this ethnographic case study research was carried out in a private school setting in the context of iran. the research tried to explore the analysis and identity construction of a group of learners and teachers along with the content analysis of books on the basis of four types of commodified, political, national and narrative identities. how english language learners and teachers in an informal context construct identities and what are the possible factors affecting this construction were the main purposes of this study. theoretically, the research drew upon the dialogical theory of bakhtin (1981), especially the notions of authoritative and persuasive discourse along with some other theories on different types of identites. methodologically, the research employed an ethnographic research method. in this respect, the data analysis was informed by content analysis, discourse analysis and narrative analysis. following norton & early (2011), we selected a qualitative ethnographic methodology through in-depth observations, transcriptions, interviews, and questionnaires, among other ethnographic tools such as monthly journal entries by teachers and learners about their classes and any noteworthy cultural identity-related experiences, audio- or videotaped, field notes, narratives, review and analysis of instructional materials or artifacts and the participant-observer’s research journal. following gee (2011), we used broad transcripts. in regard to commodified identities, the results of the content analysis of the textbooks, teachers and learners data showed the existence and construction of commodified identities, though there were intra and inter variations among the teachers responses regarding commodified identities. the results of the content analysis of the textbooks, teachers and learners data in the political identities section showed that the cases of our study had some political identities in one way or another which was not very changeable, but the construction of such identities was not very highlighted. in line with national identities, the results of the content analysis of the textbooks showed that majority of the topics, dialogues and names were in favor of the british and american, the authors discourse was more persuasive and they just presented the data; the teachers were not aware of the political ideology projected and the analysis of the learners data showed that they were influenced by the textbooks contents in one way or another. finally, the narrative study invoking two key bakhtinian concepts, chronotope and authoritative/persuasive discourse, tried to show the interplay of identities six efl teachers and six learners assumed through the narrative inquiry. based on the analysis and coding of the data, four chronotopes were distinguished for the teachers and two chronotopes for the learners. this section of the study showed that both discourse type and chronotope were key distinguishing factors in teachers and learners constructions of multiple identities. teachers were different both in the discourse type and the kind of chronotopes, though the discourse types and the chronotopes were fused together. the learners, both females and males also had some similarities and differences in terms of chronotopes and the discourse types. the study thus supported the use of a dialogic framework and also offered some implications for pedagogy and future research.