This article argues that our course descriptions may perpetuate White language supremacy (WLS) by regularly using specific terms and policing racialized student populations for written standardness more so than White student populations.

Although standard language ideologies have been well researched and theorized, the practices that lead to the reproduction and enactment of these ideologies deserve attention. Specifically, there remains a need to study language that both reveals reliance on standard language ideologies and perpetuates these ideologies within the field of writing studies, undermining the field’s efforts to challenge standard English’s ongoing privileged position. This article examines the role of language in perpetuating perceptions of standard English as linguistically neutral regardless of personal or field-wide views about linguistic equality and the value of linguistic diversity. Specifically, I describe the discursive practices of standard language ideologies—what I term standard language discourse—that allow for a positioning of standard English as normal, natural, non-interfering, and widely accessible. Finally, I explore how to resist or challenge this positioning.

This article explores the indexicality (the ideological process that links language and identity) of “standard” edited American English and the ideologies (specifically, standard language ideology and Whiteness) that work to create and justify common patterns that associate privileged White students with written standardness and that disassociate underrepresented—especially African American—students from “standard” edited American English. Drawing on interviews with composition instructors about their readings of anonymous student texts, the author argues that indexicality and standardness are mutually informative: The non/standard features of student texts operate as indexicals for student-author identities just as perceived student-author identities influence the reading of a text as non/standard. Ultimately, this article offers inroads to challenging destructive and enduring indexical patterns that offer unearned privilege to some students at the expense of others and, in the process, perpetuate race- and class-based privilege.AQ Note that APA style capitalizes Black and White.

In this article, we offer practical suggestions for teaching writing to diverse groups of students who represent the fields of composition studies, basic writing, and ESL.