Christina Maxwell
Mapping Assignment 27 February 2014
AsNedra Reynolds discusses in Geographies of Writing, maps make arguments about the world around us. On the surface, individuals believe maps are “documents to be trusted,” without thinking of the cultural, political and social implications that surround the visual. However, through detailed research and insights, we can find out there’s more to a map than what meets the eye, and ultimately, there is an argument to be made for and against every map. For the purposes of my project, inspired by the maps detailed by Denis Wood in Everything Sings, I created five maps of the main campus of Rowan University that depictstudent movement, analyzed through a semiotic lens. Semiotics is the theory of signs that help determine the meanings created and applied. This paper will offer an understanding of signs “that can mean something other than themselves.” (Hall 5) For a reader to understand signs surrounding us within our society, it all depends on the context in which they are found and ultimately read. The maps that I have created will hopefully help one understand that Rowan University is a dynamic, moving environment. Instead of highlighting static relationships/concepts such asinnate objects like buildings or signs, I wanted to mirror the bustling activity of the campus, creating five maps that depict events such as the path students take around campusand where graduation ceremonies are held. The other half of my goal with this project is to make these maps personal and help track my own journey through Rowan University, which is a location with personal historical significance for me. I also briefly wanted to play off of the role of mental maps. There is this partly wrong assumption that maps are objective images, and I wanted to break the mold and create a series of maps that are uniquely personal and cannot be replicated by
anyone else the same exact way. I will then analyze these maps through signs, meanings and conceptual structures. As Sean Hall discusses in This Means This This Means That, some maps may replicate a location to an exact science: denote every sign, road and building, but other maps that are more abstract and make the reader do most of the work. What I have created here is a resemblance of a schematic map, a text that is limited in nature but highlights certain aspects of a location. In the case of my first map, I tracked where students on campus walk to and from, placing footprints in the legend and throughout the map. I spent approximately 10 minutes in each parking lot and around each road to get a sense of where students are going and how many students walk together. As you can see, no more than a group of three students walk together at any given time (except when walking across route 322).
This Rowan University student map isn’t concrete in the way maps found on their website may be, and one will not be able to find actual footprints through the campus, but it captures a moment in time. Reading this map depends on how one perceives the iconic relationship between the signifier and signified (Hall28): the signifier (the item), in this case, the footprints, represents the student walking movement throughout the campus (the signified, which is the meaning). The relationship between signifier and signified is oftentimes complex, and as discussed by Hall, the same signifier can have multiple signifieds. As Amy Propen mentions, visuals do not work when separate from other text and in fact, may need some context and understanding before fully accepting a particular image. (Propen 234)I believe anyone who has been immersed in the Rowan culture would easily grasp the need for footprints on a campus map because the intense amount of foot traffic that happens along the campus on a given weekday,
but somebody who has never spent a considerable amount of time on campus may not understand the importance of the location of the footprints. While we think about the significance of these drawings and the value of each map, we have to think about what does the work in a map. Codes are sets of conventions or rules for content that can determine what something can be considered signifying. The codes combine the content (signifer) and the expression (signified) and helps create a sign, a sign that would not exist without the importance of a code. In terms of importance, codes trump signs, as Wood writes in The Power of Maps, there are “no signs without codes” and that “all meaning, all significance derives from codes.”(The Power of MapsChapter 5) The way the set of these maps makes or creates meaning carefully veers toward nonliteral communication. As Hall discusses, understanding literal meaning is crucial when approaching instructional materials because it helps others avoid “potential accidents” or “possible mistakes,” but understanding non-literal meanings as well will allow humans to pick up on unique gestures or certain representations that they may not notice at first glance. Oftentimes, one may have to “work to understand” specific, visual or verbal non-literal meanings such as metaphors, similes, and irony. (Hall 49-50)
These maps, specifically map #2, which is an overview of Rowan University’s commencement day every year in the second week of May (highlighting the primary and secondary ceremonies, along with the exact path each graduate would take to receive their diploma), brings along not only a slew of assumptions, but possible issues of representation, which help create or interpret meaning for a map reader. While semiotics holds steady to the belief that reality involves or helps shape representation, Hall believes adults have a difficult time “interpreting” drawings, while children would easily and innocently enough, have a keener or stronger insight into a drawing. Perhaps adults need more significant details to understand what they see. I believe the representation of the graduation cap could yield the acceptance from adults reading this map, not only because of the general belief that maps need context, but “adults often have to have things explained to them.” (Hall 68) One may not see a graduation cap
in this drawing, but creatively drawn trianglesplaced carefully on top of each other. Another possible issue could be many may question the authenticity of each map; without citations or solid proof of occurrence.
While most maps tend to make assumptions about society and the surrounding culture, perhaps we should think about the person using this map. I decided to split this project in two halves: first by representing student movement and then revealing my own personal history on this campus. In map #3, I created a trail of my own movement throughout the campus on an average week, and to go along with the personal theme of these maps, instead of drawing average footprints, I decided to draw small shoes at each walkway, parking and building location, from parking lot B to where my classes are held in James Hall, to checking my mailbox at Hawthorne Hall. Perhaps intrinsically I am taking the idea of individualized maps to heart, but
I believe it goes along with Wood’s belief that maps take a stand while “pretending to be neutral on a divided issue.” (The Power of Maps Chapter 5) My maps could allow for other members of the Rowan community to recreate their own personal maps, think about their own trail and the places they’ve never explored on a campus.
The next map (map #4) is more analytical and allows me to connect the highly abstract concept of grades (something that we cannot touch) to the physical locations placed on my map. This map pinpoints the location of each class I have enrolled in and the grade I ultimately received. I have been an undergraduate and (now) graduate Rowan University student for four years, so I thought this would be a unique and personal map that takes away the assumption that maps are created for a large, general audience. Like my previous trail map, another student at
Rowan could just as easily create a replica of this map, but their experience would not be the same as mine. The fifth map (map #5) is the locations I visited to complete my senior project audio documentary: Smoking: Unfiltered that was later a recipient of five local awards. That was one of the first, if not only times that I really ventured around the campus and visited different spots, such as apartments/townhouses to speak to students, interview professors at Education (now James) Hall and speak to public safety officials at Bole Hall. This map plays off of two concepts discussed by Reynolds and Wood: the former mentions mental and cognitive mapping and the latter discusses a temporal code.
Reynolds talks about mental and cognitive mapping as being “a person’s ability to understand where things are in relationship to one another�, especially when carrying around
images “soaked in memories and meanings” that can help reinforce one’s spatial sense. (Geographies of Writing Chapter 3) I produced, wrote and edited this documentary back in 2011, so mentally I had to retrace my steps and remember what buildings I visited, who I spoke to and where did I go to finish this project. This map also has a temporal feel to it, as Wood mentions, while on the surface time may not play a role in a map’s overall abilities, time is a “hidden dimension”, not to mention the tense code it embodies, which refers to the “direction in which the map points, the direction of its reference in time” (The Power of Maps Chapter 5). For example, I visited Linden Hall to interview the campus’ nurse practitioner;however, today one would have to go to Winans Hall to find the Student Health/Nursing Services and Wellness Center.The temporal code is helped out by a durative code, which operates on“the relationship between the time of the map and the time of the world.” (The Power of Maps Chapter 5) Therefore one cannot separate time and space on a map, which is what I believe this one map represents. In semantics, whether words or images, we can divide things into parts or look to connect it to a larger whole. While I have only drawn small icons on these maps (and not buildings or roads), the hope is that one may be able to envision the whole of the Rowan University campus through the context of each individual map. As Wood writes, maps are “loaded with intentions and purposes” (The Power of MapsChapter 5) and what I have presented is a unique representation of the main campus of Rowan University that places my own personal stamp on this location. While Wood sketched a narrative atlas of his hometown of Boylan Heights, North Carolina and highlighted the “invisible, […] overlooked, and the seemingly insignificant,” (Everything Sings cover) I believe these maps of Rowan University can shed some light on one student’s individual path through a
location that provides educational, personal and professional opportunities. It may be unnatural to think of maps as text, but hopefully that will help change the general perception of maps (such as exact measurements that a GI/GP system aims for) and expand horizons when we draw future maps.
Works Cited Hall, Sean. This Means This This Means That. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012. Print. Propen, Amy. “Visual Communication and the Map: How Maps as Visual Objects Convey Meaning in Specific Contexts.�Technical Communication Quarterly 05 Dec. 2007: 233254. Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Cabrondale: South Illinois University Press, 2007. Print. Wood, Denis. Everything Sings. Los Angeles: Siglio, 2013. Print. ---. The Power of Maps.New York: The Guilford Press, 1992. Print.