Language Ideologies of Racial Microaggression and Institutional Whiteness: Experiences of Chinese International Students in UK Higher Education

Abstract

This paper explores how language intersects with race in shaping the experience of Chinese international students in UK higher education (HE). Through the lenses of racial microaggression, critical race theory, and raciolinguistic ideologies, the study analyzes interviews and written diaries from Chinese students at a public research university. It reveals three language ideologies rooted in white supremacy: the ideology of English-only, the ideology of incompetence, and the ideology of exclusion. These ideologies manifest in everyday interactions and institutional practices, positioning Chinese students as the inferior Other and reproducing the university as a white space. However, these ideologies are sometimes internalized by students who reproduce their own raciolinguistic inferiority. The article argues that students’ racial experiences are embedded in the racial logics of the internationalization of HE and the racial hierarchies of knowledge construction, which sustain and rely on white English supremacy as a multi-scalar and transnational endeavor.