Concluding remarks

Abstract

Concluding this issue of Sociolinguistic Studies on the crossing of the urban-rural border or divide in Linguistic Landscape research, this article takes up the questions formulated in the opening contribution by Yao and Xu. It thus addresses communicative affordances of rural vs. urban spaces, and sign-making and sign usage in rural areas. Drawing on the findings of the four studies from the Asian Pacific and Oceania included in this issue as well as the work by Charles Goodwin, this article suggests that Linguistic Landscape research of rural areas could pay more attention to how social practices of people build on each other, reuse the material culture accumulated in an environment by their predecessors and in this way develop certain types of infrastructure for its population, which changes the nature of rural space.