Joy English · Level C2 · Geographyjoy-english.com

A lecture on what maps leave out

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A university lecturer argues that every map is a set of choices and that the blank spaces tell us as much as the drawn lines.

Audio and answer checking: https://joy-english.com/listening/cartography-silent-maps-lecture

Argument, attitude and implication

Listen to the recording. Choose the best answer. Think about what is implied as well as what is said.

What is the lecturer's central claim?
- a) Early maps were usually inaccurate
- b) Maps are neutral pictures that people misread
- c) Maps reflect choices about what is worth recording
- d) Modern maps are more honest than old ones
Why did eighteenth-century chart makers draw particular rocks?
- a) They were the largest rocks on the coast
- b) They were the rocks that had wrecked ships
- c) They were the rocks that fishermen avoided by habit
- d) They were the easiest rocks to measure
What does the story of Mr Pellham suggest about the marshes?
- a) The surveyor could not reach them
- b) They were too complicated to draw
- c) They did not interest the people paying for the survey
- d) Local fishermen asked for them to be left out
According to the lecturer, what separates a silence from a simplification?
- a) A silence can never be put right because the information was never gathered
- b) A silence is always deliberate, while a simplification is accidental
- c) A simplification is found only on small-scale maps
- d) A simplification hides information that powerful people want hidden
How does the lecturer respond to the objection about scale?
- a) He rejects it completely
- b) He accepts it only in part
- c) He says it supports his critics
- d) He avoids answering it
Why does he mention the navigation application and the narrow lane?
- a) To show that technology makes older maps unnecessary
- b) To criticise drivers who ignore local residents
- c) To show that what a map includes can have real effects on people who were not consulted
- d) To prove that algorithms are more accurate than surveyors
What is the lecturer's attitude to the student's word "lie"?
- a) He thinks it is too strong, because most selection is not intended to deceive
- b) He thinks it is exactly right
- c) He thinks it is out of date
- d) He thinks it applies only to commercial maps
What practical advice does he give for reading a map?
- a) Avoid maps made for profit
- b) Prefer larger maps to smaller ones
- c) Check every map against satellite images
- d) Ask who made it, for whom, and what is missing

Key details

Listen again. Type one word or number from the recording to complete each sentence.

Mr Pellham spent ___ summers measuring the sandbanks.
The lecturer jokes that a map as large as the territory would be ___.
By an algorithm, the narrow lane was promoted from an afterthought to a ___.
The residents of the lane were ___ to find it crowded with lorries.
A map is described as evidence from a witness with an ___.

Answer key

Argument, attitude and implication

c) Maps reflect choices about what is worth recordingHe says a map is a decision about what deserves to be remembered, not a window onto the world.
b) They were the rocks that had wrecked shipsHe says they drew the rocks that had sunk ships, so the chart records misfortune.
c) They did not interest the people paying for the surveyThey were well known locally but earned no money for his patrons, so on paper they were not there.
a) A silence can never be put right because the information was never gatheredA simplification can be reversed with a larger sheet; a silence cannot, since nobody collected the detail.
b) He accepts it only in partHe says he accepts it "up to a point" and then draws a further distinction.
c) To show that what a map includes can have real effects on people who were not consultedThe lane became a shortcut because of a choice made elsewhere, and its residents were not asked.
a) He thinks it is too strong, because most selection is not intended to deceiveHe resists the word because a lie needs an intention to deceive, and most selection comes from habit or convenience.
d) Ask who made it, for whom, and what is missingHe recommends asking who made the map, for whom, and what they would have lost by including the missing thing.

Key details

three / 3The lecturer says he spent three summers on the sandbanks.
uselessThe old joke is that such a map would be useless.
shortcut / short cutThe lecturer says it was promoted from an afterthought to a shortcut.
bemusedHe says they were bemused by the sudden traffic.
interestHe ends by calling a map a good piece of evidence from a witness with an interest.

Transcript

Professor Lindqvist: Good morning. Last week I suggested that every map is an argument, and several of you looked at me as though I had said something faintly indecent. So let me defend the claim. A map is not a window onto the world; it is a decision about what deserves to be remembered. Consider the humble coastal chart of the eighteenth century. Its makers did not draw rocks because rocks exist. They drew the rocks that had sunk ships, which is to say they drew a history of misfortune and called it geography.

Professor Lindqvist: Now, the interesting part is what these charts leave blank. A white space on a map is rarely an absence of knowledge. More often it is an absence of interest. The surveyor of a certain northern estuary, whom I shall call Mr Pellham, spent three summers measuring its sandbanks, and then, quite deliberately, drew the inland marshes as a pale, featureless wash. The marshes were well known to every local fisherman. They simply earned no money for his patrons, and so, on paper, they were not there.

Professor Lindqvist: You might object that this is merely a matter of scale. A map as large as the territory would be useless, as the old joke goes, and omission is the price of usefulness. I accept that, up to a point. But there is a difference between a simplification and a silence, and critical cartography begins with learning to tell them apart. A simplification can be reversed: give me a larger sheet and I will add the detail. A silence cannot, because nobody ever collected the detail in the first place.

Professor Lindqvist: Let me offer a modern parallel, since I'm told that anything older than a decade strikes you as antique. Navigation applications now choose routes for millions of drivers, and they quietly favour wide, fast roads. Residents of a narrow lane in a hill town I visited were bemused to find their street suddenly crowded with lorries. Nothing had changed on the ground. The lane had merely been promoted, by an algorithm, from an afterthought to a shortcut, and nobody had asked those who lived there whether they wished to be a shortcut.

Student: Professor, doesn't that make every map a kind of lie? If it's all selection, how can we trust any of them?

Professor Lindqvist: A fair question, though I would resist the word lie. A lie requires an intention to deceive, whereas most selection is made out of habit, convenience, or the wishes of whoever is paying. The remedy is not distrust but literacy. Ask who made the map, for whom, and what they would have lost by including the thing that is missing. Do that, and a map stops being a verdict and becomes what it always was: a very good piece of evidence, from a witness with an interest. And be wary of any map that looks perfectly confident.