You don’t need to prove yourself: A raciolinguistic perspective on Chinese international students’ academic language anxiety and ChatGPT use

• ChatGPT exacerbates language anxiety among Chinese international students. • Further reliance occurs due to ChatGPT’s response mode and readers’ biased policing. • Raciolinguistic ideologies work with negative figures of personhood in AI policing. • Internalized academic English norms engage racialized students in self-policying. Adopting a raciolinguistic perspective, this study examines the Chinese international students’ anxiety on academic English writing under ChatGPT use and AI policing. As the baseline of language proficiency and a gatekeeper to academic achievement, academic English stands as the exclusive linguistic standard within academia. Chinese international students in the U.S. often experience different levels of anxiety in academic English writing as they are usually perceived as outsiders and linguistically deficient. In this context, AI language refining tools like ChatGPT have become a popular tool for such students to “standardize” their academic English writing. While these tools “improve” the quality of writing to some extent, they in fact exacerbate linguistic insecurity and language anxiety, because of their native-like response mode and readers’ biased policing. Through analysis of the interview data and human-AI interaction data provided by 18 Chinese international students in a U.S. graduate program, this study reveals the structural challenges faced by bilingual international students as they navigate academia in the era of ChatGPT. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding requirement of academic English proficiency and racialized speakers’ experiences of being subjugated and engaging in self-policing in academic settings.