Department of Geography, University of Zurich.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
Top Cogn Sci. 2023 Jul;15(3):560-583. doi: 10.1111/tops.12652. Epub 2023 Apr 20.
Landscapes are essential to human life: they provide a multitude of material (food, water, pollination) and nonmaterial (beauty, tranquility, recreation) values. Their importance is enshrined in international conventions and treaties, committing signatories to protecting, monitoring, and managing all landscapes. Yet, relatively little is known about how people conceptualize "landscape" and its constituents. There is emerging evidence that conceptualizations of landscape entities may influence landscape management. This in turn raises the question as to how people speaking different languages, and with differing levels of expertise, may differ in conceptualizing landscape domains as a whole. In this paper, we investigated how people conceptualize landscape-related terms in a specific domain-waterbodies-by comparing German and English-speaking experts and nonexperts. We identified commonly used waterbody terms in sustainability discourses in both languages, and used those terms to collect sensory, motor, and affective ratings from participants. Speakers of all groups appear to conceptualize the domain of waterbody terms in comparable ways. Nevertheless, we uncovered subtle differences across languages for nonexperts. For example, there were differences in which waterbodies were associated with calm happiness in each language. In addition, olfaction seemingly plays a role in English speakers' conceptualization of waterbodies, but not German speakers. Taken together, this suggests the ways in which people relate to landscape although shared in many respects may also be shaped in part by their specific language and culture.
它们提供了多种物质（食物、水、授粉）和非物质（美、宁静、娱乐）价值。国际公约和条约将景观的保护、监测和管理责任赋予了签署国，这体现了景观的重要性。然而，人们对“景观”及其组成部分的概念化方式知之甚少。有证据表明，对景观实体的概念化可能会影响景观管理。这反过来又提出了一个问题，即说不同语言且专业水平不同的人，在整体概念化景观领域时可能存在差异。在本文中，我们通过比较德语和英语使用者的专家和非专家，研究了人们如何在一个特定领域（水体）中概念化与景观相关的术语。我们确定了两种语言中可持续性话语中常用的水体术语，并使用这些术语从参与者那里收集感官、运动和情感评分。所有群体的参与者似乎都以类似的方式概念化水体术语的领域。然而，我们发现非专家在语言之间存在细微差异。例如，在每种语言中，与平静和幸福相关的水体不同。此外，嗅觉似乎在英语使用者对水体的概念化中发挥作用，但在德语使用者中则不然。总的来说，这表明尽管人们在许多方面都有共同的联系景观的方式，但他们的特定语言和文化也可能在一定程度上塑造了这些方式。
