Travis Marsden
GEOG 101
Jan. 21, 2021
“The Word Itself” Response
This week we were assigned J.B. Jackson’s “The Word Itself” and I found it to be somewhat interesting. It talked about the history of the word landscape and how the meaning has changed through time.
The word landscape has been around forever now and yet everyone's meaning of this word seems to be different. For most dictionaries its meaning is “A portion of land which the eye can comprehend at a glance” and has been this way for more than three hundred years. When it was reintroduced into English, the word's meaning changed. No longer did it mean the view itself but a picture of it or the artist's interpretation. Also the Americans and the English use landscape in a similar way but there is still that difference. For Americans they would think of an all natural scenery only but in England, most times there are at least one human element involved.
Landscape is being used more frequently/freely nowadays and isn’t being used for its literal meaning anymore. Even just the word scape, is being used incorrectly with other words. Roadscape, townscape, and cityscape, like the word scape, meant a space. In most instances, landscape is metaphorically used and there is a reason it shouldn’t be. Landscape is a shared reality.
Travis, the share reality of landscape emphasizes how it is the result of a collective or group. It is a composition or creation. Earlier in the text, Jackson provides a stronger definition of the term that includes this notion. Can you find it in the text?
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