“Come join us, and lose your accent!”

In this article, we examine the hierarchization of international students by bringing together perspectives linguistic legitimacy and language ideologies. Our data stems from 26 accent reduction (AR) or modification (AM) course descriptions websites US universities. Based on their analysis, discuss socio-political implications phenomenon these courses for ways in which language-based, particularly accent-based, arguments are used to create reinforce different categories students. We argue that while presented as having kinds “comprehensibility problems” AM/AR claimed remedy, seemingly marketing do not hold. Rather, what is an issue actually seems be ideological one, drawing students’ ethnic geographical origins, thereby racializing question proficiency.