"Constructing the other: discursive processes in academic and social labelling"

This contribution is based on a videotaped corpus collected in Italian primary and secondary schools as part of a national inter-university project on classroom discourse. The project focuses on links between the discursive and participatory practices activated in classrooms and pupils' learning and social outcomes. The contribution presents a paradigmatic situation, which exemplifies the way in which discourse practices "construct reality". In this specific case, the "reality" in question is a boy's identity in a multicultural educational context.