Performance, performativity and second language identities: How can we know the actor from the act?

•How performance process fosters critical discourse awareness.•Theoretical interconnections of performance and performativity.•How multilingual educators negotiate the semiotic representations of second language teachers.•How SFL supports investigation of performance processes.

Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participants in embodying and challenging social equity issues. Informed by performativity theories (e.g., Butler, 1999) and a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective on meaning making, this paper investigates how multilingual educators in a graduate language education course analyzed and negotiated language teacher identities. Specifically, the paper explores if and how a performance process, which included storytelling, performance, and discourse analysis, supported the focal participants in developing awareness of interaction as discursive negotiation of institutional, cultural and agentive factors. Two implications of language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional resource to support critical discourse awareness among language educators, and the potential of SFL as a resource to research performative processes in multicultural education contexts.