Reading the Landscape: semitotics and landscape assessment

Authors

  • William Field

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34900/lr.v3i1.40

Abstract

The metaphor of the landscape as a text provides fertile ground for considering theories of linguistics as conceptual frameworks for interpreting and assessing landscapes. In this essay, some key propositions of semiotic theory, a branch of linguistics, are reviewed. Furthermore, the development from structuralist semiotics to post-structuralist ways of thinking is traced through the work of key semiotic proponents such as Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco. The findings of this review are compared with the approach taken in a recent New Zealand landscape assessment — the Canterbury Regional Landscape Study. The challenges presented by the multiple reading of a text, or landscape, are confronted in this landscape assessment without explicit reference to semiotic theory. Semiotic concepts such as polysemy, unlimited semiosis, semiotic fields and codification have the potential for making explicit the difficulties involved in the interpretation of landscapes.

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Published

01-03-1997

How to Cite

Field, W. (1997). Reading the Landscape: semitotics and landscape assessment . Landscape Review, 3(1), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.34900/lr.v3i1.40

Issue

Vol 3, No 1 (1997)

Section

Reflection

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