Existing research into the language classroom discourse have recurrently highlighted its institutional nature. In and through their institutional interaction, language teacher and learners have also been shown to display their orientations to their institutional identities of teacher and learner on a turn-by-turn basis so as to materialize language learning as the institutional business of this setting. A considerable body of studies has also shed light on how teachers may incorporate non-institutional identities into the language classroom interaction to manage momentary pedagogical concerns. Drawing on 22 hours of video-recorded data from Iranian English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classrooms, this study aims to explore the pedagogical possibilities of invoking institutional and noninstitutional identities in the moment-by-moment unfolding of the language classroom talk. Employing a conversation analytic (CA) approach toward the treatment of the interactional data, this study showcases the interactional negotiation identities in two ways. On the one hand, it illustrates how language learners reproduce their teacher’s institutional identity to resolve their own momentary interactional troubles. The data analysis in these cases shows that the learners make relevant their teachers’ institutional identity using two interactional practices: (1) downgrading their certainty; and (2) displaying their lack of sufficient knowledge. On the other hand, the present study also shows how the teachers invoke the language learners’ non-institutional identities to provide them with contingent assistance upon the emergence of their interactional troubles.
