophisticated contextual integration	Relevant integration	Descriptive	Tokenistic
Professional judgment	Defensible and balanced	Reasonable	Some weaknesses	Unjustified
Academic writing	Excellent	Strong	Adequate	Weak

13. CLO–PLO ALIGNMENT

Because universities use different official PLO formulations, the following mapping should be aligned with the institution's approved doctoral PLO framework before formal HEC submission.

Proposed PhD PLOs

PLO-1: Advanced disciplinary knowledge

PLO-2: Critical and analytical thinking

PLO-3: Research competence

PLO-4: Communication and scholarly presentation

PLO-5: Ethical and professional responsibility

PLO-6: Digital and technological competence

PLO-7: Independent scholarship and lifelong learning

PLO-8: Social responsibility and inclusive practice

CLO	P1	P2	P3	P4	P5	P6	P7	P8
CLO-1		✓			✓
CLO-2		✓			✓			✓
CLO-3		✓		✓	✓		✓	✓
CLO-4	✓	✓	✓		✓		✓
CLO-5	✓	✓	✓		✓			✓
CLO-6		✓	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
CLO-7		✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
CLO-8	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

14. ALIGNMENT WITH DOCTORAL-LEVEL LEARNING

The course deliberately operate at the higher levels of Bloom's revised taxonomy:

Remember

Define ethical concepts.

↓

Understand

Explain ethical frameworks.

↓

Apply

Use ethical principles in cases.

↓

Analyze

Identify competing ethical values.

↓

Evaluate

Judge alternative actions.

↓

Create

Construct an ethically defensible professional policy.

The ultimate outcome is therefore:

not ethical knowledge, but ethical judgment.

15. CORE READING ARCHITECTURE

Rather than overwhelming doctoral students with a long bibliography, readings should be divided into four concentric circles.

A. Foundational Texts

• Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics
• Kant — Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
• Mill — Utilitarianism
• MacIntyre — After Virtue
• Gilligan — In a Different Voice
• Kohlberg — Essays on Moral Development
• Al-Ghazali — Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din
• Ibn Miskawayh — The Refinement of Character

B. Research Integrity

ALLEA's 2023 Revised European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity should be a core contemporary document. It explicitly addresses responsible research practices, misconduct, open science, data practices, equity and emerging digital/AI challenges.

C. AI Ethics

UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021) should be compulsory reading, particularly its provisions on education, research, human oversight, fairness, privacy, accountability and AI literacy.

UNESCO's AI Competency Framework for Teachers (2024) should provide a practical bridge between ethical principles and educational practice.

D. Discipline-Specific Ethics

Students should additionally read current guidelines and research concerning:

• linguistics research ethics
• human-participant research
• corpus ethics
• sociolinguistic research
• discourse data
• language documentation
• publication ethics
• academic authorship
• AI-assisted scholarly communication

16. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foundational and Islamic Ethics

Al-Ghazali. (1995). The principles of the creed (N. A. Faris, Trans.). Islamic Book Trust.

Aristotle. (2009). The Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford University Press.

Ibn Miskawayh. (1968). The refinement of character (C. K. Zurayk, Trans.). American University of Beirut.

Kant, I. (2012). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge University Press.

MacIntyre, A. (2007). After virtue (3rd ed.). University of Notre Dame Press.

Mill, J. S. (2015). Utilitarianism. Cambridge University Press.

Research Integrity

ALLEA. (2023). The European code of conduct for research integrity: Revised edition 2023. ALLEA—All European Academies.

AI Ethics

UNESCO. (2021). Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence. UNESCO.

UNESCO. (2024). AI competency framework for teachers. UNESCO.

Contemporary Scholarship

Dear reader, please include 8–12 peer-reviewed articles published between 2020 and 2026, selected annually so that the course remains current rather than becoming a static reading list.

This is particularly important for:

• generative AI and academic integrity;
• AI authorship;
• research integrity;
• open science;
• algorithmic bias;
• linguistic data ethics;
• digital humanities;
• research with vulnerable communities.

17. MODEL FINAL EXAMINATION

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS–II

Time: 3 Hours

Marks: 100

SECTION A — CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE

20 marks

Answer all questions.

1. Distinguish ethics, morality, law and professional codes.
2. Explain virtue ethics.
3. Define research integrity.
4. Distinguish fabrication, falsification and plagiarism.
5. Explain informed consent.
6. Define conflict of interest.
7. What is academic freedom?
8. What is algorithmic bias?
9. Define responsible AI.
10. Explain Amanah as a professional principle.

SECTION B — CRITICAL ANALYSIS

30 marks

Answer three of five.

1. Compare deontological and consequentialist approaches to academic misconduct.
2. Examine the ethical responsibilities of a PhD supervisor.
3. Discuss authorship disputes between supervisors and students.
4. Analyze the ethical challenges of collecting social-media discourse as linguistic data.
5. Examine the relationship between Islamic ethics and contemporary research integrity.

SECTION C — CASE ANALYSIS

30 marks

Case

A PhD student uses generative AI to improve the language of a research paper. The AI subsequently introduces three fabricated references and subtly changes the interpretation of two findings. The student does not disclose AI use. The supervisor submits the paper to an international journal and lists the student as first author but does not check the references.

Questions

1. Identify all ethical problems.
2. Identify the stakeholders.
3. Identify relevant professional duties.
4. Evaluate the student's responsibility.
5. Evaluate the supervisor's responsibility.
6. Propose an ethically defensible course of action.
7. Explain how the situation could have been prevented.

SECTION D — CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL TASK

20 marks

Write a Professional Ethics Charter for a Doctoral Researcher in English Linguistics containing at least ten principles.

---

18. THE COURSE'S SIGNATURE CAPSTONE

The most distinctive feature of this course is the creation of:

THE DOCTORAL SCHOLAR'S ETHICAL CHARTER

Every student leaves the course with a document answering:

What do I refuse to do, even if doing it would advance my career?

That question is more powerful than any list of regulations.

A student might commit to:

1. I will not fabricate evidence.
2. I will not manipulate findings to obtain publication.
3. I will acknowledge intellectual debts.
4. I will negotiate authorship transparently.
5. I will protect research participants.
6. I will respect linguistic communities.
7. I will disclose consequential use of AI.
8. I will verify every citation I submit.
9. I will distinguish evidence from speculation.
10. I will treat students and junior scholars with dignity.
11. I will challenge ideas without humiliating people.
12. I will accept correction when evidence proves me wrong.
13. I will not confuse academic status with intellectual authority.
14. I will protect academic freedom while accepting scholarly accountability.
15. I will regard knowledge as an amanah, not merely as a career instrument.

19. THE DEEPER ARCHITECTURE OF THE COURSE

The entire syllabus can finally be compressed into one intellectual progression:

FROM CHARACTER TO CONDUCT

Who am I?

↓

What do I value?

↓

What do I owe others?

↓

What responsibilities accompany knowledge?

↓

How should I conduct research?

↓

How should I treat evidence?

↓

How should I treat participants?

↓

How should I treat students and colleagues?

↓

How should I use technology?

↓

How should I respond when rules are insufficient?

↓

What kind of scholar will I become?

20. THE TOUCHSTONE PRINCIPLE

THE TOUCHSTONE PRINCIPLE

The Moral Architecture of Doctoral Education

Every doctoral program teaches students how to produce knowledge. A serious doctoral program must also teach them how to become worthy of the knowledge they produce.

This distinction should stand at the philosophical center of Professional Ethics–II.

The course should therefore conclude with one proposition, placed on the final slide, printed on the first page of the course handbook, included in the assessment framework, and perhaps displayed above the instructor’s desk:

A university does not merely produce people who know more. It produces people who become responsible for what they know.

This is more than an attractive educational maxim. It is the touchstone principle of doctoral professionalism.

A PhD is not simply an advanced qualification. It is an institutional declaration that an individual has acquired the intellectual authority to investigate questions, evaluate evidence, construct arguments, challenge established knowledge and make claims that may subsequently enter the scholarly record. The doctoral scholar is therefore entrusted with something more consequential than a degree: epistemic responsibility.

Professional ethics begins precisely at this point.

The central question is no longer merely:

What do you know?

Nor even:

How did you come to know it?

The deeper question is:

Can other people trust the person who claims to know it?

That question transforms professional ethics from a peripheral course requirement into the moral architecture of doctoral education.

From Knowledge to Trustworthy Knowledge

The contemporary university operates within an extraordinary paradox. Humanity has never possessed greater capacity to produce, reproduce, distribute and manipulate information. Yet the abundance of information has made the production of trustworthy knowledge more—not less, difficult.

A doctoral researcher can now locate thousands of articles within minutes, generate literature summaries almost instantaneously, analyse enormous datasets, produce polished prose with generative AI, disseminate findings globally and publish through an expanding ecosystem of journals and platforms.

But technological acceleration has not abolished the ethical obligations of scholarship.

It has intensified them.

The ability to generate text does not constitute understanding. The ability to retrieve information does not constitute scholarship. The ability to produce statistically sophisticated results does not guarantee methodological integrity. And the ability of artificial intelligence to generate plausible academic prose does not transfer intellectual responsibility from the researcher to the machine.

Indeed, the central ethical challenge of contemporary doctoral education may be precisely this:

As the production of plausible knowledge becomes easier, the responsibility for trustworthy knowledge becomes greater.

The doctoral scholar must therefore learn to distinguish information from evidence, evidence from knowledge, knowledge from wisdom, and expertise from authority.

This is where professional ethics intersects with the deepest purposes of the university.

The Ethical Scholar in the Age of AI

Generative artificial intelligence has made this principle particularly urgent.

AI systems can assist with brainstorming, language refinement, coding, translation, literature discovery and many other legitimate scholarly activities. But they also create difficult questions concerning authorship, attribution, fabrication, confidentiality, intellectual property, bias, privacy, verification and accountability.

The ethical question is consequently not simply:

“Can I use AI?”

It is:

“Can I remain intellectually responsible for everything I submit, claim, publish or recommend after using AI?”

That distinction is fundamental.

A doctoral researcher cannot outsource epistemic responsibility. If an AI system produces a fabricated citation, the researcher remains responsible for submitting it. If an algorithm reproduces a hidden bias, the researcher remains responsible for interrogating the result. If a machine-generated paragraph misrepresents a source, the responsibility does not belong to the machine.

The ethical scholar therefore does not merely ask whether a technological tool is available.

The ethical scholar asks whether its use is justifiable, transparent, proportionate and intellectually accountable.

This principle should govern the course's treatment of artificial intelligence just as rigorously as its treatment of plagiarism, research misconduct, authorship, confidentiality and conflicts of interest.

Integrity Is Larger Than the Absence of Misconduct

Professional ethics must also resist a narrow conception of integrity.

Integrity is not simply the absence of plagiarism.

It is the presence of intellectual honesty.

A scholar may avoid plagiarism and still manipulate evidence. A researcher may correctly cite every source and nevertheless conceal contradictory findings. An academic may technically comply with institutional regulations while exploiting students, abusing authority, discriminating against colleagues or appropriating another researcher's intellectual contribution.

Ethical professionalism therefore requires a positive conception of character.

It asks scholars to cultivate:

honesty, intellectual humility, fairness, transparency, accountability, respect, confidentiality, courage, responsibility and commitment to the public good.

These are not ornamental virtues added to scholarship after the "real work" has been completed.

They are part of the real work.

A trustworthy scholar does not merely know the rules. A trustworthy scholar develops the moral judgement necessary when the rules do not provide an obvious answer.

That is why ethical education must move beyond lists of prohibitions.

Students should encounter dilemmas.

They should debate ambiguous cases.

They should examine conflicts between competing obligations.

They should confront situations in which legality and morality diverge, institutional interests conflict with public interests, loyalty conflicts with truth, and professional advancement conflicts with intellectual honesty.

The purpose is not to produce students who can recite a code of conduct.

It is to produce scholars capable of ethical reasoning under pressure.

From Compliance to Conscience

This marks the crucial transition from compliance ethics to professional conscience.

Compliance asks:

What am I permitted to do?

Professional conscience asks:

What ought I to do?

The first establishes a minimum standard.

The second establishes a scholarly character.

Universities require both. Regulations can prohibit fabrication, plagiarism, harassment and conflicts of interest. But no regulatory framework can anticipate every ethical dilemma a researcher will encounter.

There will always be situations in which judgement is required.

A supervisor will have to decide how much assistance is appropriate.

A researcher will have to determine whether a methodological weakness is serious enough to disclose.

An author will have to negotiate credit with collaborators.

A lecturer will have to balance compassion with academic standards.

A scholar will have to decide whether institutional pressure justifies remaining silent.

At precisely these moments, professional ethics ceases to be a chapter in a handbook and becomes a test of character.

The Islamic Ethical Dimension

Within an Islamic university context, this architecture acquires an additional philosophical depth.

The Islamic conception of ethical conduct does not reduce morality to external compliance. Concepts such as amanah (trust), sidq (truthfulness), 'adl (justice), ihsan (excellence), taqwa (God-consciousness) and muhasabah (self-accountability) provide a vocabulary through which professional conduct can be understood as both a social responsibility and a moral obligation.

The scholar's knowledge is therefore not merely a possession.

It is an amanah.

The question becomes not simply whether knowledge increases one's status, but whether one's use of knowledge fulfils one's responsibility to students, colleagues, institutions, society and, ultimately, God.

This creates a powerful convergence between contemporary research-integrity principles and Islamic ethical thought.

Both reject the idea that professional excellence can be separated from responsibility.

Both insist that authority generates obligation.

And both place truthfulness at the centre of trustworthy human action.

The Final Standard

Professional Ethics–II should therefore not end with a conventional examination in which students reproduce definitions of ethics, theories of morality or institutional codes.

It should end with a professional declaration.

Each doctoral scholar should be able to answer, in substance:

What kind of scholar will I become when no supervisor is watching, no reviewer is reading, no committee is examining and no institutional rule explicitly tells me what to do?

That is the real examination.

The mature scholar understands that academic freedom without responsibility becomes intellectual irresponsibility; expertise without humility becomes arrogance; productivity without integrity becomes industrialized misconduct; and technological capability without ethical judgement becomes a mechanism for amplifying error.

The ultimate objective of doctoral education is therefore not merely more knowledge.

It is more trustworthy knowers.

A university succeeds when its graduates can be trusted not only to answer difficult questions, but also to recognize when an answer is uncertain; not merely to defend an argument, but to revise it when evidence demands revision; not merely to publish, but to protect the integrity of the scholarly record; and not merely to possess authority, but to exercise it responsibly.

That is the touchstone.

A university does not merely produce people who know more. It produces people who become responsible for what they know.

Everything in Professional Ethics–II should ultimately lead back to that proposition.

Every lecture should illuminate it.

Every case study should test it.

Every assignment should practise it.

Every assessment should measure some dimension of it.

And every doctoral scholar who completes the course should leave with a conviction more demanding than “I know how to conduct research.”

They should be able to say:

“I understand that knowledge gives me responsibility, and I am prepared to be accountable for how I acquire it, how I represent it, how I use it, and how it affects others.”

That is not merely professional ethics.

That is the moral architecture of the university.

Riaz Laghari, Lecturer in English (Linguistics)