ABSTRACT
The college experience is made more equitable when all students’ voices are given attention and respect in educational environments. This chapter highlights language as a central factor in student preparation and success in higher education, particularly for African-American students, based on 80 interviews with African-American college students at several Minority-Serving, Historically Black, and Predominantly White universities in Maryland and in California. Participant feedback reveals that African-American students frequently face linguistic bias and may benefit from additional support and guidance as they navigate the linguistic terrain of higher education. Information shared from additional interviews with African-American students who have taken courses in linguistics demonstrate the impact of education about language and culture on students’ academic opportunities and social lives. These findings help create a model of assessment for what linguistic information African-American students need to be successful in higher education and how faculty can help to establish pathways for students to dialogically access content about language, culture, and education within the collegiate curriculum in ways that connect their personal linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences to empirical, academic knowledge about linguistic inequalities in higher education.
