Files
Abstract
This study critically engages with the liminal space between theory and practice to challenge the constitution of language in its intersections with knowledge and knowing. To this end, I start by foregrounding my own experiences with the diversity that characterizes language to portray the significance of studying its ontology and plurality. I then identify philosophical hermeneutics as a practical metatheory that centrally positions language as a medium for understanding. From this perspective, I conceptualize how language manifests as a network of meaning that is constituted through an ontological metaphoricity that echoes an inherent duality in its capacity for presentation and representation of phenomena. I then intertwine text and illustrations to theorize language as a being that becomes and revels in its plurality, illuminating the inherent and necessary aesthetic and multimodal dimensions of any struggle toward meaning; a disruptive and transformative move that holds the potential to invite a diversity of experiences and perspectives currently not at the center of education and research practices. I consider how foregrounding the ontological metaphoricity of language can help researchers and educators aesthetically engage and artfully attend to the inherent complexities of language and its mediating role in knowledge and knowing. Ideas about language developed throughout the dissertation are then contextually considered to rethink the multidimensional ontology of theory in qualitative research and to generatively study young multilingual children's learning.