Mapping All the Way Down

Part I: Exploring Choracophany

“Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods.”

So sayeth Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Book 1 : Section 18. Let’s set the stage here. For Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word consists in its use. Specifically its use within a social practice, according to customary rules. He calls this a language game. In theory, a language can consist of a single language game. But realistically, languages are made up of many language games (and the totality of a language is itself a language game). Now these language games don’t exist in a vacuum. Language - and social practice - are inherited and transmitted. They evolve with the passage of time and contact with other peoples. Much like the quaint cities of Europe with which Wittgenstein was familiar. Here’s a medieval town hall, there’s a Roman amphitheater, now here’s a colossal skyscraper. The traces of people come and gone, near and far. Indeed, elsewhere in the Investigations Wittgenstein writes, “to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”

Granted, I’ve painted Witty’s portrait in broad brushstrokes. I’m leaving much out here. I intend to return to him in future posts. But now I ought to practice my rhetoric and ask the question: What the hell does any of this have to do with cartography? I’m glad you asked, Collin.

Think of a place. Where is that place? You may say, “It’s there at [insert coordinates here].” Now I could respond with the classic “It is so, Socrates.” But I’m feeling argumentative today. I’ve donned my thinking cap, a fedora tailored from the finest aluminum foil. So I demand that you prove it to me. Prove that place is really there at [insert coordinates here]. So you show me the place on Google Maps. Yes, I see the numbers when you right click. But you aren’t responding to my initial challenge. I asked you to think of a place, then tell me where it was. Those lines and curves there, were those what came to mind when you thought of a place? So now you switch the map to satellite view. That’s cute, but raster data won’t help you weasel your way out of this. That image - even the actual thing - is that the place you were thinking of? Because if you can’t be candid in your reply, then you’ll never know where it is. A place is elusive, even when you know where to look.

In all seriousness, I’m not a Google Maps truther. Conventional maps can certainly tell you where a place is. Even thematic maps can do this incidentally. They communicate location in one sense of the word “place.” That is, when “place” is used to denote a bounded area in Euclidean space. It’s used in language games like direction giving, clarifying, reporting, naming, etc. Conventional maps are a pictorial version of such language games.

Yet, there exist other uses/meanings of the word “place.” Of particular interest is when “place” describes a unique experience of a bounded area, often with emotional vividness. Think of language games like providing travelogues, telling folktales, self-identification (ethnic or national), reminiscing, etc. Thematic maps can sometimes capture this meaning, especially multivariate ones. But they’re limited because they stand for one (or few) themes. What they miss is how the spirit of a place is only intelligible against the backdrop of many places.

That’s the point of my absurd dialogue. If I think of a place, say my middle school, I don’t just think of that place. My experience is tied up in associated places: my home (my parents were teachers in the district), the fantasy world of Azeroth (I played a lot of WoW back then), the trailer park where my friend lived, the wheat fields I passed on the ride to school, and so on. The meaning of one place is deferred to many places. A phenomenon I call “choracophany,” a portmanteau of the Greek “khora” - town/area/place - and cacophony. So, how do you map that? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve recently attempted to do so. In the follow up to this post, I’ll showcase the result of my experiment.