Abstract：As a component of academic discourse power, academic evaluation plays a guiding role in academic practice. The influence of language on research has been increasingly prominent. However, existing studies in China on academic evaluation have paid inadequate attention to language factors. This study examined the language-related evaluation indicators in four authoritative university ranking systems at home and abroad and the assessment criteria for teachers’ academic competence in different types of universities in China. Investigating the explicit and invisible roles of language factors in the existing academic evaluation system and their transmission mechanisms from both institutional and individual perspectives, we find that the language practice in academic evaluation is implicit, subject to extra-linguistic factors such as economic, political and cultural factors, and intra-linguistic factors such as language management and language beliefs; explicit quantitative evaluation indicators play a major role in the transmission mechanism; and the dynamic adjustment of language policy in academic evaluation reflects the interaction between structure and agency. To enhance the international academic influence of Chinese and implement the General Plan for Deepening the Reform of Education Evaluation in the New Era, it is recommended that a reasonable transmission mechanism of language policy in academic evaluation should be established to optimize the evaluation system and achieve more power in the evaluation of academic discourse.
