BAD GLOBES BETTER GLOBES - MULTILINGUAL CATEGORIZATION OF CARTOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS EXEMPLIFIED BY 'MAP' AND 'GLOBE' IN ENGLISH, GERMAN AND SPANISH

摘要

Whereas analogue globes have been mentioned in cartographic literature just marginally during the last decades, the term globe is enjoying increasing popularity when tagged as virtual and digital. However, every attempt to precise the concept of virtual/digital globes and to integrate these terms into existing typologies of cartographic representation forms faces us with various inconsistencies. Intending even multilingual definitions yet multiplies these discrepancies. The consequences of such lack of compatibility are manifold and affect cart ographic communication both internally in regard of its technical terminology and extern ally regarding communicational aims as to the user's geospatial information. Against this background, our paper purposes to outline a general principle for cartographic typologies by use of the example of the two basic level categories map and globe. The method we will apply is borrowed from cognitive scientific theories and implies prototypical, fuzzy categorization principles. These principles show cultural- and language-specif ic varieties, for which reason they were surveyed empirically within a multilingual study. The results of this survey confirm the theoretical assumptions: Particular stimuli are taken as better, i.e. more prototypical examples of maps and globes than others. However, the evaluations of the stimuli are language-dependent; the concept map, for example, has different connotations in English, German or Spanish. Furthermore, our empirical data allows a more detailed definition of the concept of virtual/digital globes and its integration into a modern user-centred typology of cartographic representations.