Between regulation and practice: the linguistic landscape of Jiegao on the China–Myanmar borderland

This article examines the linguistic landscape of Jiegao Border Trade Zone on the China–Myanmar borderland. Drawing on Trumper-Hecht’s physical, political and experiential dimensions, it combines photographic documentation of public signs, analysis of language regulations and interviews with Chinese and Burmese business owners, Burmese migrant workers and Chinese visitors. The results show that Chinese and Burmese shape the core communicative order of Jiegao in different ways. Chinese retains institutional prominence, whereas Burmese gains visibility through cross-border trade and routine interaction. English, by contrast, plays a more limited, largely symbolic role. The study further shows that the relationship between regulation and practice is best understood as a negotiated order, in which official norms are adjusted to the communicative demands of commerce and practice. It also argues that language visibility is domain-specific and that multilingual signs are better analysed in terms of graded accessibility. The article contributes to borderland linguistic landscape research by foregrounding how multilingual public space works under conditions of trade, mobility and uneven literacy.