Sustainable rural and language tourism for valorisation of farming communities, traditional vocabulary and culture of Madeira Island

This study aims to show the importance of rurality with its local intangible cultural heritage, including the linguistic heritage of Madeira Island, for sustainability and identity of agricultural places — preserving traditional Madeiran culture and the language that is inseparable from the community’s rural activities. The methodology used in this qualitative study involved collecting lexical data representing sociocultural realities: vocabulary of agricultural food products and traditional culinary practices, present in the written corpus of Silva’s (2021) book. Data processing was done through the traditional words referenced in the texts of local life stories of elders, collected through fieldwork in isolated localities of Campanario in Ribeira Brava municipality, allowing knowledge of Madeiran rural communities’ ancestral and actual vocabulary repertoire. The results show the importance of language for expressing and transmitting the heritage of farming places. The selected culture-loaded words and expressions from the two thematic groups of interrelated subjects were: 52 names of traditional agricultural practices, and 39 of culinary practices. The study highlights the richness of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Madeira’s rural communities and underscores the importance of valuing and safeguarding this Intangible Cultural Heritage to reinforce Madeira’s identity as a sustainable tourism destination, while diversifying the island’s tourism experiences and cultural offerings.