LANGUAGE AS A COGNITIVE MEDIUM – LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Abstract

In this article, I pose a question concerning the place of language education in the complex processes of an individual's coming to understand the world. The answer requires integration of knowledge from various academic fields. I refer to linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociological and psychological theories, among others, although I describe them from a pedagogical perspective. I present a type of model in the description of human linguistic functioning, portraying individual cognitive spheres in mutual dependencies . For the sake of descriptive clarity, I reduce these relations to three spheres as distinguished by Jürgen Habermas – the objective world, the subjective world, and the intersubjective sphere. Against this background, I examine early language education. I focus on the importance of the intersubjective sphere in shaping of the world image in the mother tongue and foreign language education.