In this paper, we draw on data from world languages teachers (English, Spanish and French, in particular) to explore and unpack binaries encountered in their practice in relation to both culture and language. Specifically, we explore the fluid and the fixed, and the essential and the hybrid, within the classroom and world beyond. We theorise language and culture through the frame of the "assemblage," drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, to problematise the binaries which world languages educators engage as part of their practice.