Place dialogue

• Published in: Transactions - Institute of British Geographers (1965) 2022-12, Vol.47 (4), p.1090-1103
• Main Authors: Adams, Paul C., Kotus, Jacek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication; communication geography; Geographers; Geography; Human agency; Indigenous geography; place agency; place dialogue; Posthumanism; Pragmatism; Semiotics
• ISSN: 0020-2754; 1475-5661
• DOI: 10.1111/tran.12554

This paper argues for attention to place dialogue, rethinking how place meanings emerge through interactions between human agency and the nonhuman agency of place. To speak is to act, so what is in play here is acknowledging place not only as a ‘speaker’ and a ‘listener’ but also as an agent. In addition to developing posthumanist geographies, the article proposes a new direction for geographical studies of communication, building on the semiotic theory of C.S. Peirce and closely related research in philosophical pragmatism. Communication geography research on place‐in‐communication (representations) and communication‐in‐place (infrastructures) should be complemented by a third approach that recognises place as an interlocutor intervening in meaningful ways with human and nonhuman inhabitants' lives. In calling for this sort of recognition of place dialogue, we trace an ontological shift already prescribed by Indigenous geography, assemblage theory, philosophical pragmatism and posthumanism. The body of the article offers glimpses of three place dialogues: a research meeting taking place in an outdoor seating area of a bakery/cafe, a short viral video featuring a resourceful rat living in the New York subway, and a trip to a nature preserve to climb a mountain. In each example, we show how geographers can return to the non‐modern idea that place acts and speaks. What does it mean to engage in dialogue with a place? Indexical, iconic, and symbolic communications swirl through the place, forming a co‐constitutive relationship between humans, nonhumans, and the place itself. The semiotic processes involved are embodied and more‐than‐human, exceeding modernist understandings of place and communication.