The research of Phuong & Cioè-Peña (2022) and Smith (2019) demonstrates that language in educational settings always carries racial, disability-related, and power-based connotations. Both authors demonstrate that language serves as a tool for determining which students are perceived as belonging and which are excluded. Phuong & Cioè-Peña introduce the Critical Disabilities Raciolinguistic (CDR) framework to show how linguistic differences are pathologized, labeling students of color as disabled (p. 133). Similarly, Smith uses Jaeda’s story to illustrate how accent-based bullying forced her to constantly alter her English to meet white standards of acceptance (p. 296).
These findings resonate with my own experiences. In high school, some of my classmates hid their native language because teachers implied it would create “confusion.” The way teachers treated Dan’s Spanish in Phuong & Cioè-Peña’s study as a disability marker while framing English as “growth” (p. 138) mirrors this same form of language policing. Students internalized the idea that their natural speech patterns required correction instead of being valued as assets.
Smith’s use of positioning theory also clarified for me how students internalize and uphold social hierarchies of language. Jaeda learned to shift her English between academic and social settings as a survival strategy (pp. 297–298). I remember peers doing the same—adopting “classroom English” during lessons, then slipping back into their original accents at lunch. These shifts were not just about communication but about self-protection, what Smith calls maintaining one’s “personhood,” against erasure.
Both readings also highlight how schools reinforce these patterns under the guise of support. Phuong & Cioè-Peña note that deficit-based views of language often extend into the home, where parents begin monitoring their children’s speech (pp. 139–140). Many immigrant parents push their children to master “perfect” English as a shield against discrimination, but this comes at the cost of disconnecting them from their native language.
Together, these texts prompt me to consider how schools can create conditions that enable students to preserve their native languages while also gaining access to academic English. Teachers must find ways to resist reproducing the white gaze that marks certain languages as inadequate and elevates others as “standard.” Protecting multilingual student identities requires confronting these structural patterns and reshaping how language is valued in education.