“Theatre in the Acquisition of the Intercultural Communicative Competence: The Creation of a Multilingual Corpus of Dramatic Texts for the Training of Future Language Mediators”

Theatre in the Acquisition of Intercultural Communicative Competence: The Creation of a Multilingual Corpus of Dramatic Texts for the Training of Future Linguistic Mediators Main Description In the multicultural society in which we live it is increasingly important that future linguistic mediators become intercultural speakers, so that they can both achieve an extensive knowledge of the languages/cultures studied and cope with the misunderstandings which can arise from the communicative situation. Starting from this assumption, we will try to answer the question of whether intercultural communicative competence can be taught/acquired in the classroom context. We maintain that the introduction of specific drama activities in university curricula can help students to develop their empathic attitude and improve their cognitive and emotional competence, which are fundamental aspects of an intercultural perspective. In this paper we present a three-stage research project that is being developed by the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna and is based on linguistic mediator training and on the teaching/acquisition of intercultural communicative competence through theatre. The first stage of the project involves the creation of a multilingual corpus of contemporary dramatic texts, following the criteria of the cultural and social domains described by Balboni (1999). This corpus will be used to create teaching units for a course of linguistic mediation, through which students can start from the observation and comprehension of their own culture to develop empathy, accept diversity and avoid stereotypes. In the second stage of the project, the educational model designed in the first phase will be tested on students, with a subsequent analysis and evaluation of the results. In the third and last stage, an interactive CD-ROM with the corpus of selected dramatic texts and a guide for teachers and students will be published. Short Description Linguistic mediators can acquire intercultural communicative competence through theatre, seen as a means to observe and understand culture(s) and to live authentic intercultural experiences. Keywords Intercultural Communicative Competence; Cognitive and Emotional Competence; Empathy; Second Language Learning; Drama Activities.