How We Speak Shapes How We Learn: A Linguistic and Psychological Theory of Education

This book examines language not as an instrument or a device to conduct daily transactions but as a mode of living and being. Each chapter addresses some of the major educational and pedagogical issues and deconstructs their implicitly embedded assumptions. Creativity and language are inextricably tied together. This book presents an innovative perspective on language and creativity with their implications for education. The work focuses on language as a way of living and examines how a shift in language can lead to a change in one's mode of being and becoming. In this sense, education is inherently tied to language. There would be no change within education unless the change addresses the representational manifestations which boil down to the question of language. The language of education prescribes what to do and what not to do. Deep inside this structural approach, the question of knowing, knowledge and modes of knowing unfold themselves. An education with an emphasis on linear modes of knowing, for example, would exclude other modes of knowing which may have their validity in their own realms. The integration of language and education would, thus, purport an epistemological standpoint through which policies, planning, curriculum development and teaching operate. A change in education, therefore, would require a comprehensive understanding of the ontological and epistemological foundations of any educational system.