Maastikukuvand eesti keeles
The concept of landscape in Estonian language

Summary/Abstract: Landscape is a central concept in geography with a well-established definition. However, little is known about how landscape is conceptualised by the speakers of Estonian. This article examines how landscape is discussed in ordinary language. The analysis of a free-listing task indicates that landscape is most often associated with natural phenomena. However, a qualitative content analysis of responses to the question ‘What is landscape?’ reveals a different pattern: for Estonian-speakers, landscape is conceptualised as both a natural and a human-made phenomenon. Landscape is described equally often as an area of land and as an environment, although for some respondents, it is also linked to a perceptual or even a personal experience. Older participants produced a larger number of landscape-related terms, suggesting change in the lexical composition of the semantic field, possibly related to a decline in activities carried out in the landscape. In addition, the findings indicate that landscape terms do not constitute a homogeneous semantic field comparable to that of colour terms, body parts, or musical instruments.

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