Linguistic diversity is a defining feature of Swedish schools, where a substantial proportion of pupils have amigration background, underscoring the need for teachers who can support pupils with diverse linguisticexperiences. Teacher education programmes have nevertheless been criticized for insufficiently preparingstudent teachers for multilingual classrooms. This study examines how teacher educators in primary schoolteacher education programmes at three Swedish universities conceptualise language and multilingualismwithin their disciplines and how they express critical multilingual awareness (CMLA) in their teaching. Thestudy is grounded in a critical and dynamic understanding of language(s), in which CMLA highlights thesocial, political, and economic conditions shaping linguistic diversity. The empirical material consists ofindividual interviews with 21 teacher educators. The findings show that although teacher educators generallyacknowledge the importance of linguistic diversity and often view multilingualism as a resource, their criticalawareness of the wider conditions influencing it remains limited. Multilingualism is frequently framed as achallenge linked to subject-specific linguistic demands, while broader social and political dimensions oflanguage are less visible. Overall, the findings indicate a need to strengthen critical perspectives on languagein teacher education to better support linguistic diversity in schools.