Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 79

To illustrate this argument further, consider a local being approached by a
passer-by: “Excuse me, do you know where the train station is?” (resuming the
example around Fig. 1.7 ) . The straight answer would be “Yes” but such a literal
understanding of the question is clearly inappropriate considering the context of
the question. What actually happens in the mind of the local, interrupted from some
meditations on the way home, is switching to a problem solving mode and activating
from long-term spatial memory what is needed to think about an answer for this
question. Train station provides a clue, and its ambiguity needs to be resolved. The
location of the encounter provides a clue, the fact that the passer-by is walking adds
to context, and also the guess that she is unfamiliar with the environment. Certain
memories pop up in the local's mind, candidate solutions, and he might search for a
route simple to explain and memorize, and suited for walking. This all happens in a
blink of an eye because he also has already started talking to show his preparedness
to help: “Of course! Let me see ...”. After he has described the route to her and
the two have departed he still thinks about this encounter, now in a more relaxed
mood. Suddenly he remembers a landmark along the route he should have referred
to for easing her wayfinding task. This late intuition must have been in his long-
term memory all the time, but it could not be immediately activated. Also, with the
benefit of hindsight he may even remember a more pleasant route. And then there
comes back this particular sweet memory for one place along the route, which he
did not mention at all but which makes him dream away now. To give this story
its twist, imagine that the passer-by actually was a researcher testing the local's
knowledge, or mental spatial representation of the locality. Certainly she received
valuable insights, but she must also be aware that she never will have a full or even
accurate picture.
The story is not yet complete, and allows to illustrate the reading process of
the passer-by. While the local walks parts of this route he just described to the
passer-by he notices a narrow laneway off the street he had not considered, even
forgotten when he said: “At the second intersection turn left”. He starts worrying
whether the passer-by really has found her way when counting intersections. His
worries refer not to the completeness of his mental spatial representation, but to the
shared experience and conceptualization of reality, and the general indeterminacy
of language. In this particular instance the problem is the meaning of intersection .
This indeterminacy has been studied in speech act theory [ 9 , 192 , 239 ] and reading
theory [ 47 , 53 ] . Key in both theories are the intentions of the speaker ( intentio
autoris ) and of the reader ( intentio lectoris ).
Eco points out that there is even a third, the intentio opere [ 47 ] . In our
example, the intention of the local was to help another person finding their way.
Conversational maxims were applied to produce an utterance (a spoken or written
instruction, a sketch, a gesture) serving this purpose. Once words have been spoken
or sketches drawn, they have a meaning by themselves, which, depending on the
instruction giver's language skills, mood and care, will be close to his intention but
never accurate, just for the mentioned indeterminacy in language. This (imperfect)
transfer of a speaker's intention to an utterance is crucial especially in asynchronous