LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF THE WORK OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS THOUGHT FOR PROCESSES OF LEARNING

• Main Author: MCNALLY, PATRICIA ANN
• Language: ENG
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 1980
• Subjects: Educational theory
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8019477

This dissertation focuses on language and how its use and structure in Western society affect the way man learns. The paper is set forth in two parts. Part One is an interpretation of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological exegesis of early Greek words. Using this phenomenological exegesis of early Greek language as a philosophical foundation, Part Two proposes a theory of learning and looks at the linguistic structures through which Western man has characteristically learned. Chapter I, GENERAL INTRODUCTION, offers the reader a statement of the problem and advances the hypothesis that continuance of the disassociative Zeitgeist which plagues Western society may be related to man's failure to question those linguistic contexts and frameworks through which learning is attempted and content is transmitted and conveyed. Part One begins with a general introduction to Martin Heidegger and an overview of his work. This is followed by an exploration of terms pivotal to an understanding of Heidegger's work, along with a fairly detailed interpretation of the structural changes Heidegger chronicles in the historical development of language. An epistemology, or theory of learning, is advanced in Part Two. This proposed theory states essentially that learning requires motion; more specifically, that learning requires a recognition of relational motion. Furthermore, it is advanced that where there is a lack of motion, which is to say where relational motion is not perceived by the learner, the learning that occurs is artial. The paper then proceeds to a discussion of those processes of learning which the author sees as representative of Western man's structuring of language. These include the contradicting process, the idealizing process, the valuing process, the explanatory process, the commotioning process, and the either-or process. Finally, the implications of this theoretical discussion for future studies in learning and education are raised.