Fragen des Stils / Questions of style

Abstract

This paper undertakes a creative exploration of problems of academic understanding and exchange across language-specific segments of human-geographic discourse by utilizing and elaborating Ludwik Fleck's concept of 'styles of thought'.  To illustrate what distinguishes styles of thought, and to develop ideas about how to improve inter-cultural exchange within human geography, the authors perform paired readings of papers in the concept of 'landscape' or 'Landschaft' from each other's language traditions.  Hannah reads and reflects upon a paper by Ulrich Eisel, and Schlottmann reads a piece by John Wylie.  These readings are oriented toward uncovering the ways in which expectations, assumptions and hitherto un-thematized viewpoints of the two readers are unearthed, activated, provoked or rendered intelligible by the respective texts, their subtexts and contexts.  One of the results of these paired readings is a more detailed sense of the specific ways in which a broadly 'German-language' 'thought collective' can be distinguished from a broadly 'Anglophone' one despite all the complicated overlaps and interdigitations between the two.