A performative language teaching approach in connection with emotion and identity

Abstract

The expression of subjectivity and emotionality is a challenge for migrant speakers of a new or heritage language. A multilingual and multicultural reality leads us to (re)shape our own identity in order to adapt to new and increasingly hybrid social models (Iglesias and Ramos, 2020). Language is not simply a means of expression or communication, but a practice that constructs and is constructed by the ways in which learners understand themselves, their social environment, histories and possibilities for the future (Norton and Toohey, 2004). Teaching practices that focus only on linguistic aspects are therefore insufficient, especially in the field of teaching an additional language to migrants and refugees, to contribute to social and affective inclusion (Ramanathan, 2005; Norton and Toohey, 2011; Kramsch, 2014) without limiting opportunities for language learning and for imagining more desirable identities (Lee, 2008). In addressing the question ‘how can one intervene didactically in the language learning process in relation to the identity construction of the migrant speaker of the new language?’, this chapter develops the grounds for a methodological approach based on embodiment for a performative teaching of additional language(s) to migrants and refugees (Piazzoli, 2018).