Towards an aesthetic and performative approach to transcultural mediation
Abstract
How can we best prepare future engineers to navigate between languages and cultures while working towards a common destiny for the planet? In this article, we share some of the results from a language module which was devised as an attempt to address this issue. We created a series of English language workshops with the aim of making future engineers aware that the ability to communicate is rooted in the body and requires empathic listening to both oneself and others, and that words emerge from a pre-language rooted in the senses and this process is a core part of the empathic process itself. To do this we created a curriculum which combines Hélène Trocmé-Fabre’s cognitive framework L’Arbre du Savoir-Apprendre3 (2003) with a phenomenological approach to drama largely inspired by Jacques Lecoq’s teaching methods (2000).