An Exploration of the Time Element in the Linguistic Landscape and Reconstructing Culture: The Case of Langtou Village in China

Abstract

The tourism industry has penetrated traditional Chinese villages, where the linguistic landscape reflects a dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary culture, thereby redefining the transformation of China's rural cultural ecology. The researchers gathered 475 images of the linguistic landscape through fieldwork in Langtou Village and conducted a qualitative investigation within the context of Chinese cultural history and village history. Based on Huebner's (2008) speaking model, researchers investigated the potential influence of time elements in the linguistic landscape on the cultural reconstruction of the village. We conclude that the linguistic landscape of Langtou Village encompasses seven types of time elements, which essentially observe content time, creation time, and feature time. The commonalities or differences among these elements give rise to time trajectories that influence the cultural reconstruction of Langtou Village. One is the cultural reconstruction of cherishing memory, which perpetuates historical information. Another is the cultural reconstruction of combining moments, which amalgamates contemporary culture and poses the risk of inauthenticity in historical villages. The study suggests that the distribution of time elements in linguistic landscapes exhibits hierarchy in real settings, which is related to the spatial regularity induced by the village's historical information. We believe that adopting a time-element-oriented perspective can deliver new recommendations for the linguistic landscape planning of traditional Chinese villages. This research inspires readers to comprehend the essence of the relationship between rural linguistic landscapes and cultural ecology, specifically: what is the smallest unit of interaction between historical and contemporary culture in the context of reconstruction?