To examine the theoretical status of ethics scholarship and to explore the historical and present directions of ethics in human communication research, this paper reviews more than 100 articles drawn from the speech communication literature. Following a brief introduction that sets forth the criteria for article selection, the paper discusses definitions of ethics in human communication. It then examines the articles according to the following groupings: (1) democratic ethics; (2) procedures, standards, and codes in ethics; (3) universal-humanitarian ethics; (4) contextual ethics; and (5) narrative ethics. The paper concludes that ethics research is healthy and vital, but that significant research questions still need to be answered in each of the five categories examined. The appended bibliography lists all references by category and includes a section on introductory books and articles. (FL)