Performing English, Performing Bodies: A Case for Critical Performative Language Pedagogy

Abstract

This essay examines critical performative pedagogy within the context of a language course for immigrants and refugees. I adapt Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed practice as the framework for a critical performative English as a Second Language course. I use exemplars from the course to suggest implications for the theory and practice of critical performative pedagogy. These include the challenges of: negotiating educational contexts that normalize instructional ideology; describing and adapting performance practices that critique students’ and teachers’ ideological bodies while activating their performing bodies; and articulating social efficacy in relation to a given pedagogical practice.