Semantic categories underlying the meaning of ‘place’

This paper analyses the semantics of natural language expressions that are associated with the intuitive notion of ‘place’. We note that the nature of such terms is highly contested, and suggest that this arises from two main considerations: 1) there are a number of logically distinct categories of place expression, which are not always clearly distinguished in discourse about ‘place’; 2) the many non-substantive place count nouns (such as ‘place’, ‘region’, ‘area’, etc.) employed in natural language are highly ambiguous. With respect to consideration 1), we propose that place-related expressions should be classified into the following distinct logical types: a) ‘place-like’ count nouns (further subdivided into abstract, spatial and substantive varieties), b) proper names of ‘place-like’ objects, c) locative property phrases, and d) definite descriptions of ‘place-like’ objects. We outline possible formal representations for each of these. To address consideration 2), we examine meanings, connotations and ambiguities of the English vocabulary of abstract and generic place count nouns, and identify underlying elements of meaning, which explain both similarities and differences in the sense and usage of the various terms

‘NO OUTLET’:A critical visual analysis of neoliberal narratives in mediated geographies

This article turns to Miami, Florida’s (USA) Upper Eastside – an eclectic stretch of about 20 city blocks in one of the nation’s ‘global cities’ – for a critical visual analysis that uses mapping and photography to explore how neoliberalism is communicated. With an approach that considers geography as a visual ‘vernacular landscape’, this research further supports the role of visual communication as a means to reveal deeper meanings of geography, particularly in terms of identifying ideological qualities of the neoliberal project that are often hidden in plain view. The authors’ photographs and maps supply data for this article, which are then read through the process of ‘geosemiotics’

News place-making:applying ‘mental mapping’ to explore the journalistic interpretive community

Scholarship in visual communications, media, and geography explore how news media assign meanings to environment through narratives of and about place. In this study, however, the author aims to move scholarship from evaluating journalistic place representations to exploring the cultural and ideological processes of how these place representations come to be. Understanding how journalists construct place adds depth to knowledge about news as a social and cultural construction, and contributes to previous research on news place-characterizations. This study enacts a methodology called ‘mental mapping’ and serves as a call for communication scholars to consider such participatory methods. Data for this study come from interviews with 30 participants, including reporters from three newspapers, public officials, and residents of Iowa City, USA. In the end, this study identifies a visual methodology for exploring the role and influence of how journalists work and represent place in the news, a process the author calls news place-making