Keynote speakers

LI Jia, PhD

Professor

English Department

Yunnan University

Keynote Title

Borderland Gaze: Reimagining Peripheral Language Learning

Bio

Dr Jia Li is Professor of Applied Sociolinguistics at Yunnan University. Her research examines multilingualism and the socioeconomic inclusion of linguistically marginalised populations within the shifting paradigm of China’s regional integration and global expansion. She served as an Assistant Editor for the Journal of International Students (2020–2022), has been an Editorial Board Member for Multilingua since 2023, and will become Co-Editor-in-Chief for Multilingua in 2027.\

Abstract

While previous studies on peripheral multilingualism have illuminated how centre-periphery dynamics shape language practices and identity negotiations in minority contexts, the existing scholarship remains largely anchored in Northern peripheries and does not adequately account for the historical and contemporary complexities of Southern margins. This study shifts the analytical focus to China’s southwest borderlands, an under-explored but transforming space evolving from a multi-ethnic periphery into a new center for expanding commercial and cultural interactions among communities, markets and places in China and mainland Southeast Asia. Drawing on a critical ethnography conducted between 2023 and 2025, the study collected data through participant observations, field notes, and semi-structured interviews with eight Chinese undergraduates majoring in Lao at a Chinese borderland university. The findings show that Lao language learning becomes a site of ideological contestation and creative negotiation. Specifically, the study reveals that Lao language learning opens a space for challenging dominant linguistic hierarchies through geopolitical and ethnic recalibration, for relinking borderland knowledges that modern nation-states have fragmented, and for fostering an ethics-oriented solidarity that shifts language learning from individual accumulation to community care. These three interconnected dimensions constitute what we term the borderland gaze, a conceptual tool for reimagining peripheral multilingualism as a situated way of seeing, knowing, and acting that arises from the geopolitical specificities, historical kinships, and multilingual realities of the China-Laos periphery. By foregrounding the tensions between state agendas, market demands, and community ethics, this study underscores the necessity of a critically oriented language pedagogy that navigates students’ pragmatic aspirations while cultivating reciprocal consciousness and mutual care. Taken together, the study offers an alternative construct of multilingualism as it unfolds within the highly porous and rapidly evolving borderland communities of the Global South.

Key words: peripheral multilingualism, borderland gaze, Lao language learning, China’s southwest borderlands

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