Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
THE LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE OF CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS
Whereas the graphical structure of the map and the effective use of symbols and
graphic variables have been subject to extensive study in cartographic science over
the last decades, the linguistic components have largely been ignored by cartogra-
phers and geographers alike. However, according to Pickles (1992), the graphical
and linguistic elements in maps are almost inseparable, with the linguistic elements
being embedded within the image. In order to understand the message of a map, it is
therefore important to 'read between the lines' (Harley, 1989: 3) and to uncover the
'linguistic structure' (Pickles, 1992: 219) of the map. Both Pickles and Harley have
used historical and propaganda maps to demonstrate their arguments and to discuss
the underlying discourses.
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Although propaganda maps are rather bold examples of
wilful map distortion, the theories of the two authors are a useful starting point for an
analysis of cartographic representations in spatial planning strategies.
What Harley (1989) termed the 'deconstruction of maps'
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builds on the idea
of discourse analysis and is aimed at breaking 'the assumed link between reality
and cartographic representation, which has dominated cartographic thinking, has
led it in the pathway of “normal science” since the Enlightenment, and has also
provided a ready-made and “taken-for-granted” epistemology for the history of car-
tography' (Harley, 1989: 2). Harley suggests an alternative epistemology, rooted in
social theory rather than scientific positivism, in order to show that 'even “scientific”
maps are a product not only of “the rules of the order of geometry and reason” but
also of the “norms and values of the order of social tradition” ' (1989: 2). Drawing
on Foucault and Derrida, Harley sets out to search for the social forces that have
structured cartography, to locate the presence of power and its effects in all map
knowledge, and thus to unravel the hidden agendas of cartography. At the same
time, however, he acknowledges 'that there are many aspects of their meaning that
are undecidable' (Harley, 1989: 8).
Harley (1989) differentiates between two distinct sets of rules in the history
of Western cartography since the seventeenth century. One set governs the tech-
nical production of maps, the other relates to the cultural production of maps. The
first set of cartographic rules is defined in terms of a scientific epistemology,
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which regards the object of mapping as to produce a 'correct' relational model of
the terrain. The underlying assumptions of this model are that the objects to be
mapped are real and objective, that their reality can be expressed in mathematical
terms, that systematic observation and measurement offer the only route to carto-
graphic truth, and that this truth can be independently verified. Cartographers eval-
uated maps according to standards of 'objectivity', 'accuracy', 'factuality' and
'truthfulness', and thus increasingly differentiated between their standardised and
'scientific' maps and other, non-conforming maps, thereby implying that Western
maps are value-free (Harley, 1989).
