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Conceptualisations of landscape differ across European languages

van Putten, Saskia ; O'Meara, Carolyn ; Wartmann, Flurina ; Yager, Joanne LU ; Villette, Julia ; Mazzuca, Claudia ; Bieling, Claudia ; Burenhult, Niclas LU ; Purves, Ross and Majid, Asifa (2020) LANG-KEY 2nd Project Meeting In PLoS ONE 15(10).
Abstract
Policies aimed at sustainable landscape management recognise the importance of multiple cultural viewpoints, but the notion of landscape itself is implicitly assumed to be homogeneous across speech communities. We tested this assumption by collecting data about the concept of “landscape” from speakers of seven languages of European origin. Speakers were asked to freely list exemplars to “landscape” (a concrete concept for which the underlying conceptual structure is unclear), “animals” (a concrete and discrete concept) and “body parts” (a concrete concept characterised by segmentation). We found, across languages, participants considered listing landscape terms the hardest task, listed fewest exemplars, had the least number of shared... (More)
Policies aimed at sustainable landscape management recognise the importance of multiple cultural viewpoints, but the notion of landscape itself is implicitly assumed to be homogeneous across speech communities. We tested this assumption by collecting data about the concept of “landscape” from speakers of seven languages of European origin. Speakers were asked to freely list exemplars to “landscape” (a concrete concept for which the underlying conceptual structure is unclear), “animals” (a concrete and discrete concept) and “body parts” (a concrete concept characterised by segmentation). We found, across languages, participants considered listing landscape terms the hardest task, listed fewest exemplars, had the least number of shared exemplars, and had fewer common co-occurrence pairs (i.e., pairs of exemplars listed adjacently). We also found important differences between languages in the types of exemplars that were cognitively salient and, most importantly, in how the exemplars are connected to each other in semantic networks. Overall, this shows that “landscape” is more weakly structured than other domains, with high variability both within and between languages. This diversity suggests that for sustainable landscape policies to be effective, they need to be better tailored to local conceptualisations. (Less)
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
PLoS ONE
volume
15
issue
10
article number
e0239858
pages
16 pages
publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
conference name
LANG-KEY 2nd Project Meeting
conference dates
2018-05-20 - 2018-05-24
external identifiers
  • scopus:85092763623
  • pmid:33052934
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0239858
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
9e5c9c30-675a-4438-947f-b478a720c953
date added to LUP
2020-04-13 20:59:52
date last changed
2023-12-04 11:34:10
@article{9e5c9c30-675a-4438-947f-b478a720c953,
  abstract     = {{Policies aimed at sustainable landscape management recognise the importance of multiple cultural viewpoints, but the notion of landscape itself is implicitly assumed to be homogeneous across speech communities. We tested this assumption by collecting data about the concept of “landscape” from speakers of seven languages of European origin. Speakers were asked to freely list exemplars to “landscape” (a concrete concept for which the underlying conceptual structure is unclear), “animals” (a concrete and discrete concept) and “body parts” (a concrete concept characterised by segmentation). We found, across languages, participants considered listing landscape terms the hardest task, listed fewest exemplars, had the least number of shared exemplars, and had fewer common co-occurrence pairs (i.e., pairs of exemplars listed adjacently). We also found important differences between languages in the types of exemplars that were cognitively salient and, most importantly, in how the exemplars are connected to each other in semantic networks. Overall, this shows that “landscape” is more weakly structured than other domains, with high variability both within and between languages. This diversity suggests that for sustainable landscape policies to be effective, they need to be better tailored to local conceptualisations.}},
  author       = {{van Putten, Saskia and O'Meara, Carolyn and Wartmann, Flurina and Yager, Joanne and Villette, Julia and Mazzuca, Claudia and Bieling, Claudia and Burenhult, Niclas and Purves, Ross and Majid, Asifa}},
  issn         = {{1932-6203}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{10}},
  number       = {{10}},
  publisher    = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
  series       = {{PLoS ONE}},
  title        = {{Conceptualisations of landscape differ across European languages}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/85419281/journal.pone.0239858.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0239858}},
  volume       = {{15}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}