Mapping as Language or Semiotic System: Review and Comment

Abstract

A large part of the core of what geographers do is mapping. By mapping I do not mean merely the drafting of maps with pens or with the computer but, to turn Robinson and Petchenik’s noun “mapper” into a verb, mapping is the act of conceiving spatial relationships in the milieu. “Whether those relationships involve the hills and valleys of the topography, the familiar nodes and corridors of the city dwellers, or the invisible shoals and reefs of the ship’s pilot” they observe, “the conception of things in spatial relationship is the critical operation....” (Robinson and Petchenik 1976, p. 17). Not all of what geographers do, of course, is mapping. Much attention is given also to process, to the understanding of the manner in which things of the milieu—things physical, cultural or economic—evolve and interact, but in the final analysis most geographers would probably admit that it is the knowing what to map so as to reveal significant spatial patterns or the explanation of spatial patterns that appear from mapping that seems to define the essence of their discipline. Mapping—this focus upon spatial relationships—seems almost always to be the core of creating geographical information from mere spatial data.