The lay of the language: surveying the cartographic characteristics of language maps

Although visible in research in the 1980s and 1990s, works concerning language-mapping issues are recently rather absent. This is an unfortunate oversight given current GIS capability and its potential to tackle visualization issues that were previously simply acknowledged and accepted. Given that there are no established guidelines for language map construction, this work aims to renew attention to language mapping, beginning with a survey documenting the characteristics of published language maps. The survey components address the problematic aspects described in the literature, such as boundary representation and depicting linguistic diversity, and reveal their usage and frequency. The noted map characteristics include, but are not limited to: publication type, publication year, coverage area, language data or variable used, and symbology details. For consistent classification, we use a language-map symbology classification scheme found in previous research. In general, chorochromatic maps using polygonal map units dominate our survey. We also find further evidence supporting the problems outlined in language mapping literature with the widespread use of solid-line boundaries and depiction of only one language or feature per place. However, we also note some unique strategies used for handling uncertainty and linguistic plurality. Observations of tactics not captured by the existing 20-year-old typology lead us to create an updated language map symbology typology consistent with the trends observed in our survey. Overall, we document language mapping strategies in practice and provide direction for future research by highlighting the pros and cons of current cartographic approaches for depicting language.

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