Languages

This chapter offers an overview of the different ways in which languages, speech varieties or single linguistic variants have been represented on maps, i.e., with reference to geographic space. It discusses historical aspects of language mapping, which initially referred to the mapping of languages (resulting in “language maps”) and further developed into the representation of linguistic phenomena on maps (resulting in “linguistic maps”). Moreover, former and current theoretical and methodological issues of variational linguistics and their specific impact on map topics in a linguistic atlas will be laid out. In this respect, the academic field of language cartography has fundamentally changed over the last 130 years from the mere depiction of linguistic variants in certain geographic locations or areas to the systematic consideration of additional (above all social) factors influencing linguistic variation. In summary, linguistic geography has developed from a monodimensional to a pluridimensional approach to maps and atlases. Finally, as for future prospects—which the following still had been when this chapter was originally submitted in 2011—the application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) will be introduced, allowing for statistic correlations of linguistic data and other, e.g., socially or economically relevant data in geographical space. Such investigations offer completely new insights into the overall interrelations of such aspects providing the opportunity to learn more about the functioning of societies.