This study investigated the functions of gesture in teaching and learning grammar in the context of second language (L2) classroom interactions. The data consisted of video‐recorded interactions from a beginner‐ and an advanced‐level grammar classroom in an intensive English program at a U.S. university. The sequences of talk‐in‐interaction selected for sequential analysis involved gestures that are used by teachers for explaining English temporal concepts, and those by students to respond to their teacher's gesture. Our analysis revealed that teachers and students repeatedly used abstract deictic gestures and metaphoric gestures in the classroom, which can become important interactional resources for instruction as well as assessment of student learning. Furthermore, students effectively used gestural catchments to demonstrate their understanding of temporal concepts and to construct interactional alignments with their teachers. These findings suggest that gesture is an important element of interactional competence for teaching and learning in L2 grammar classrooms.

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As im/politeness scholars increasingly explore the intersections of identity and im/politeness, they reveal a growing need for empirical research that examines these intersections in a variety of discourses. This paper investigates the linkages between participants’ co-constructions of identity and impoliteness in naturally occurring classroom discourse. The data come from a corpus of conflictive interactions observed in seven hours of whole-class discussions and twelve hours of small-group discussions in four eighth-grade classrooms. I apply an analytic framework that combines a genre-approach (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010, 2013) to impoliteness with a socio-constructivist approach (Bucholtz and Hall 2005) to identity, and I categorize identity according to Zimmerman’s (1998) three broad identity types: discourse identity, (genre)situated identity, and transportable identity. In co-constitutive processes (Miller 2013), participants co-construct impoliteness and identity, strategically initiating and assessing potential impoliteness acts to assert and reject identity claims.

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