Enrolment statistics indicate that while the cultural and linguistic landscape of Australian higher education continues to be enriched by widening participation and internationalization, ongoing patterns of underrepresentation of students from traditionally excluded, equity groups persist. There is a need for sector-wide, strengths-based engagement with language as both a complex and dynamic manifestation of sociocultural identities, and a key intersectional factor that shapes participation and inclusion in higher education. This article reports on research regarding an underexplored aspect of this topic: academic staff engagement with institutional language support services. In this small-scale study, participants recounted experiences that suggest nuanced and complex factors related to identity, community, and historically entrenched, linguistically mediated power relations inform their practices. The study offers valuable insights into the complexities of language in higher education, the need for critical conversations about linguistic hierarchies in academia, and the importance of institution-wide, strengths-based engagement with multilingual/multidialectal students' linguistic repertoires.