LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 26:5 May 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

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Feeling with Machines: Emotional AI, and Humane Pedagogy in English Language Teaching

B. M. Mukesh Kumar and
Dr. K. Madhavi

Abstract

The Pedagogical landscape in English Language Teaching (ELT) is being continuously redefined by the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically in regards to emotional or affective computing. This essay analyzes the role of emotional AI in transforming the affective, ethical and relational aspects of teaching and learning. The study takes a conceptual, interpretive approach and utilizes the affect theory, critical pedagogy, and posthumanism to guide the study as well as incorporating empirical evidence of current studies on emotional recognition, adaptive feedback, and emotion regulation in teachers.

The review reveals that culturally specific emotions are frequently misconstrued in emotional AI, escalates emotional labour in teachers and diminishes intricate affective encounters to quantifiable information points. Although in this way, such systems have the potential to make augmentation more engaging by providing adaptive feedback, they may be prone to standardisation of emotional expression and favouring algorithmic legibility over human authenticity.

Subsequently, the paper suggests the Emotionally Intelligent AI-Pedagogy Framework (EI-AIPF) that focuses on emotional awareness, ethical governance, as well as human mediation. The paper holds the opinion that educators need to develop critical emotional literacy as a way of becoming ethically aware of AI-generated affective data and because educators need to maintain relational sense in AI-mediated classrooms. The article adds the theoretically based framework of maintaining the humane pedagogy in the technologically mediated education settings.

Keywords: Emotional AI, ELT, Affective pedagogy, Critical pedagogy, Posthumanism, AI in education

Introduction

Affective Turn in Digital Pedagogy The learning of English by intelligent machines is delicate to a certain extent. What was once a subtle system of voices, gestures, and shared laughter is now translated with the invisible existence of algorithms. Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not only enter the modern teaching of English as a set of tools but also as a cultural, emotional, and epistemic phenomenon that redefines the ways in which the teachers and learners experience, perceive, and interact. Formerly an affective ecology of glances, silences, hesitations, mutual humour or discomfort, communication and language learning become mixed into the algorithms of judgement and predictive models which are said to read emotions. Recent research indicates that emotional AI is not merely a viewer of emotions but is an active participant in terms of what can be viewed as attention, engagement, or enthusiasm (Liu et al., 2024; Vistorte et al., 2024). The role of emotion in the era of AI is thus paradoxical, both as the focus of learning and as a flattened data point to familiarise oneself with, which only contributes to the idea of the circulation of affect between bodies, technologies, and institutional contexts where emotions are continuously shaped and reshaped, as Ahmed (2004) explains.

There is no shortage of AI in the English Language Teaching (ELT) domain. For example, many are already familiar with writing assistance which adapts to the preferences of the learner, pronunciation assistants, chatbots which seek to anticipate the needs of the learners, lesson writing systems, and feedback engines. The question of whether machines can teach is no longer an issue, and the more pressing one is whether machines can feel and what the pedagogy is when machines strive to emulate feeling. Pedagogy is not cognitive or technical work but emotional, moral, and interpersonal, as the affective turn in education has always demonstrated (Ahmed, 2004; Benesch, 2017). AI compels teachers to readdress emotion as the place of tension and value between human compassion and machinic deciphering.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

B. M. Mukesh Kumar
Research Scholar
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
National Institute of Technology
Warangal, India 506004
mkmukeshkumar171@gmail.com
&
Dr. K. Madhavi
Professor
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
National Institute of Technology Warangal, India 506004
madhavik24@nitw.ac.in

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