Managing multiple normativities in classroom interaction: Student responses to teacher reproaches for inappropriate language choice in a bilingual classroom

• Article investigates language choice in bilingual classroom interaction.
• Analysis focuses on situations where students’ L1 use is sanctioned by the teacher.
• Analysis shows how students respond by continuing L1 use in peer interaction.
• Managing language choice this way leaves the monolingual ideology unquestioned.

This article adds to research on bilingual language alternation by investigating how language choice is managed at the crossroads of social norms and rules in the interaction of a bilingual classroom. Drawing on conversation analytic methodology, the paper examines sequences in which the teacher invokes a locally established, explicit rule whereby the students are to use L2 only in the classroom. Sequential analyses focus on how students respond to such teacher turns, addressing either the teacher or their peers, and how they align with the classroom rule in their responses. It is argued that when responding to rule-enforcement, students position themselves not only as regards the behavioural norm set by the particular classroom rule, but also in terms of teacher authority to regulate behaviour via such a rule. The implications of these micro-interactional findings to the social and ideological order of bilingual classrooms are briefly discussed.