The Need to Create a “Virtual Campus”: Translingual Practice and Community Building in Virtual Linguistic Landscape

Abstract

This study examines the role of virtual linguistic landscapes (VLL) in shaping a “virtual campus” through an analysis of the “985 Five (Rubbish/Loser) Recruitment Project” on Douban. Adopting Digital Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA 2.0), we investigate how translingual parodies, marked by intertextuality, playfully create a “virtual campus.” Within this virtual space, university students share experiences of failure, emotional struggles, and desires for mutual support, thereby fostering in-group solidarity. The research demonstrates how students creatively and critically mobilize their semiotic repertoire to negotiate precarious identities and subtly resist the dominant narrative within the meritocratic system in Chinese higher education. Furthermore, the study reveals how transpositioning through translingual practices in online communities empowers struggling university students, allowing a dialogic space for humor, resilience, reflection, and criticism that challenges traditional power structures and envisions a more inclusive society.