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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4197 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Johnson, Larry Colvin |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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