Using phenomenology: researching lived experience

I am a part-time PhD student using phenomenology as a research paradigm to explore the experiences of nurses who mentor students in practice. Phenomenology raises many challenges to the collection and handling of research data. In particular, what it is possible to know about other people's experiences is bound up with philosophical theory that needs to be interpreted by the researcher in order to make sense of the lifeworld being studied.

Friday, 24 June 2011

Time-Manner-Place

It's a silly thought really, but it occurred to me than in German, Time–Manner–Place states the general order of adpositional phrases in its sentences: "yesterday", "by car", "to the store". It is apparently common among languages with Subject-Object-Verb word orders.

An example of this appositional ordering in German is:

Ich fahre heute mit dem Auto nach München.
I drive today with the car to Munich.

I'm travelling to Munich by car today.

Then, I thought, well, Martin Heidegger was German and he came up with the idea that time was the horizon for human being-in-the-world. I wonder to what extent this was mediated by the language he was embedded in?

2 comments:

Sara said...: A very interesting thought indeed, Anthea. Might explain a lot! Sara; 7 July 2011 at 05:18
Anthea Wilson said...: Hi Sara, it is a bit of a scary thought too. But, Heidegger did put language as a structure of existence alongside alongside attunement and understanding, although temporality was the overarching factor.; 15 July 2011 at 02:12