Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Philosophers who take maps to have a semantics (i.e., rules that assign contents to cartographic marks) also typically hold that semantics fully determines the truth‐conditional meaning of maps. In this paper, I tackle this form of literalism, which assigns no truth‐conditional role to pragmatics, by investigating the semantics‐pragmatics divide in cartographic representation. I rely on examples from Google Maps, whose widespread use makes it possible to draw general conclusions about the communicative behavior of maps. This behavior, I argue, supports a form of contextualism, on which pragmatics pervasively influences the truth conditions of maps by altering semantic elements.
Source: Mind & Language
DOI: 10.1111/mila.70068
Author: Francesco Pierini
Institution: University of Genoa
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,150
OpenAlex ID: W7224008113