Teaching intercultural pragmatics via DS (Didactic Subtitling): A deaf-Inclusive lesson plan
The globalized world requires effective communication across cultures. Intercultural pragmatics, emerging from the intersection of classical pragmatics, intercultural communication, and interlanguage research (House, 2002), goes beyond the surface meaning of language to explore how participants creatively strive to build understanding (Philip, 2005).
My attempt draws on the insights of intercultural pragmatics to investigate how Audiovisual (AV) materials, particularly films, can be used to improve intercultural communication skills as well as linguo-cultural awareness in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners.
This approach applies CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) strategies (Graziano et al., 2021) to teach intercultural pragmatics in an inclusive way – that is, accessible to both hearing and deaf learners – by means of DAT (Didactic Audiovisual Translation), a relatively young field of research which has been proved beneficial in terms of LE (language education) as it fosters motivation, promotes autonomous learning and cognitive development, and encourages cooperation (Talaván et al., 2024).
More specifically, a lesson plan – available at this link: https://forms.gle/2Jn1bTA56G9sQHYi9 – will be proposed to introduce learners to the topics of pragmatics and the concept of positive/negative face in a cross-cultural – deaf vs. hearing – perspective; the core of this LP is based on an AVT task, a written production task consisting in creatively subtitling a short videoclip from the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), a clip showing the interaction between a BSL signer, a BrE speaker, and an AmE speaker. The project is currently going through its pilot phase, so further research and experimentation are still necessary.
References
Graziano, A. et al. (eds.). (2021). Pedagogical and Technical Innovations in (and through) Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
House, J. (2002). Developing pragmatic competence in English as a lingua franca. In Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 245-267). Knapp, Karlfried & Christiane Meierkord (eds.). Peter Lang.
Philip, G. (2005). Figurative language and the advanced learner. Research News: The Newsletter of the IATEFL Research SIG, 16, 16–20.
Talaván, N. et al. (2024). Didactic Audiovisual Translation and Foreign Language Education. Routledge.