La vulnérabilité linguistique comme enjeu éthique pour la communication des organisations

Abstract

This article examines the power of language to make an organization’s audiences vulnerable, drawing on the specifically ethical concern it generates within the communications department of a major French university. This collective concern is described as a long-term subjective experience, of which we, through our particular position within this institution, are privileged observers and co-subjects. We use a descriptive approach inspired by phenomenology, which draws on both a contemporary ethical framework and a provisional typology of forms of linguistic vulnerabilizing taken from recent works on the power of language.

Our analysis suggests that attention to the linguistic vulnerability of audiences is an essential, though rarely articulated, reflexive dimension of the collective experience of communicating on behalf of an organization.