Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY
What is Geography? “mother of sciences”, geo means
earth, graphien means to write
1. Description of the Earth
2. Spatial Science
3. Study of Spatial Variation
Evolution of the discipline:
 Ancient Period
o Eratosthenes – coined the term
geography
o Strabo – task of geography was to
“describe the several parts of the
inhabited world… to write assessment
of the countries of the world and to
treat the differences between
countries”.
 Observed that humans were
active elements in human –
environmental partnership.
o Herodotus – had found it necessary to
devote much of his book to the lands,
peoples, economies, and customs of the
various parts of Persian empire as
necessary background to understanding
of the causes and course of Persian
wars.
o Greek and later Romans measured the
earth devised the global grid of parallels
and meridians.
o Ptolemy – Ptolemy map
 Non-western Contributions
o Idrisi –collect all known geographical
information an assemble it in a truly
accurate representation of the world.
 Modern Period – national consensus, trade
statistics, ethnographic.
Focus of Geography: Three dominating interests
 Areal Variation of the Earth's Surface
o Examines relationships between human
societies and the natural environments
that they occupy and modify.
 Spatial Systems
o Link physical phenomena and human
activities in one area of the earth with
other areas.
 Regional Geography
o Studies human-environmental-
"ecological"-relationships and spatial
systems in specific locational settings.
Physical Geography – directs its attention to the natural
environment side of the human- environment structure.
Human Geography
Human geography emphasis is on people: where they
are, what they are like, how they interact over space,
and what kinds of landscapes of human use they erect
on the natural landscapes they occupy.
Subfields of Human Geography:
 Behavioral
 Political
 Economic
 Cultural
 Social
 Urban
 Medical
 Population
Core Geographic Concepts
 The Geographer's Questions
 Space
o implies areal extent and may be under
stood in both an absolute and a relative
sense.
 Absolute space - objectively and
physically real with measurable
extent and definable
boundaries.
 Relative Space - is perceptual,
not objective, and variable, not
permanent, over time.
 Place
o the companion concept to space. In
common understanding, place is a
synonym for location.
o Sense of place
 Attachments we have to
specific locations and their
complex of attributes—is
unique to each of us, though we
may share some aspects of our
regard for a place with many
others.
o Placelesslness
 The sense of place is reinforced
by recognized local and regional
distinctiveness
Geographers use the word spatial as an essential
modifier in framing their questions and forming their
concepts. Geography, they say, is a spatial science. It is  Accessibility - Consideration of
concerned with spatial behavior of people, with the distance implies assessment.
spatial relationships that are observed between places  Connectivity - Accessibility,
on the earth’s surface, and with the spatial processes therefore, suggests the idea of
that create or maintain those behaviors and connectivity, a broader concept
relationships. The word spatial comes, of course, from implying all the tangible and
space, and to geographers, it always carries the idea of intangible ways in which places
the way items are distributed, the way movements are connected.
occur, and the way processes operate over the whole or  Networks —the patterns of
a part of the surface of the earth. routes connecting sets of
FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PLACES places—determine the
Location efficiency of movement and the
1. Absolute Location - precise and accepted connectedness of points.
system of coordinates o Spatial Diffusion and Globalization
2. Relative Location - position of a place in relation  Spatial diffusion - is the process
to other places. of dispersion of an idea or an
3. Site - physical and cultural attributes of a place. item from a center of origin to
4. Situation - Expression of relative location with more distant points with which
particular reference to items of significance to it is directly or indirectly
the place in question. connected.
Direction  Globalization implies the
1. Absolute Direction - use of cardinal points. increasing interconnection of
N,S,W,E peoples and societies in all
2. Relative Direction - describing the direction, parts of the world as the full
more subjective. range of social, cultural,
Distance political, economic, and
1. Absolute Distance - use of miles, kilometers and environmental processes
other units of measure. becomes international in scale
2. Relative Distance - use of time and the related. and effect.
Physical & Cultural Attritbutes  The Rational Structure of Place (Spatial
 Natural Landscape Distribution) - arrangement of items on the
o Climate, soil, water, resources, minerals, earth’s surface.
and terrain features o Density
o Provides the setting within which  A measure of the number of
human actions occurs. anything within a defined unit
 Cultural Landscape area.
o Visible expression of human activity.  Number of items in relation to
Places the space in which they are
 Changing Attributes of Place found.
o The physical environment surrounding o Dispersion (opposite concentration)
us seems eternal and unchanging but,  The amount of spread of a
of course, it is not. phenomenon over an area.
 Interrelation between Places o Pattern
o Tobler’s First Law of Geography - tells  The geometric arrangement of
us that in a spatial sense everything is objects.
related to everything else but that Place Similarity & Regions
relationships are stronger when items Regions —earth areas that display significant elements
are near one another. of internal uniformity and external difference from
o Accessibility and Connectivity surrounding territories.

 Types of Regions:
o Formal
 Uniform regions; uniformity in
one or a limited combination of
physical or cultural features.
o Functional
 Give an organizational basis
o Perceptual
 Reflect feelings and images.
Maps - are tools to identify regions and to analyze their
content. Maps are geographers’ primary tools of spatial
analysis.
 Map Scale
o Scale —the relationship between size or
length of a feature on the map and the
same item on the earth’s surface—
determines the amount of that
generalization.
o large-scale maps show small areas, and
small-scale maps show large areas.
 The Globe Grid
o Prime meridian - 360
o Latitude – N to S
o Longitude – E to W
 How Maps Show Data
o General-purpose, reference, or location
maps
o Thematic map
 is the general term applied to a
map of any scale that presents
a specific spatial distribution or
a single category of data—that
is, presents a graphic theme.
 second major class of maps.
 Qualitative - show the
distribution of a particular class
of information
 Quantitative thematic maps
show the spatial characteristic
of numerical data.
o Graduated circle
 maps use circles of different
size to show the frequency of
occurrence of a topic in
different places
o Isometric map
 features lines (isolines) that
connect points registering equal
values of the item mapped (iso
means “equal”).
o Choropleth map
 presents average value of the
data studied per preexisting
areal unit—dwelling unit rents
or assessed values by city block.
o Statistical map
 records the actual numbers or
occurrences of the mapped
item per established unit area
or location.
o Cartogram
 uses such statistical data to
transform territorial space so
that the largest areal unit on
the map is the one showing the
greatest statistical value
Contemporary Geospatial Technologies
 Global positioning systems (GPS)
o rely upon a system of 24 orbiting
satellites, earth-bound tracking stations
that control the satellites, and portable
receivers that determine exact
geographic locations based on the
signals from the satellites
 Remote sensing is a relatively new term, but the
process it describes—detecting the nature of an
object and the content of an area from a
distance—is more than 150 years old.
 Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
o extend the use of digitized data and
computer manipulation to investigate
 Mental Maps
o Our understanding of distributions
o Our view of spatial reality
o Images about an area or environment
developed by an individual on the basis
of information or impressions received,
interpreted, and stored.
Systems, Maps and Models
 Spatial System
o The content of area is interrelated
o Component parts are interdependent
 Model
o Simplified abstraction of reality
o Clarifies casual relationships
 Chapter 2: Cultural Geography
ROOTS AND MEANING OF CULTURE
Culture is the specialized behavioral patterns, under Environment as Control
standings, adaptations, and social systems that Environmental Determinism
summarize a group of people’s learned way of life.  The belief that the physical environment
 “melting pot” exclusively shapes humans, their actions, and
Components of Culture thoughts
Culture is transmitted within a society to succeeding Possibilism
generations by imitation, instruction, and example. In  A reaction against environmental determinism;
short, it is learned, not biological. people are dynamic forces of development (the
Subcultures environment is not as dynamic like human
 are groups that can be distinguished from the beings)
wider society by their cultural patterns  By French geographer, Paul Vidal Blache, 20th
Culture Traits century
 smallest distinctive item of culture Human Impacts
 Units of learned behavior  Cultural Landscape
o Tools o the earth’s surface as modified by
o Languages human action, is the tangible physical
o Objects record of a given culture
o Techniques or beliefs o Building, roads and other man-made
o Elementary expressions of Culture infrastructures.
Culture Complex  More complex culture, bigger impact to the
 Traits that are functionally interrelated environment
 The assemblage of traits Roots of Culture
 Traits and complexes have a real extent and  Hunter-Gatherers
they can be plotted on maps o Pre-agricultural people dependent on
Culture System the year-round availability of plant and
 A broader generalization than a cultural animal foodstuffs they could secure
complex o Rudimentary stone tools and weapons
 Refers to the collection of interacting cultural o Hunters and gatherers required
traits and cultural complexes that are shared by considerable territory to support a
a group within a particular territory. relatively small number of individuals.
Culture Region Seeds of Change
 A portion of the Earth's surface occupied by  Cultural Divergence
populations sharing recognizable and distinctive o is when a culture separates or goes in a
cultural characteristics. different direction.
Culture Realm  Carrying Capacity
 A set of cultural regions grouped whenever they o a species' average population size in a
show related cultural complexes and landscapes particular habitat.
Globalization Agricultural Origins and Spread
 Homogenization of cultures as economies are  Domestication of Animals and Plants
integrated and uniform consumer demands are o Farming
satisfied by standardized commodities. o Plant Domestication
People and Environment  Food crops cultivated
Cultural ecology —the study of the relationship  Raising crops
between a culture group and the natural environment it o Animal Domestication
occupies.
  The successful breeding of
species that are dependent on
human beings.
 Domestication of plant and animals began
during the Mesolithic period.
 Neolithic Innovations
o "New Stone" Age
Culture Hearth
The place of origin of any culture group whose
developed systems of livelihood and life created a
distinctive cultural landscapes.
Where civilization first began.
“Cradle” of any culture group
Multilinear Evolution
 The common characteristics of widely separated
cultures developed under similar ecological
circumstances.
 Environmental zones tend to induce common
adaptive traits in the cultures of those who
exploit these areas.
 Comparable events cannot always be explained
in the basis of exporting techniques.
Diffusionism
 Belief that cultural similarities are product of
spatial spread from common origin sites.
Cultural Convergence
 Differences between places are being reduced
by improved communications leading to
homogenization
 Sharing of technologies so evident among
widely separated societies in a modern world
united by efficient communication systems.
The Structure of Culture
Ideological Subsystem
 Mentifacts
Technological Subsystem
 Artifacts
Sociological Subsystem
 Sociofacts
Cultural Integration
 when individuals from one culture adopt
practices from another culture without
diminishing their own.
Culture Change
Innovation
 Cultural Lag
o Resistance to change
Diffusion
 The process by which an idea or innovation is
transmitted from one individual or group to
another across space.
 Expansion Diffusion
o Contagious diffusion affects nearly
uniformly all individuals and areas
outward from the source region
o Hierarchical Diffusion involves
processes of transferring ideas first
between larger places or prominent
people, and later to smaller or less
important points or people.
o During stimulus diffusion, a
fundamental idea, not the trait itself,
stimulates imitative behavior.
o Spread of the concept but not the
specific system.
 Relocation Diffusion
o The idea is physically carried to new
areas by migrating individuals.
 Acculturation
o A culture is modified
o Adoption of traits of another dominant
group.
o Immigrant populations take on the
values attitudes, customs, and speech
of the receiving society, which itself
undergoes change from absorption of
the arriving group.
 Contact between Regions
o Diffusion Barriers
 Any condition that hinder either
the flow of information or the
movement of people and thus
retard or prevent the
acceptance of an innovation.
o Syncretism
 The process of the fusion of the
old and new and is a major
feature of cultural change.
Location
1. Relative Location - gives position based on the
location of something else.
2.Absolute Location - associated with providing
coordinates. (latitude and longitude)
Place - strongly associated with meaning.
Space - areas between meaningful places.
Cognitive Mapping - drawing maps from memory.
Individuals and Groups of people Imbue Locations with
Meaning.
Chapter 3: SPATIAL INTERACTION & SPATIAL
BEHAVIOR
Bases of Interaction
A Summarizing Model
 Complementarity
o For two places to interact, one place
must have what another place wants
and can secure.
o Effective supply and demand are
important considerations for exchange.
 Transferability
o Acceptable costs of an exchange.
o An expression of the mobility of a
commodity and is a function of three
interrelated conditions:
1. The characteristics of the
product.
2. The distance measured in time
and money penalties, over
which it must be moved.
3. The ability of the commodity to
bear the cost of movement.
a. If the time and money
costs of traversing a
distance are too great,
exchange does not
occur.
 Intervening Opportunity
o Complementarity can be effective only
in the absence of more attractive
alternative sources of supply or demand
closer at hand or cheaper.
o Intervening opportunities serve to
reduce supply /demand interactions
that otherwise might develop between
distant complementary areas.
o For reasons of cost and convenience, a
purchaser is unlikely to buy identical
commodities at a distance when a
suitable nearby supply is available.
Measuring Interaction
 Friction of Distance
o Distance has a retarding effect on
human interaction because there are
increasing penalties in time and cost
associated with longer distance, more
expensive interchanges.
 Distance Decay
o The decline of an activity or function
with increasing distance from its point
of origin.
 The Gravity Concept
o The physical laws of gravity and motion
developed by Sir Isaac Newton (1642 -
1727) are applicable to aggregate
actions of humans.
o A large city is more likely to attract an
individual then a small helmet.
 Movement Bias
o Short movements advantage
o Predictable flows making some centers
more attractive to merchants and
customers.
Human Spatial Behavior
Mobility
 The general term applied to all types of human
territorial movement.
o Circulation – daily or temporary use of
space
o Migration - The longer-term
commitment related to decisions to
permanently leave the home territory
and find residence in a new location.
Individual Activity Space
 Territoriality
o The emotional attachment to and the
defense of home ground—as a root
explanation of much of human action
and response.
 Personal space
o The zone of privacy and separation
from others our culture or our physical
circumstances require or permit.
 Activity space
o or area within which we move freely on
our rounds of regular activity, sharing
that space with others who are also
about their daily affairs
 Awareness space
 o knowledge of opportunity locations
beyond normal activity space—is
minimal, distorted, or absent.
The Tyranny of Time
 Space-Time Prism
o volume of space and length of time
within which our activities must be
confined
Distance and Human Interaction
 Critical Distance
o The distance beyond which cost, effort,
and means strongly influence our
willingness to travel.
Spatial Interaction and the Accumulation of
Information
 Information Flows
o Spatially significant information flows
are of two types: individual (person-to-
person) exchanges and mass (source-to-
area) communication.
Information and Perception
 Place perception
o the awareness we have, as individuals,
of home and distant places and the
beliefs we hold about them.
 Perception of Environment
 Perception of Natural Hazards
Migration
Principal Migration Patterns
 Intercontinental
o A reflection of massive intercontinental
flows
o From one continent to another
 Intracontinental
o Movements between countries
 Interregional
o Movements within countries
 Rural-to-Urban
o Movements of peoples from
agricultural areas to cities; prominent
during the industrial revolution
o Rapid increase in impoverished rural
populations put increasing and
unsustainable pressures on land, fuel,
and water in the countryside.
Types of Migration
 Forced
o The relocation decision is made solely
by people other than the migrants
themselves
 Slaves were forcibly transferred
to the Americans
 Convicts transported to other
continents
 Communist relocations (USSR)
 Immigrants expelled (Uganda)
 Forced repatriation of foreign
nationals
 Reluctant
o Less than fully voluntary
 Aggressive governmental
relocation campaigns
(Indonesia)
 Voluntary
o The great majority of migratory
movements are voluntary
o Migrants believe that their
opportunities and life circumstances
will be better ate their destination than
they are at their present location.
 Involuntary
o Not forced
o Illegal people without papers
Controls on Migration
Push & Pull Factors
 Push factors are negative home conditions that
impel the decision to migrate
o They might include loss of job, lack of
professional opportunity, overcrowding
or slum clearance, or a variety of other
influences.
 Pull factors are the presumed perceived to exist
at the new location: safety, and food, perhaps,
or job opportunities, better climate, lower taxes,
more room, and so forth.
Place Utility
 The measure of an individual's satisfaction with
a given residential location.
Step Migration
 Place Transition
 Rural to central city
 A series of less extreme locational changes
 From farm to small town to suburb, and finally
to the major central city itself.
Chain Migration
  The mover is part of an established migrant  Provides the background tools and
flow from a common origin to a prepared understanding of population data such as:
destination. o Numbers of People
 An advance group of migrants is followed by o Age of People
second and subsequent migrations originating o Sex Distribution of People
in the same home district and frequently united o Patterns of fertility and morality
by kinship or friendship ties. o Density
Counter Migration  Differs from demography, the statistical study
 Not all immigrants stay permanently at their of human population, in its concern with spatial
first destination analysis – the relationship of numbers to area.
 Return migration Some Population Definitions
Channelized Migration To those basic counts, demographers bring refinements
 Areas that are in some way tied to one another that make the figures more meaningful and useful in
by past migrations, by economic trade population analysis. Among them are rates and cohort
considerations, or some other affinity. measures.
Ravenstein's Laws of Migrations RATES
 Most migrants go only a short distance  simply record the frequency of occurrence of an
 Longer-distance migrations favors big cities event during a given time frame for a
 Most migration proceeds step-by-step designated population.
 Most migration is rural to urban  Birth Rates
 Most migrants are adults and males o Crude Birth Rate
Globalization o The annual number of live births per
 Economic Patterns 1000 population
 Political Patterns o It is "crude" because it relates births to
 Cultural Patterns total population without regard to the
age or sex composition of the
population.
Chapter 4: POPULATION: WORLD PATTERNS,
 Fertility Rates
REGIONAL TRENDS
o Total Fertility Rate
Population geography
 The average number of children
 provides the background tools and
that would be born to each
understandings of those interests. It focuses on
woman if, during her
the number, composition, and distribution of
childbearing years, she bore
human beings in relation to variations in the
children at the current year’s
conditions of earth space
rate for women that age
Population data
 A more refined statement than
 We begin to understand how the people in a
the crude birth rate for showing
given area live, how they may interact with one
the rate and probability of
another, how they use the land, what pressure
reproduction among fertile
on resources exists, and what the future may
females.
bring.
o Replacement Level Fertility
Demography
 Death Rates
 the statistical study of human population, in its
a. Crude Death Rate
concern with spatial analysis—the relationship
o Also called mortality rate
of numbers to area.
o The annual number of deaths per
Population Growth
1000 population
 Implications of the Numbers o In the past, a valid generalization
Population Geography was that death rate varied with
national levels of development
 o Characteristically, highest rates
were found in the less developed
countries
o Nowadays, countries with a high
proportion of elderly people, such
as Denmark and Sweden, would be
expected to have higher death rates
than those with a high proportion
of young people.
b. Infant Mortality Rate
o The ratio of deaths of infants aged 1
year or under per 1000 live births.
o Infant mortality rates are significant
because it is at these ages that the
greatest declines in mortality have
occurred, largely as a result of the
increased availability of health
services
c. Maternal Mortality Ratio
o Maternal deaths per 100,000 live
births
o Maternal mortality is the single
greatest health disparity between
developed and developing
countries.
COHORT
 Measures refer data to a population group
unified by a specified common characteristic.
 Population Pyramids
o A graphic device that represents a
population's age and sex composition.
o A rapidly growing country has most
people in the lowest age cohorts; the
percentage in older age groups declines
successively, yielding a pyramid with
markedly sloping sides.
o Rate of Natural Increase of a Population
 Derived by subtracting the
crude death rate from the
crude birth rate
 Natural means that increases or
decreases due to migration are
not included.
o Dependency ratio
 is a simple measure of the
number of economic
dependents, old or young, that
each 100 people in the
productive years (usually, 15–
64) must support.
 Population Growth
o Rate of Natural Increase
o Doubling Times
 The time it takes for a
population to double if the
present growth rate remains
constant.
The Demographic Transition
Demographic Transition
 An attempt to summarize an observed
voluntary relationship between population
change and economic development
 Traces the changing levels of human fertility
and mortality presumably associated with
industrialization and urbanization
 A divided world converging
Replacement Process
 First Stage
o High birth and high but fluctuating
death rates
 Second Stage - Western experience
o is usually associated with the
modernizing consequences of the
industrialization of Europe. Its effects—
declining death rates accompanied by
continuing high birth rates—were
gradually dispersed worldwide even
without universal conversion to an
industrial economy.
 Third Stage
o when birth rates decline as people
begin to control family size. The
advantages of having many children in
an agrarian society are not so evident in
urbanized, industrialized cultures. In
fact, such cultures may view children as
economic liabilities rather than assets
 Fourth
o Final stage characterized by very low
birth and death rates. This stage yields
at best only very slight percentage
increases in population and doubling
times stretch to a thousand years or
more.
Demographic Equation
Summarizes the contribution made to regional
population change over time by the combination of
natural change (difference between births and deaths)
and net migration (difference
 Natural change (births – deaths) + net migration
(in-migration – out-migration)
 Population Relocation
 Immigration Impacts
World Population Distribution
 Pattern of Unevenness
Ecumene
 Permanently inhabited areas of the earth’s
surface
Nonecumene
 The uninhabited or very sparsely occupied zone,
does include the permanent ice caps and large
segments of the tundra and coniferous forest of
northern Asia and North America
Population Density
Expresses the relationship between number of
inhabitants and the area they occupy.
 Crude density
o or arithmetic density of population is
the most common and least satisfying
expression of that variation.
o It is the calculation of the number of
people per unit area of land, usually
within the boundaries of a political
entity.
 Physiological density
o which is, in a sense, an expression of
population pressure exerted on
agricultural land.
 Agricultural density
o Still another useful variant. It simply
excludes city populations from the
physiological density calculation and
reports the number of rural residents
per unit of agriculturally productive
land. It is, therefore, an estimate of the
pressure of people on the rural areas of
a country.
Overpopulation
 It is wise to remember that overpopulation
is a value judgment reflecting an
observation or conviction that an
environment or territory is unable
adequately to support its present
population
Underpopulation
 refers to the circumstance of too few
people to sufficiently develop the resources
of a country or region to improve the level
of living of its inhabitants.)
Carrying Capacity
 The number of people an area can support
on a sustained basis given the prevailing
technology
Urbanization
 (transformation from rural to urban status
according to individual state’s definition of
“urban”) of population in developing
countries is increasing dramatically
Population Data and Projections
Population data that students of population employ
come primarily from the United Nations Statistical
Office, the World Bank, the Population Reference
Bureau, and ultimately, from national censuses and
sample surveys. Unfortunately, the data as reported
may on occasion be more misleading than informative.
For all their inadequacies and imprecisions, current data
reported for country units form the basis of population
projections, estimates of future population size, age,
and sex composition based on current data.
 Population projections, therefore, are based
on assumptions for the future applied to
current data that are, themselves,
frequently suspect.
Population Controls
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
 A British economist
 In 1798 he published “An Essay on the
Principle of Population and It Affects in the
Future Improvement of Society”
 The world’s population was increasing
faster than the food supplies needed to
sustain it
 Population increases at what he called a
geometric rate
 The means of subsistence growth at an
arithmetic rate
 Population growth might be checked by
hunger or other tragic events
Populations Prospects
Population or Demographic Momentum
  When a high proportion of the population is
young, the product of past high fertility rates,
larger and larger numbers enter the
childbearing age each year
Aging
Chapter 4: LANGUAGE AND RELIGION MOSAIC OF
CULTURE
We begin with two prominent threads in the tapestry of
cultural diversity—language and culture.
Language and religion are basic components of
cultures, the learned ways of life of different human
communities.
Language and religion are mentifacts, components of
the ideological subsystem of culture that help shape the
belief system of a society and transmit it to succeeding
generations.
Language is the most important medium by which
culture is transmitted.
Language is a hallmark of cultural diversity, an often
fiercely defended symbol of cultural identity helping to
distinguish the world’s diverse social groups.
The Classifications of Languages
Language
 is any systematic method of communicating
ideas, attitudes, or intent through the use of
mutually understood signs, sounds, or gestures.
 For our geographic purposes, we may define
language as an organized system of spoken
words by which people communicate with each
other with mutual comprehension.
Language family
 is a group of languages descended from a single,
earlier tongue.
 Subfamilies, braches, or groups
 The Indo-European linguistic family tree.
Euskara (Basque), Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian,
Maltese, and Lappish are the only European
languages not in the Indo-European family.
 Indo-European family
o is the largest, embracing most of the
languages of Europe and a large part of
Asia, and the introduced—not the
native—languages of the Americas
o Languages in the Indo-European family
are spoken by about half the world’s
peoples.
World Pattern of Languages
Language Spread
 Different forms of Diffusion
o Relocation Diffusion
 Culture is transported
o Hierarchical Diffusion
 Status
o Expansion Diffusion
 When it is spread
Language Change
Comparable changes occur normally and naturally
within a single language in word meaning,
pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax (the way words
are put together in phrases and sentences).
Change may be gradual and cumulative, with each
generation deviating in small degree from the speech
patterns and vocabulary of its parents, or it may be
massive and abrupt
English
 Gradual and cumulative changes
 Before 18th cent, the English language gained
thousands of words from Latin, Greek, and
French languages
 After the discovery and colonization of new
lands aboriginal American, Australian and
African names were adopted.
Standard and Variant Languages
People who speak a common language such as English
are members of a speech community.
Standard Language
 comprising the accepted community norms of
syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation—and a
number of more or less distinctive dialects
reflecting the ordinary speech of areal, social,
professional, or other subdivisions of the
general population.
Dialect
 A dialect may become the standard language
through identity with the speech of the most
prestigious, highest-ranking, and most powerful
members of the larger speech community.
Just as no two individuals talk exactly the same, all but
the smallest and most closely knit speech communities
display recognizable speech variants called dialects.
Social Dialects
  Denote social class and educational level.
Speakers of higher socioeconomic status or
educational achievement are most likely to
follow the norms of their standard language;
Vernacular
 Nonstandard language or dialect native to the
locale or adopted by the social group.
 less-educated or lower-status persons or groups
consciously distinguishing themselves from the
mainstream culture are more likely to use.
Linguistic geography
 the study of the character and spatial pattern of
dialects and languages—of a generalized speech
community
Isogloss
 The outer limit of its occurrence is a boundary
line called an isogloss (the term isophone is
used if the areal variant is marked by difference
in sound rather than word choice)
Geographic or regional dialects
 may be recognized at different scales.
Pidgins and Creoles
 Pidgins
o A pidgin is an amalgam of languages,
usually a simplified form of one, such as
English or French, with borrowings from
another, perhaps non-European local
language
 Creoles
o Creole language is a pidgin language
with more complex and vocabulary that
has become the native language of a
group of people.
Lingua Franca
 A lingua franca is a language used among
speakers of different languages for the
purposes of trade and commerce.
Multilingualism
 Monolingual states
o are countries where almost everyone
speaks the same language
 Multilingual states
o Are countries in which more than one
language is in use.
Official Language
 Countries with linguistic fragmentation fatten
adopt an official language (or languages) to tie
the people together.
 What ties us together
 A state adapts an official language in the hope
of promoting communication and interaction
among people who speak different local and
regional languages.
Language on the Landscape: Toponymy
Yi Fu Tuan
 studied the role and function of language in the
shaping of places.
 Each place has a unique location and
constitutes a reflection of human activities,
ideas, and tangible, durable creations.
 Tuan argued that by simply naming a place,
people in effect call that place into being, and
thereby impart a certain character to it =
Toponyms.
Toponyms
 place names—are language on the land, the
record of past inhabitants whose namings
endure, perhaps corrupted and disguised, as
reminders of their existence and their passing.
Toponymy
 is the study of place names, a special interest of
linguistic geography.
 revealing tool of historical cultural geography,
for place names become a part of the cultural
landscape that remains long after the name
givers have passed from the scene.
Goerge Stewart - English Proffesor
 Ten Toponyms:
1. Descriptive
2. Associative
3. Commemorative
4. Commendatory
5. Incidents
6. Possession
7. Folk
8. Manufactured
9. Mistakes
10. Shift
Changing Toponyms
1. Postcolonial - reflect independence
2. Postrevolution - changes in power
3. Memorial - important person or event
Religion and Culture
All societies have value systems—common beliefs,
understandings, expectations, and controls—that unite
their members and set them off from other, different
culture group.
Religion
 when it involves systems of formal or informal
worship and faith in the sacred and divine
 Religion, like language, is a symbol of group
identity and a cultural rallying point.
Classification of Religion
Monotheism – single deity
Polytheism – many gods
Nonreligious value systems can exist—humanism or
Marxism
Classification based on religions' distribution and
patterns and processes of diffusion:
 Universalizing Religions
o Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism are
the major world universalizing religions,
faiths that claim applicability to all
humans and proselytize; that is, they
seek to transmit their beliefs through
missionary work and conversion
 Ethnic Religions
o Ethnic religions have strong territorial
and cultural group identification
 Tribal or Traditional Religions
o Tribal, or traditional religions, are
special forms of ethnic religions
distinguished by their small size, their
unique identity with localized culture
groups not yet fully absorbed into
modern society, and their close ties to
nature.
o Animism, Shamanism
The Principal Religions
Judaism
 Judaism, whose belief in a single God laid the
foundation for both Christianity and Islam.
 The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948
was a fulfillment of the goal of Zionism, the
belief in the need to create an autonomous
Jewish state in Palestine
Christianity
 Regions and landscapes or Christianity
Islam
 Islam—the word means “submission” (to the
will of God)—springs from the same Judaic
roots as Christianity and embodies many of the
same beliefs: There is only one God, who may
be revealed to humans through prophets; Adam
was the first human; Abraham was one of his
descendants.
Hinduism
 Hinduism is the world’s oldest major religion
 Hinduism is not just a religion but an intricate
web of religious, philosophical, social, economic,
and artistic elements comprising a distinctive
Indian civilization
Buddhism
 Syncretism
o (a combination of different forms of
belief and practice) of them
 The largest and most influential of the dissident
movements has been Buddhism, a
universalizing faith founded in the 6 century
th
B.C. in northern India by Siddhartha Gautama,
the Buddha (Enlightened One)
East Asian Ethnic Religions
 Confucianism
 Taosim
 Shinto
 Secularism
o an indifference to or rejection of
religion and religious belief, is an
increasing part of many modern
societies, particularly of the
industrialized nations and those now or
formerly under communist regimes.
Change and Diversity in the Geography of Religion
One of the most dramatic recent changes is the
expansion of the universalizing religions of Christianity
and Islam in areas of Africa once primarily associated
with traditional religions.
Most dramatic changes are the secularization of large
portions of European society and the rise of new
religions brought by immigrants, primarily Islam and
Hinduism.