{"id":16435,"date":"2026-10-13T11:30:59","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=16435"},"modified":"2026-10-26T11:26:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T16:26:58","slug":"on-the-wrong-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/on-the-wrong-road\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Wrong Road to Linguistic Justice: Exploring the Role of GenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Hidy Basta, Seattle University<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a transnational translingual academic, I\u2019m used to spending an unfair<\/em> share of emotional energy worrying whether I have missed a subject verb agreement somewhere, if that \u201cerror\u201d would jeopardize my belonging\u2014if it would undermine what I\u2019ve written. I appreciate the helpful tools of my word processor\u2014the swirly red lines signaling me to take another look. This is a technology I could trust even as I tend to dismiss a lot of its suggestions because I believe I\u2019m intentional or perhaps just stubborn. I don\u2019t think I would trust generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to edit my writing: I prefer to have my written accent, to own my own words, to be grateful to the careful eyes of my trusted human editors and their refreshing sense of humor, and also to access water. I have the luxury of time, and I don\u2019t mind spending it doing work I love. I acknowledge both my privilege and my internalized anxieties.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the director of the writing center in my institution, my anxieties help me appreciate the concerns with which our clients consistently select \u201csentence level structure and grammar\u201d as the highest priority for their writing center visit\/use. My anxieties also helped me understand why there was much promise in the GenAI tools purporting to level the playing field for multilingual writers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, writing center practices undermined the concerns for grammar and mechanics as lower order concerns\u2014far less important than the higher order of structure and organization. As we have benefited from the critical scholarship that applies linguistic justice to writing center practice (eg. Condon<\/a>; Denny and Towle<\/a>; Faison<\/a>; Garcia<\/a>; Grimm<\/a>; Green<\/a>; Greenfield<\/a>, among many others), we\u2019ve begun to acknowledge clients’ concerns for grammar and mechanics. However,  this acknowledgment doesn\u2019t lead to a predetermined decision to conform to Standard Academic English (SAE). We don\u2019t know how to \u201ccorrect\u201d things. Instead, writing consultants often engage in meaning making conversations, encourage writers to own their agency, consider their rhetorical choices, and explore the possibilities, etc. It\u2019s an uncertain and a time-consuming process. GenAI outputs do this process in split seconds\u2014the conformity to language of power is not carefully considered or negotiated; it\u2019s rather oppressively normalized. The outputs are efficiently decisive.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Pull<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

No wonder, the decisive conformity brought about by LLMs in programs like Grammarly, and ChatGPT, among others, seemed to respond more \u201cefficiently\u201d to students\u2019 requests. As the MLA\/CCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI capture the advantages of the emerging technology as a way to level the playing field by promising  \u201c[w]riters who come from diverse and various linguistic and educational backgrounds [to] benefit from the more sophisticated grammar, style, and genre editing capabilities of LLMs by receiving access to the \u2018language of power\u2019\u201d (MLA\/CCCC, 2023<\/a>, p.9). I was surprised that I found no comfort in this purported promise\u2014not as a translingual writer, not as a writing center administrator, and not as a writing instructor. The statement of purported benefit echoes standard language ideology in assuming that the \u201clanguage of power\u201d is actually \u201cmore sophisticated<\/em>\u201d than the linguistic resources of the language diversity and linguistic backgrounds. Linguistic justice is not the same as linguistic access, and we shouldn\u2019t confuse the two in our practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity and Pedagogy<\/em><\/a>, April Baker-Bell explains that \u201c[linguistic justice] is about dismantling Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic hegemony and supremacy in classrooms and in the world\u201d (7). Linguistic justice is about linguistic human rights. It\u2019s about Students\u2019 Right to Their Own Language<\/a>. It\u2019s about Black Linguistic Justice<\/a>. I seriously doubt that GenAI can level the playing field any more than the adherence to standard academic English (SAE) does. Indeed, the similarities in the failure of both to achieve linguistic justice are striking.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Pull<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Both (1) normalize language dominance, (2) make translingual and racialized writers seem suspect, and (3) use self-fulfilling inevitability arguments limiting the legitimacy of more linguistically just frameworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) Normalization of Language Dominance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In her chapter, \u201cThe \u2018Standard English\u2019 Fairy Tale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies  and Commonplace Assumptions about Language Diversity<\/a>\u201d Laura Greenfield reminds us that standard language is an idealized and imagined version that approximates the language of the privileged, often white, hetero, middle class, and male speakers. The idealized standardized version is often replicated to give logic to the unjustifiable oppression of the racialized speakers. Julia Lee and colleagues<\/a> describe the ways in which large language models are trained in large data sets that are representative mostly of privileged standard English which further normalizes its dominance and marginalizes different varieties. The ubiquity of the standardized\/white linguistic features, styles, genres come to represent the legitimate discourse of academic writing and in doing so dismisses marginalized varieties. A good example is Alfred Owusu-Ansah<\/a>\u2019s exploration of the ways in which GenAI reflected standard language ideology when it told him that \u201cwhile it is possible to write an academic paper in Ghanaian English, it is important to use standard English grammar\u201d (144). When further prompted to use Ghanaian English, the output was a fictionalized stereotyped pidgin. Owusu-Ansah demonstrates how GenAI tools are trained to echo the colonialist language ideology that privileges white and western varieties while dismissing others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Racialized and Translingual Writers are Made Suspect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even when translingual and multidialectal speakers perform assimilation, their linguistic production is often suspect. Greenfield<\/a> cites several instances where racialized writers who wrote \u201cperfect\u201d English were often suspected of plagiarism. To be clear, I don\u2019t mean to suggest that racialized and translingual writers can\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t claim standard English as their own. I mean to assert that even doing so is no guarantee of acceptance of their legitimacy. Greenfield argues that the skepticism grounded in SAE ideology doesn\u2019t make space for bilingual\/bidialectal speakers to be proficient in SAE as well as their home language. Their performance in standard English is \u201cnot viewed as bilingual but as a contradiction<\/em> (53, emphasis in original). I believe the same mechanism works in using GenAI tools. Multilingual students\u2019 texts are more scrutinized as demonstrated in several studies among which \u201cWho Wrote This Essay?\u201d<\/a> Plagiarism deduction programs are known to also falsely flag translingual writers for plagiarism.<\/a> Further, even the transparency and disclosure of GenAI use don\u2019t always earn the trust of the evaluator\/readers. One study on GenAI use on second language writing found that  even when GenAI use is clearly disclosed by students<\/a>, evaluators tended to score the essays that disclosed the use of GenAI lower due to multiple factors, among which is that the use hides the writers\u2019 actual language proficiency. Perhaps the saying should go \u201cit\u2019s not how you write, it\u2019s who you are.\u201d Neither the adherence to SAE nor the use of GenAI to facilitate such adherence seem to bypass linguistic prejudice.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no doubt that the emerging technology of GenAI plays and will play a role in the future of writing, but it won\u2019t bring about justice. Justice is about questioning the attitudes we hold on language diversity. If educators are so offended by students\u2019 use of GenAI to replace their \u201cauthentic\u201d language, then students shouldn\u2019t be penalized for their authentic language in their assessment. If educators are offended by students\u2019 use of GenAI in favor of producing a polished text that masks their messy learning process, then they should reward the learning process and make it more visible. If adherence to the monolingual polish of academic English is preferred, then assistive technology should be allowed (with a focus on educating students on documenting their rights to their intellectual properties). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(3) Racialized and Translingual Writers are Pressured to Adopt the Inevitability Argument for both Standard Academic English and GenAI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As SAE is peddled as the language of successful communication and GenAI tools as the future of writing, students often find little space to question the inevitability argument and to cherish their own voices in academic spaces.  When I asked my first-year composition students to define what academic writing is on a shared padlet, they agreed that academic writing was something that is very different from what they do\u2014a way to alienate them from their own voice. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Shoulder<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

With the emoji of \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d\u2014one of the most \u201cliked\u201d entries on the padlet was from a student who wrote \u201cI believe academic writing to be very restrictive in the ways it has been taught in traditional school systems. It has been taught to us that academic writing follows a harsh set of rules, which I ultimately see as a way of taking away the person behind the writing.<\/em> However, I also think it\u2019s useful, as it can help students gain better writing skills. Whether people like it or not just depends on their personal writing style\u201d (emphasis added). What struck me about this comment is the ways in which the writer (and most of the class) had unquestionably accepted what Bethany Davila describes as The Inevitability of \u201cStandard\u201d English<\/a>, despite acknowledging the ideological conventional tradition, the violence in the harshness, the alienation of the writer, and the exclusion of those who have a different \u201cpersonal\u201d writing style. Davila\u2019s study indicates that the standard edited language ideology is supported by discourses that promote it as \u201cnormal,\u201d \u201cnatural,\u201d \u201cnot-interfering,\u201d and \u201cwidely accessible.\u201d She proposes changes in the ways we discuss SAE, and purposefully using strategies implementing translingual strategies such as code-meshing (see Vershawn Ashanti Young\u2019s \u201cShould Writers Use They Own English\u201d<\/a>). Translingual writing, rhetorical grammar, critical language awareness are pedagogies that are often practiced in writing centers toward linguistic justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of GenAI in writing is often considered inevitable as well. Indeed, the argument for teaching GenAI literacy, much like the teaching of SAE, is about what future employers expect and require. While I understand the importance of teaching critical GenAI literacy in writing, I continue to be troubled by the assumption that the use of GenAI is the future of professional accomplishments. Perhaps it is, but it shouldn\u2019t come at the cost of linguistic self-denial. Examining case studies of GenAI use in professional settings shows that it\u2019s not a good replacement for linguistic justice and translingual approaches to communication. In her study, \u201cArticle laundry\u201d or \u201ctutor in pocket?<\/a>, Qianqian Zhang-Wu examines a case study of multilingual writers\u2019 generative AI-assisted writing in professional settings. She analyzes the case of Cara, a successful intern who was able to use GenAI tools brilliantly to accomplish her tasks during her virtual workdays. Her in-office days, however, brought a different experience of isolation. Cara didn\u2019t feel comfortable using GenAI tools in the office. She didn\u2019t feel comfortable hanging around with colleagues for fear that her language proficiency in English would be judged. She agonized over her decision to record the virtual meetings in order to take good notes. She was successful even exemplary by her internship criteria. The personal cost was social isolation and ethically questionable behaviors that troubled her. I wonder what if a linguistic justice framework was in place. What if Cara felt free to ask her colleagues permission for recording their fast-paced meetings? What if she felt comfortable asking for clarification, for time, for understanding and linguistic negotiation, or even for permission to use assistive GenAI tools? Why do successful professionals like Cara feel obligated to behave monolingually in their multilingual realities? In Cara\u2019s case, both standard language ideology and GenAI tools led to a distrust of her own voice, proficiency, and belonging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A linguistically just context is one in which people in academic and professional settings feel confident in negotiating their linguistic resources and identities? \u201c[C]ultivating\u2026 a sense of agency in combating, linguistically and otherwise, the injustices that they encounter along the way\u201d (Greenfield, 58) should be the goal of writing support. In my world, this context is the writing center. Writing centers can play an essential role in addressing the \u201ccrisis\u201d uncovered by the rise of GenAI. I\u2019m strangely optimistic because the emerging technology brings us to truly question what we should teach and what we should value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is much exciting work for the writing center to do.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The writing center practice could be the perfect antidote to the hegemony of standard language ideology that is otherwise normalized by the instantaneous outputs of GenAI. The writing center practice resists what Paul Matsuda calls the  myth of linguistic homogeneity<\/a>. By taking the time to deliberate with the client on the rhetorical options, the writing center supports students\u2019 agency and respects their linguistic resources which don\u2019t need to be sacrificed on the altar of \u201ccorrectness.\u201d The time-consuming back and forth during a consultation offers much needed space to explore and negotiate multiple possibilities. The practice cares that the writer is making an intentional choice rather than simply defaulting to excluding their linguistic resources and reproducing the standardized version. Linguistic justice is about dismantling language hegemony and language supremacy. The messy, slow, collaborative, and creative process in a writing conversation goes a long way toward dismantling what long has been normalized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For our work, I believe this means that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n