Bertin’s matrix concepts reconsidered: transformations of semantics and semiotics to support geovisualization use

ABSTRACT

Transformations, for many the core of analytical cartography, involve manipulations of semiotics and semantics. To develop a framework for contemporary geovisualization, we draw on concepts behind Jacques Bertin’s lesser known work among Anglo-American cartographers, La graphique et le traitement graphique de l’information (1977), translated 1981 as Graphics and graphic information-processing. This book describes the transformations of semiotics and semantics in a matrix-based process to create graphics, especially geovisualizations. It offers a logical development from concepts presented in the semiology of graphics and took up semantics and communication aspects. The framework we develop starts with the insights from this book but moves beyond Bertin’s questionable assumption about the necessity of a prior accord between map producer and map reader regarding semiotics and semantics for successful communication. We reconsider the involved semiotic and semantic manipulations for the discursive analysis of geovisualizations beginning with Barbara Petchenik’s insight that cartographic communication accounts for biases and physiological limits. We broaden these considerations to include distributed cognition concepts from Edward Hutchins, which account for preferences and physiological limitations regarding their broader institutional and cultural settings. The revised linkage of semantics and semiotics, which understands map design as a process of developing boundary objects, focuses on the transformations for making geovisualizations. This analysis holds relevance for improvements to geovisualization and the development of enhancements for cartographic design.

KEYWORDS:

• Bertin
• semiology
• semiotics
• semantics
• map design
• transformations
• Bertin@50

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our colleagues at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and in comments to presentations of this work who discussed various aspects of this research and concepts with us. We wish to particularly thank Lea Bauer and Natalia Ipatow for the detailed discussions during the early development of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.