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Temporalities of meaning making

Narrative productions of place and identity in rural Uganda and China

ORCiD logo with link | University of Wisconsin-Madison
 | Sichuan Agricultural University
Published online: 17 September 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.25160.ho
Abstract
Presenting two cases of rural communities in Uganda and China, this study explores time-space relations in narrative productions of place and identity. Drawing on walking interviews with youth in these communities conducted as part of a larger sociolinguistic research project on digital storytelling about local places, the notion of chronotopes is used as theoretical lens to understand how narratives of place are embedded in multiple scales and time-spaces of rurality and development. Findings show how relations between time-space are constructed in the talk of the youth in different ways, for example, either laminated to produce new hybrid spaces and identities or demarcated to reinforce distinctions between old/new, rural/urban. We discuss how a chronotopic lens can be used to understand sociolinguistics of mobility from a local perspective by illuminating the relations between the histories of places in relation to trajectories of change and development.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Spatial-temporal dimensions of meaning making
    • Chronotopic relations in narrative
  • Methodology
    • Research sites
      • The Ugandan site
      • The Chinese site
    • Data collection
    • Data analysis
  • Findings
    • Narratives of place in the Ugandan village
      • Positioning with different scales of Chronotopes in the forest
      • Narrative juxtaposition of time-spaces and hybrid rural identities
    • Narratives of place in the Chinese village
      • Competing narratives of rurality in the new village
      • New developments and rural (im)mobility
  • Discussion
  • References
References (44)
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