ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes several instances of classroom discourse at the lyceum, technical institute, and vocational school over the span of an academic year and shows that students found many ways to perform academic ability and/or schooled expertise without playing entirely by their teachers’ rules. This chapter focuses not on what teachers considered high-quality student contributions, but on how students walked the line between being disruptive and participatory, and how they performed expertise for their peers without ruining their public image. In particular, the chapter draws on Rymes’s (2010) concept of communicative repertoire and Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of double-voicing to consider how students draw on distinctly non-school elements when engaging with official classroom discourse and demonstrating their knowledge of how to “do school” while nonetheless maintaining their carefully curated social personae.
