Public-facing statements about anti-racism and linguistic justice have become common tools for educational organizations to promote values of criticality and openness. Such statements often explicitly reject practices that equate language difference with deficit and continue to harm marginalized groups that speak languages or use pronouns that fall outside of the “mainstream.” As with all language policies, enacting such statements is far from straightforward as individual social actors bring to bear their own experiences and interpretations of the policy. Drawing on the methodological framework of nexus analysis and theoretical foundations regarding the re-entextualization of language ideologies, this dissertation examines one US university writing center’s language statement as it seeks to decenter English-dominant standard language ideologies and to promote inclusive language practices in the center.In particular, this study highlights how four writing center consultants interpreted and appropriated the statement in diverse ways. Data sources included documents related to onboarding and training, extended semi-structured interviews about consultants’ prior experiences with language difference and consulting practices, audio-recorded observations and field notes of hour-long writing consultations, participant journals, and post-observation reflection interviews. A poststructural, multi-scalar discourse analysis revealed tensions between policy and practice, as well as several profiles of ideological negotiation within the consultants. Discourses valuing competition, excellence, and expertise at the university level came into tension with discourses of relationality and collaboration within the writing center. In response to requests to correct clients’ grammar, consultants developed and revised practices that re-entextualized their past experiences with language diversity as well as the center’s policies about language. The choices to accept or challenge expertise positioning and agree or refuse to make direct edits on clients’ writing were identified as key moments where consultants (re)created discursive relationships between their actions and institutional discourses about language use.Educational institutions seeking to support linguistic diversity through such value-laden language policies should also develop reflective and collaborative tools to assist its members in navigating these ideological tensions. The study lends continued support to using language ideology as an invaluable conceptual tool for administrators and educators interested in grappling with complex social problems.
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