Relational well-being and human connection in artificial intelligence era language classrooms: a hermeneutic phenomenological study

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education raises context-specific pedagogical and ethical questions concerning relational conditions, dignity, and well-being in language learning environments. This hermeneutic phenomenological study examines relational well-being in an AI-era EFL preparatory classroom at a single Turkish university through an interpretive framework informed by relational rights scholarship. Drawing on Gadamerian hermeneutics, the study explores how English instructors and students experience relational conditions in this specific institutional context. Semi-structured interviews with 10 instructors and 10 students were analysed through an iterative hermeneutic process. Within this context, the analysis suggests that participants’ sense of well-being may be connected to five relational conditions they articulated in rights-like terms: dignity, authentic connection, cultural transmission, autonomy, and emotional safety. Some participants described experiences they interpreted as relational tension when they perceived institutional practices as prioritising efficiency over these conditions, though accounts varied, with others recognising AI as offering pedagogical value alongside relational limitations. Overall, the analysis suggests an experiential inseparability between well-being and relational conditions within this setting, highlighting how AI-mediated practices may be perceived as reshaping relational expectations with implications for how relational rights are theorised as moral-interpretive constructs in language education research.