Within sociolinguistics, education is considered a key site for the increasingly commodifying effects of language under late capitalism (Heller, 2010). This study aims to contribute knowledge about how teachers’ language epistemologies are shaped by the material conditions of their work by examining the case of so-called Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) in Sweden. Students of migrant backgrounds and national minorities can opt to follow the MTI curriculum, resulting in the meeting of innovative language practices and standardised criteria. Applying Bourdieu’s (2006) theory of analogous circulations of symbolic and economic capital in fields, I examine the embodied and objectified capital of MTI teachers, whose field positions predispose them to particular ideas about standard language use(rs). Bourdieusian sociology complements language materiality research in exploring how commodification and language ideology intertwine (Shankar & Cavanaugh, 2017; Heller & McElhinny, 2017). My research question asks what forms of capital are exchanged within the MTI market, and how exchanges shape teachers’ predispositions towards their and each other’s languages. The method was discursive shadowing (Dewilde and Creese, 2016) of ten teachers from three language centres across Sweden. I recorded audio and wrote field notes when following teachers into schools, observing planning sessions, and conducting teacher focus group interviews. Findings showed an inherent market competitiveness, since language instruction is ordered according to hourly demand. Forms of capital included teaching materials, planning time, class sizes, number of schools, parent engagement, and number of teachers within languages. Teachers planned within language groups, with sporadic opportunities for collaboration over language borders. A coherent MTI community is difficult due to no national training program, off-timetable classes and teachers being in different schools. Material differences became salient indicators of a linguistic hierarchy, expressed as “linguistic jealousy”, teachers coveted the material conditions of other languages. How this was expressed among teachers will be discussed further.