“They talk like they’re from the South, I think?” “Is it okay if I guess that my partner is Black?” “What is ‘Yemen’?? Never heard of it.” Questions like these were the result of a 2025 “language exchange” completed by 224 middle and high school students in 4 different parts of the U.S.: Chicago, IL; Dearborn, MI; Atlanta, GA; and Derby, CT. Initially, these questions may sound jarring and even uncomfortable, but ultimately I believe they reflect the kind of honest curiosity essential for developing critical language awareness. 

As BLTN Change fellows, Jessie Yanes (MA ’24) (and her colleague, Kristin Parry), Caroline Stewart, and I, partnered with Erin Tabor (MA ’23). This was the fourth iteration of a project originally created by Erin and Leslie Schallock, who developed this mini-unit after taking Dr. Baker Bell’s course Anti-Racist Writing Pedagogy. 

The goal of this language exchange was to invite students to examine the concepts of accentism, dialect, language, and linguistic prejudice, and then to analyze how these invisible social structures impact everyone. Central to this project was our desire to invite students to go a step beyond conceptual thinking and to participate in an authentic experience that would challenge them to observe these realities in real time, in their own lives. 

We undertook this project over the course of two weeks in January 2025. For the first week, students spent time learning about and discussing accentism, dialect, language, and linguistic prejudice in their individual classrooms. To ground students’ explorations and discussions of these concepts, we used resources like The New York Times Dialect Quiz, the “Talk American” episode of the CodeSwitch podcast, and histories of different American accents.

The week after, students participated in their language exchange. The process went like this. First, students recorded a speech sample for a mystery partner in another state. Then, students listened to their mystery partner’s speech sample, analyzed their speech, and made guesses about their partner’s geographic location, race, gender, age, interests, etc.

Next, students received a “Who Am I?” reveal slide from their partner and reflected on the assumptions they made about their partner based solely on language/dialect/accent:

Finally, students wrote a letter to their partner, reflecting on their experience in this exchange and what they learned:

This was a rich experience and every single one of my students was so engaged in this process: they have asked significant questions not only about how they perceive others based upon language, but also about how they are perceived by others on the basis of language. This exchange led them to critically think about the ways that power and systems have shaped and reinforced linguistic prejudice. At the same time, this exchange also prompted them to self-reflect on building their linguistic awareness to combat these social pressures. We found it both rewarding and meaningful. 

The impact was perhaps most evident in the reflective letters that students wrote to one another, as seen in the letter above and below, written by my seniors in Chicago. These are students who typically “hate” writing and find it a very frustrating task. In addition to this exchange leading to its intended outcomes in terms of critical language awareness, it was a fantastic surprise to see this exchange invite students into the act of writing as a means for sincere connection across race, gender, and geography. My students were eager to write letters to their partners, carefully analyzing their language and wording to communicate with someone in a different place. They found a lot of meaning in writing and receiving a letter as well, especially as many of my students have very limited exposure to or experience with folks outside of the neighborhood or city in which they live.

After the exchange, Erin, Kristin, Caroline, Jessie, and I held a debrief meeting and all spoke so highly of the experience and would be excited to do it again. We brainstormed ways to extend the unit by including more literature and research to supplement the discussions around linguistic awareness. We discussed adding in My Fair Lady, articles on how language practices may signal (and lead to prejudice) on the basis of class and socioeconomic status, as well as adding in more opportunities for students to have more conversations with their partners outside of the one letter they send. 

Part of what made this exchange so rewarding and beneficial was having teachers from different geographic areas with diverse student populations; logistically, the geographical differences were not as big of an issue as we anticipated and were in fact a key to making this so successful. In our reflection, we all discussed how many of our students had never thought (or even heard) about Lebanon, Yemen, or Iraq, which is where most of the students in Dearborn, MI, are from. Additionally, all my students are Black, and other teachers were discussing how this led to conversations about why some of them felt uncomfortable making assumptions about race based on a speech sample. Importantly, linguistics and racial politics are closely intertwined, and this project allowed for reflective conversations in this area.

My students still talk about this project months later, and they are noticeably more aware of their own language practices, as well as others’. They are equipped with the awareness and vocabulary for describing the language practices they hear around them, and they make frequent observations of how linguistic prejudice is at work in their lives and community. With this awareness of accentism and linguistic prejudice, however, also comes power: to make the conscious effort to notice and welcome difference, to value how our ways of speaking mark the rich histories and people we come from.