To support emergent bilinguals in the content area classroom, applied linguists suggest teachers add metalinguistic conversations to their pedagogical repertoire. However, such language-centered pedagogies may become difficult to enact when a teacher sees language at the word level. This comparative teacher case study explores how teacher Pedagogical Language Knowledge was observed in two upper elementary teachers working with emergent bilinguals in the social studies classroom. Through a novel discourse analytic scheme that traces a teacher's linguistic dispositions, I examine the relationship between beliefs about language and instructional practice that reveal teachers place a disproportionate emphasis on vocabulary study. Findings endorse professional support initiatives that allow teachers to explore their histories as language learners while offering sustained exposure to how non-lexical features of academic language may be embedded into disciplinary instruction.