T.’s lifeworld and language

Abstract

During his twelve years of life, T., a gifted boy who was born with
 severe cerebral palsy, achieved the ability to communicate with "the rest
 of the world" at an advanced level, though he used facilitated and
 augmentative communication. The author of this narrative and
 interpretive study is T.'s father, who maintained a unique dialogue with
 his son. T. himself volunteered to contribute actively to the study by
 helping to plan and to edit, and by supplying a number of autobiographical
 sketches. The pedagogical relationship that existed between T. and his
 father is prominently featured.
 The study explores T.'s individual case through thirteen narrative
 "scenes" (beginning with his birth and ending with his twelfth year),
 which address various particulars of his lifeworld and his language
 development. Each narrative scene is followed by two, three, or four
 interpretive passages, each of which interprets one of seven themes that
 emerged from T.'s life. The seven themes are: memory, observation,
 scientific/technological assessment, not foreclosing on the future,
 integration, communication, and growth. The interpretive passages treat the seven themes at four levels of
 interpretation: the literal level, the moral level, the allegorical level, and
 the anagogic level. The attempt is to revive an exegetic practice common
 in the days before the Enlightenment, Cartesian doubt, and the
 "mathematical project" (Heidegger, 1993c, p. 293). Following the dictum
 that "the hermeneutic imagination is not limited in its conceptual
 resources to the texts of the hermeneutic tradition itself" (Smith, 1991,
 p. 201), the study borrows from a variety of sources, including Astrology,
 Waldorf education, and Zen.
 The reader is offered a direct experience of "the fecundity of the
 individual case" (Gadamer, cited in Jardine, 1994, p. 143). Emerging,
 through the thirteen scenes, the seven themes, and the four levels of
 interpretation, is a unique picture of an exceptional boy's language
 development.

Education, Faculty of

Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of

Graduate