Mobilizing emotion in an urban classroom: Producing identities and transforming signs in a race-related discussion

• We theorize emotion as mediated action linked to language and identity.
• We examine how emotion is mobilized in a race-related discussion.
• Emotion is mediated by texts, talk, and histories of participation.
• Emotion produces identities and transforms signs.
• We suggest implications for agentive critical literacy practices in urban classrooms.

In studies of learning, emotion is understood as an expression of affect separate from the mind and in need of discipline rather than constructed through language, culture, and power. This study focuses on emotion in a diverse urban classroom and explores, instead, how emotive interactions in a race-related discussion were mediated by texts, talk, and histories of participation. We theorize emotion as action linked to language and identity, and argue that emotion, when viewed as mediated action, offers a broader critical literacy. This critical literacy is deeply related to how students and teachers, as social actors, mobilize emotion to transform texts and signs, acts that are widely understood to be central to sociocultural and social semiotic concepts of learning, but are otherwise veiled in English classrooms.