Language and Moral Formation: Language Education as a Form of Moral Education

• In Event: Research in Progress Roundtable Session 3
  In Invited Roundtable: School Context, Teaching and Learning, and Moral Education: Insights from Research on Language, Race, Gender, and Sexuality (Table 18)

Abstract

This article explores the philosophy and practice of moral education in relation to language and language education. It draws on literatures from the fields of philosophy of moral education, linguistic anthropology, moral psychology, and foreign language education to illustrate morality from a cultural perspective. There is a body of research on the byproducts of foreign language education, however, the field has not sufficiently considered the impact of language acquisition on moral identity. I argue that language socialization is an important means in the formation of moral identity. The language acquisition process is also a process of moral identity formation. The moral beliefs implicit in all languages make language education, like other kinds of teaching, a venue of moral education.

Author

• Yue Zheng, University of Oklahoma