The digital resources targeted by digital humanities (DH) projects are usually archived and preserved as "archive". This has led to a conceptual expansion that goes beyond the defined scope of archival science, indicating a linguistic shift in archives in the digital age. Exploring this phenomenon could help bridge the research gap between both communities. Using internet research and content analysis methods, 51 cases about archival DH project were selected from the award-winning cases of the International Digital Humanities Award (DHA) from 2012 to 2022. Drawing on the social level analysis framework, this paper conducts coding and descriptive analysis of the cases, revealing the phenomenon of linguistic turn of archive in DH research. Through structured analysis and sorting, three significant characteristics are found: firstly, the concept of traditional archival terminology has expanded, i.e., an increasing number of digital products referring to themselves as 'archive'; secondly, the use of archival management methodologies, i.e., the project adopts archival principles or methods to carry out archiving; thirdly, the archival thinking abstracted from DH research provides ideas for project creation, operation and output. The research results further reflect that DH promotes an archival paradigm shift, while archival methods and thinking provide references for the sustainable development of DH projects.