Abstract
A class of 16- to 19-year old boys at a technical institute in central Italy was branded as disciplinarily problematic by their teachers. Observations in this class over the course of an academic year show, however, that some of the disruptiveness of the students contributed in important ways to the students’ social and academic engagement. Specifically, this article explores (1) how student side-talk created interactional spaces which served important social and academic functions and (2) how students’ displays of expertise in side-talk and in teacher-facing discourse relied on the tactful combination of ‘school’ and ‘non-school’ communicative repertoire elements (Rymes 2010). These interactional practices allowed students who were branded as disciplinarily problematic to both demonstrate their knowledge of how to do school—that is, their classroom competence (Gutiérrez 1995)—and engage in academic discussion without ruining their public image (e.g., of toughness, masculinity, etc.). This article argues that adopting the lens of ‘little-L language’ in classroom contexts—drawing on Bakhtin's heteroglossia (1981) and double-voiced discourse (1984)—can help teachers unpack these and other sociolinguistic strategies that students use, normalizing and operating in cooperation with student side-talk, and creating in-roads for fuller student participation.