Responding to the Call for New Landscape Metaphors

Languages reflect and are reflected by the values of the communities that speak and write them. Since languages are public, metaphors must build on shared meanings. Advocating new landscape metaphors must recognize that shared meanings provide the foundation for successful metaphoric communication. Philosophic theories of metaphor, such as Nelson Goodman's, may provide practioners with a way of determining how helpful descriptions of landscapes as “metaphors”—a metaphor itself—are in understanding, evaluating, and creating new landscapes.