Performing the lesson: A linguistic-performative model of classroom affect

This article develops a linguistic-performative model of classroom affect for second language (L2) and multilingual educational settings. It conceptualizes teaching as a semiotic performance in which emotional orientations are not merely expressed but interactionally accomplished through discourse, prosody, and embodied pedagogical cues. The article is conceptual and theoretical in orientation, integrating insights from pragmatics, discourse analysis, affect theory, performance studies, and classroom interaction research. It identifies a set of key semiotic resources—intonation, deixis, metaphor, rhythm, repetition, silence, and discourse markers—through which teachers enact, regulate, and recalibrate affect in classroom interaction. To illustrate the model, the study uses analytically reconstructed vignettes based on recurrent patterns documented in prior classroom discourse research. These cases illustrate how rapport, authority, reassurance, engagement, and misalignment may emerge through the moment-to-moment organization of pedagogical talk. Analytically, the article reframes affect as an interactional accomplishment rather than a background psychological variable. Pedagogically, it argues that emotional literacy, classroom presence, and prosodic awareness should be treated as core professional competencies in teacher education. The model thus offers a vocabulary and framework for future transcript-based, multimodal, and pedagogical research on affect in language classrooms.