The first person in the acquisition of native and second language. Reflections with Hegel and Rousseau
Susanne Herrmann-Sinai (Oxford University)

In this paper, I shall discuss Hegel’s Anthropology with a view to learning a first and second language. The process of learning our first language is elusive to our minds, which is striking, given the central status of our linguistic skills and our participation in linguistic practices for our self-understanding. While we can theorize about the learning process after it is completed, there seems to be no first-personal point of view of that process. Drawing on the process of learning a second language and on Rousseau, I will suggest that first language acquisition is closer to the process of second language acquisition than it might initially appear, paralleling Hegel’s talk about ‘magical relationships’ in the context of a mother-child relationship, an early form of intersubjectivity.

Susanne Herrmann-Sinai is an Associate Faculty Member Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford and secondary teacher of German and Philosophy. Her specializations are the philosophy of German Idealism, in particular Hegel, Kant, and philosophy of music. She is Reviews Editor of the Hegel Bulletin, journal of the Hegel Society of Great Britain. Among her publications are the edited volume Hegel’s Philosophical Psychology (2016), and articles such as ‘Philosophieren als Übersetzen’ (Gobsch&Held 2021), ‘Hegel on the Difference between Social Normativity and the Normativity of Right’ (Hegel-Studien2020), ‘Musik und Zeit bei Kant’ (Kant-Studien 2009) and she has presented various papers on language in dictatorships.