Landscapes are essential for people’s physical and psychological well-being. Conceptually, landscapes extend on a continuum between space – the largest and most abstract geographical notion – and place – a sub-unit of space, which humans create through experience and invest with meaning and objectives (Tuan, 1977). Interactions between humans and landscapes are manifold (Fagerholm et al., 2020): Not only do humans shape landscapes in their daily activities to provide for a living, but they also relate to landscapes as an integral part of their identity, which is expressed in the notion sense of place (Collins-Kreiner & Kliot, 2017; Derr, 2002). Therefore, the notion of landscape is relevant well beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries of geography.
For example, research on language and landscape has been carried out from anthropological, philosophical and cognitive psychological perspectives to reveal relations of landscape elements – often regarded as universally perceivable natural elements – and culturally dependent conceptual structure as embedded in language (Burenhult & Levinson, 2008). Landscape ontology has described conceptual divergence of landscape categories such as forest between typologically different and closely related languages (Bromhead, 2017; Mark & Turk, 2003). From a political perspective, processes of categorisation and framing of landscape are essential for successful implementation of and communication about sustainability measures (Lakoff, 2010).
Within the scope of ILANSCO, we refer to landscape as a dynamic space perceived as having features making it representative from an ecological, historical, cultural, social and/or other points of view (compare Förster et al., 2012; Tuan, 1975). Consequentially, not only landscapes themselves, but more precisely their conceptualisation, linguistic expression and social meaning are subject to change. For conservationist aims, it is essential to document and to keep track of these multidimensional dynamics.
The following research questions are addressed by ILANSCO:
- How do people from diverse backgrounds think, talk about and interact with landscapes?
- In what ways does linguistic structure influence and/or reflect conceptualisations of landscapes? (relativist vs. universalist perspective)
- How do societal dynamics (e.g. migration) affect the way in which people relate to landscapes?
- What role do political and ideological attitudes play in landscape conceptualisations?
- What are possible implications for sustainable landscape management?
To tackle these and related questions, we invite for original, interdisciplinary contributions from researchers working in the domains of linguistics, cognitive science, sociology, migration studies, political science, communication studies, human geography, GIS, history (of science/ideas), literary studies and cognate fields. We welcome contributions using applied, theoretical, quantitative, qualitative, experimental and computational approaches. Especially, we encourage contributions from early career researchers and presentations of ongoing and unpublished research.
The organizing team is planning a publication after the conference. Details will follow in late 2024.
Submissions to ILANSCO can address but are not limited to the following topics (examples in brackets):
- Conceptualisation, metaphorisation and framing of landscape
- Meaning of landscapes and/or landscape elements for different speaker communities/social groups
- Migration, landscape(s), national and linguistic borders
- Corpus linguistic approaches to landscapes
- (Critical approaches to) toponomastics
- Landscape narratives, ideologies and nationalism
- Literary study approaches to landscape and sustainability
- Landscape conservation policies and sustainability (Burenhult, 2023)
How to apply:
Abstracts should not exceed 300 words excluding title and references; they should mention three to five keywords. Submissions should provide information on the topic, data, methodology, and theoretical framework(s) of the contribution and clearly state their interdisciplinary character and/or relevance beyond their main discipline. All submissions will be assessed in anonymised, peer-reviewed form. Each paper will have a 20-minute slot for presentation, followed by a 10-minute discussion.
Abstracts should be submitted as anonymized PDF files (including only: title of the talk, abstract text, references) to the following email address: ilansco@slav.uzh.ch.
Deadline for submission is March 31, 2024.
Scientific committee:
Cristiana Lucchetti
Sara Racca
Philipp Striedl
Aleksej Tikhonov