Landscape as text
Landscape as text

Summary/Abstract: From the mid-1980s, the textual paradigm ignited a representational approach toward landscape within human geography. In this context, human geographers largely used the metaphor of landscape as text. Due to a rigid concept of text, this research assumed that landscapes could manifest selective worldviews and dominant discourses of power. Subsequently, human geographers refashioned the notion of landscape as text. The proposal was to consider landscapes as actors able to produce and transform meanings. The task was to uncover the hidden, dominant meanings represented in landscape representations in favour of underrepresented cultural meanings. Despite the promising proposals, geographers especially focused on the meanings of the author of landscape texts, while underestimating the multifaceted interpretations of readers. Likewise, traditional semiotic analysis considered text as an immutable, coherent system of signification produced by a prior authored utterance. In response, this paper advances an approach to include the alternative and unexpected meanings embodied in landscape texts. Following recent developments in semiotic theory, this paper proposes a suitable concept of landscape as text to explain the complexity and the unpredictability of contemporary everyday landscapes.

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