Abstract

Denis Cosgrove (2003) has stated that there are two distinct discourses in landscape studies, ecological and semiotic:

A semiotic approach to landscape is sceptical of scientific claims to represent mimetically real processes shaping the world around us. It lays scholarly emphasis more on the context and processes through which cultural meanings are invested into and shape a world whose ‘nature’ is known only through human cognition and representation, and is thus always symbolically mediated.