Abstract
This paper reviews the history of care ethics as a feminist ethic and surveys competing definitions of care that may serve as a moral framework for communication ethics. “Care” is shown to be a flexible moral concept that can be used to assess discourse practices in various contexts. It is argued that the practices of care and communication overlap such that communication is an ability that must be nurtured by care, and at the same time is often constitutive of care. The normative intersections between care and communication are explored in terms of both style and substance, highlighting how communication in care sometimes involves “epistemic empathetic projection”, and how care ethics as a discursive practice calls for what Nancy Fraser describes as a “politics of needs interpretation,” the discursive struggle for more caring and equitable relations.
