'Labor is the most glorious'1'Labor is the most glorious (劳动最光荣)', sometimes is translated as 'To work is glorious'.: Chronotopic linguistic landscaping and the making of working class identities2I am grateful to Jan Blommaert and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier versions of this paper. (September 2021) - Dong, Jie
Abstract: This paper draws on the notion of chronotope to investigate linguistic landscape (LL) signs of an urban migrant community on the out skirts of Beijing. Internal rural migrant workers have relocated to urban centers for labor-intensive jobs on a massive scale since the 1980s when China underwent rapid economic changes. While many migrant workers are pre-occupied with their jobs, some have built a community center to record their migrant histories, to voice their concerns as a marginalized social group and to construct their identity as legitimate workers. This paper argues that the LL signs of this migrant community center invoke multiple chronotopes and need to be understood in complex timespace frames. The analyses of three examples show that the migrant workers use painting and other creative ways of representation in public space to address their economic position and social identification in a globalizing China. Highlights: This article draws on the notion of chronotope to study LL signs of an urban migrant village on the out skirts of Beijing. It follows an ethnographically grounded approach in LL data collection and interpretation. The data show that multiple chronotopes are at play at different scales. It shows that the migrant workers use LL signs to address the socioeconomic inequalities and to make their voice heard.