Performativity will be shown to replace more abstract conceptions of language as a structure of meaning or as a symbol system and one way of introducing the concept of spheres of interculturality into ELT. The emphasis will be on the role of language in the concrete, particular transactions of the speaking body in specific contexts and in specific moments of time. It focuses on language as action, and also on meaning as the effect of embodied processes of meaning-making.

1. Creating Spheres of Interculturality
through
Performative Activity
FAAPI
Buenos Aires 2013
Susan Hillyard B.Ed. (Hons)
http://susanhillyard.blogspot.com.ar/

2. Questions for today
What is identity?
 What is culture?
 What is the relationship between the
two?
 What is interculturality?
 What is Performative Activity?
 Why is it important and how do we do
it?


3. The
Speaking Body
in the
Empty Space
Peter Brooks

4. Gender through performative
activity
All bodies are gendered
from the beginning of their social existence
(and there is no existence that is not social),
which means that there is no “natural body”
that pre-exists its cultural inscription.
Butler J (2006)

5. Performativity
Austin referred to it way back in
1955 when he said “to say
something is to do something”
and set up the philosophy
behind our notion of speech
acts to which we refer today.
Austin ( 1955)

6. Performative inquiry invites a
stance of inquiry, an embodied
exploration of curricular
concerns, issues, assigned texts,
communal narratives, and lived
experience.
Lynn Fels

7. Guess the theme (Ken)






Groups of six
Number around
Turn to back
Listen
When I call out a number, that number from
each group turns to view the screen and thinks
how they will explain the pic to the group.
When all done Guess the theme and point to
the ceiling looking at the screen.

19. Each tells their pic and then discuss
in your group:
What theme unites all the six
pictures?
When you have it, stand still in
silence and point to the ceiling.

20. Just do it!

26. Talk time in pairs



Which greetings made you laugh?
Which greetings made you uncomfortable?
Why?
Which greetings would make other nationalities
laugh or feel uncomfortable? State the
nationality and say why……

27. My Identity

28. Defining her Identity
 Vegetarian
 Personality Traits
 Appearance
 Scottish
 Artist
 Female
(profession)
 Emotions
 Birth
 Relationships
 I wish…..

29. Saving and adapting from UK to AR
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Spain

30. All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players:
They have their exits and their
entrances;
And one man in his time plays many
parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Shakespeare W. As you Like It

31. Erving Goffman:
The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life
1959
We have our front stage
and our backstage.
A Model of Life as
Dramaturgy
Ex: The 2 (+) Faces of
Me

32. Awareness

34. Irrelevant, uninteresting,
conflictive, puzzling, disgusting?








Garage sales
Aborting female foetuses
Meal times
Wearing shoes indoors
Installing a washing machine in your kitchen
Not having IDs
Wearing a veil
Eating Malaysian food with chopsticks

35. Iceberg of Culture

36. Tableaux: (Iceberg)

In groups of 4,
choose any trait from
the base of the
iceberg and discuss
with your group how
you can show that
trait through the
speaking body in the
empty space.

37. Iceberg of Culture

38. Language and PA
Performativity refers to the doing of
language. It opposes more abstract
conceptions of language as a structure of
meaning or symbol system with an
emphasis on the role of language in the
concrete, particular transactions of speakers
and hearers at specific sites. Performativity
focusses on language as action.

39. According to Fels and Meyer (1997:76),
performative inquiry assumes that
knowledge is
embodied in creative processes and rooted in
the “world of lived sensorial experience”,
taking cognisance of the fact that neither
knowledge nor experience is a direct
representation of the world.

40. Plural Cultures
Not only do we need to be continually
empowered to choose ourselves, to
create our identities within a plurality;
we need continually to make new
promises and to act in our freedom to
fulfill them, something we can never do
meaningfully alone.
Fels and Meyer (1997)

41. Our cultures in English in Action








Hospital
Immigrant
Shanty town
Down Syndrome
Deaf
Asperger’s
Autism
AHDH








DOD
Violent
Poverty
Silent
Invisible
Gifted
Aggressive conduct
Dyslexic

42. Mr Action in Guayacil

45. The stop
Between closing and beginning lives
a gap, a caesura, a discontinuity.
The betweenness is a hinge that
belongs to neither one nor the
other. It is neither poised nor
unpoised, yet moves both ways......
It is the stop.
Fels

46. To play is to encourage laughter, to
explore the underbelly of the
unsaid, to inspire new
understandings, to engage in
“wide-awakeness” (Greene, 1971)

47. My Baby…….
The Speaking Body in
the
Empty Space

48. Evaluation
 I learned a lot !
 I learned quite a
lot…
 I learned a little…
 I learned nothing!

49. Free course on Teaching English
through Drama
Http://groups.yahoo.com/group
/EVO_Drama_2013/

50. References


Austin, J. L. [1955] How to Do Things With Words,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
LynnFels:
http://www.bctela.ca/resources/english-practice/spring200
Retrieved 09/09/13


Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of Learning. New York,
N.Y.: Teachers College Press.
Butler.
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/11880_Chapter_3.pdf
Retrieved 09/09/13