Language as Access Point to Spatial Knowledge: A Cognitive Discourse Analysis (CODA) of Planning & Navigation Accounts

This article aims to identify the type of spatial knowledge in use when people plan or navigate a route in any unfamiliar environment. For this purpose, route descriptions were used as a medium to examine and identify linguistic items that refer to spatial knowledge at work during planning and navigation. In this regard, two spatial tasks were designed including map reading and real-time navigation activities, followed by the retrospective interviews under the methodological framework of Cognitive Discourse Analysis (CODA). The linguistic data showed that people use spatial linguistic markers to indicate concrete spatial elements such as landmarks, start and end points, directions and positions, public orientation aids including objects in the spatial field, referential statements, deixis, explorations items and linguistic items to indicate certainty and uncertainty in the new environment. The findings suggest that in the planning discourses, linguistic items related to concrete spatial elements and uncertainty markers were prevalent as map presents concrete information and provides a 2-D view of the environment. On the contrary, the dominance of linguistic items related to public orientations aids were observed in the real-time navigation data. This suggests that participants, while exploring the actual field, were relying more on their referential system to remain oriented in the 3-D environment. Overall, the findings confirm that human language carries the mental representations to express cognitive functions at work during any cognitive task.