This paper is derived from an ongoing longitudinal ethnographic study exploring Chinese doctoral students’ trajectories across different stages of their PhD programs. Guided by the South Theory and academic discourse socialisation frameworks, the original project aims to explore how doctoral students in their academic trajectories interact with complex nexus of communities and hierarchies. Using two excerpts from the larger dataset, this paper captures 1) the presence of essentialist assumptions premised upon Global North-South binaries, and 2) the embedded possibilities towards decolonisation-informed dispositions. These two data excerpts concern the most centred issue of the original project as well as the doctoral journey: academic writing and “academic language”, framing decolonisation-informed dispositions in deference to translingualism and multimodal repertoire-deploying communication. To that end, findings suggest the need for dismantling and reconceptualising what it can mean by such constructs as language structures, language prestige, and communication repertoire. While the original project explores decolonisation-informed training and support schemes for doctoral students in navigating their academic trajectories, this paper specifically invites further scholarly discussions on possibilities of cultivating awareness in day-to-day interactions.