With language technology increasingly affecting individuals' lives, many recent works have investigated the ethical aspects of NLP. Among other topics, researchers focused on the notion of morality, investigating, for example, which moral judgements language models make. However, there has been little to no discussion of the terminology and the theories underpinning those efforts and their implications. This lack is highly problematic, as it hides the works' underlying assumptions and hinders a thorough and targeted scientific debate of morality in NLP. In this work, we address this research gap by (a) providing an overview of some important ethical concepts stemming from philosophy and (b) systematically surveying the existing literature on moral NLP w.r.t. their philosophical foundation, terminology, and data basis. For instance, we analyse what ethical theory an approach is based on, how this decision is justified, and what implications it entails. Our findings surveying 92 papers show that, for instance, most papers neither provide a clear definition of the terms they use nor adhere to definitions from philosophy. Finally, (c) we give three recommendations for future research in the field. We hope our work will lead to a more informed, careful, and sound discussion of morality in language technology.

翻译：随着语言技术日益影响个体生活，近期许多研究开始关注自然语言处理（NLP）的伦理层面。在众多议题中，学者们聚焦于道德概念，例如探究语言模型作出何种道德判断。然而，关于支撑这些研究的术语、理论及其影响，学界几乎没有展开讨论。这一缺失问题严重，因为它掩盖了研究的基本假设，阻碍了针对NLP中道德议题进行深入、精准的学术辩论。本研究旨在弥补这一研究空白，具体通过：(a) 梳理源自哲学领域的重要伦理概念；(b) 系统考察现有道德NLP文献在哲学基础、术语体系及数据来源方面的现状。例如，我们分析某项研究基于何种伦理理论、该选择如何被论证、以及蕴含何种影响。通过对92篇论文的调查发现，例如多数论文既未明确界定所用术语，也未遵循哲学定义。最后，(c) 我们为该领域未来研究提出三项建议。期望我们的工作能推动语言技术中道德讨论走向更富见地、更为审慎、更具严谨性的方向。