Landscape in Language: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Culture and Language Use 4

摘要

The relevance of philosophical conceptions of landscape cross-culturally and the embeddedness of language in the human and natural world is the focus of the volume under review. The 21 chapters in this well composed and intelligently edited edition provide ample evidence of where certain modern priorities in anthropological linguistics lie and how contemporary authors attempt to tackle complex phenomena dealing with more intricate aspects of language in landscape and landscape in language research. Ethnophysiography, or the "linguistics of landscape" (p. 3), differs from studies of the 'linguistic landscape' (e.g. Shohamy & Gorter 2009) by considering landscape terms and categories, toponyms and the cultural and spiritual significance of places in relation to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences. It was initiated in 2002 by David Mark and Andrew Turk and is defined as "the study of differences in the way languages use generic terms and proper names (toponyms) for landscape features" (p. 25). This research perspective draws all the chapters together epistemologically.