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In:60 Years of Applied Linguistics: Toward more engaged research
Edited by Grégory Miras, Isabel Colón de Carvajal, Nathalie Blanc and Shona Whyte
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 22] 2026
► pp. 44–60

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Chapter 3
An ethical-aesthetic account of giving an AILA keynote

ORCiD logo with link | University of Warwick
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 9 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.22.03cre
Abstract
This paper explores my efforts at representing research aesthetically rather than empirically in the AILA keynote I gave in Lyon in 2023. I consider the ethical underpinnings of this direction as I attempted to engage my audience beyond argumentation. The paper is a personal account of what I hoped to achieve, illustrating how my biography shaped the talk I gave as well as the risks I felt I was taking. I describe my attempt to open up a space for my audience to dwell within the musical range of 15 individual and choral voices each of whom can be said to signify powerfully beyond what they said, not least in what their voices said to me. I explore the languaging of these voices, pointing to the possibilities of reverberation and audience connection, inviting an “appreciation of voice and its semiotic excess” (Deumert, 2023, p. 919). I describe the curation process as an ethical responsibility and a personal vulnerability. I draw on recent work in applied linguistics which recognizes the limits of language-as-a-system-of-representation, exploring epistemological repertories offered through the arts. In this account, I join other applied linguists venturing beyond the academic article or keynote talk to portray truth in ways which strive to bring together intellectual rigour and aesthetic sensibility. Genres which push us to be self-conscious about what we are saying, and consider who we are including or omitting from the picture, appear to be on the increase.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Keynote as sound and light show
  • 2.Curation: Looking to the arts
  • 3.An ethical-aesthetic applied linguistics
  • 4.Continuities and departures
  • Note
  • References
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