What Is (or “Are”) Language Ethics?

The word-pair “language ethics” seems to refer to something familiar. Yet when focusing on it, using imagination and thinking, one cannot say that it is indeed readily recognizable or knowable. “Language” implies a number of different phenomena, and as for “ethics” … well, there is an active scholarly interest in examining and re-examining ethics, whether in the singular (as a single sphere of activity) or in the plural (implying numerous, different ethics, pertaining to distinct areas of human conduct). Considering the initial perplexity, and then the scope, range, and diversity of possible referents, I will begin by clarifying what I