What maps mean to people: Denotation, connotation, and geographic visualization in land-use debates

Abstract

People read meanings into maps that go well beyond the literal identification of the entities and relations represented. In traditional cartography it is generally not possible to represent the diverse connotations people may assign to what is denoted on a map, nor would this be desirable in most map-use contexts. There are however cases, as in conflicts over land use or the management of natural resources, where much of the debate surrounds the connotations assigned by different groups to certain contested entities. At the same time, the GIS-based spatial decision support systems increasingly used in planning debates do in principle offer the possibility of representing connotations significant to the task at hand. This paper explores how such representations could eventually be achieved by building into GIS data models fundamental aspects of experiential space to enrich the standard underlying geometrical representations. The suggested strategy builds upon the image schema concepts of the experiential approach in cognitive linguistics and may be formalized through a universal algebra.