Towards an Ethics of Answerability: Reconsidering Dialogism in Sociocultural Literacy Research.

Abstract

This essay responds to the problem that sociocultural literacy research has failed to adequately theorize individual literacy learners as moral agents with the capacity to produce harm or good to themselves and others. Building from the rhetorical construct of dialogism, this inquiry explores how the early ethical thought of Mikhail Bakhtin can contribute an “ethics of answerability” to sociocultural literacy studies. Explicating and extending a more established perspective in classroom literacy study—what I call an “ethics of difference”—my reading of Bakhtin’s early work offers a shift in focus from linguistic difference to the self who responds, or answers, to difference. An ethics of answerability highlights the unique and heavy responsibilities that individuals face as they respond to others in everyday interaction and in textual production. Proposed in light of this theoretical orientation are questions to guide inquiry in classroom-based sociocultural literacy research.