This study employed a metaphor analysis approach to investigate instructor language as it relates to the positioning of agency within a college developmental reading course context. Agency, or the socioculturally mediated potential to act, is a crucial part of self-regulated, self-efficacious learning and contributes to identity formation and affirmation. Understanding where agency is being positioned via classroom discourse can have important implications for the teaching and learning transaction, including the construction of students' implicit theories about their literacy practices and their roles as active learners. As a type of discourse analysis, metaphor analysis allows for an unobtrusive, highly ecologically valid method of determining the underlying conceptualisations about a given topic that are held by participants in discourse communities. The article concludes with pedagogical implications.