“They” as a discursive marker of curricular authority: Co–constructing chronotopes in early mathematics education

In this study, we examine how “they,” a linguistic marker frequently invoked by children and their teacher, mediated curricular authority and organized classroom dynamics in a first-grade mathematics classroom. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes and an interactional ethnographic framework, we analyze across ten weeks of classroom interactions to uncover how “they” signals boundaries of engagement, aligns directives with curricular logics, and structures rhythms of participation. Our findings show that “they” linguistically structurs how time, space, and participation were organized: signaling the source of mathematical content, guiding procedural timing, and defining what counted as doing mathematics. Children and their teacher co-constructed a classroom chronotope in which “they” narrated the sequence and pacing of tasks, directing children’s movement through curricular time. By analyzing the discursive signaling of “they,” we illuminate how linguistic patterns embed institutional logics into everyday classroom activity, shaping children’s roles, participation, and access to mathematical meaning-making.