Man and his landscape. Lexical correspondences, structural qualities and meaning valences

Abstract

Forms of communication mediated by words or images sometimes take advantage of lexical items or graphic/pictorial signs with polyvalent identity: they open up to different possibilities of interpretation which depend on reference background. The present contribution wants to explore the relationships that exist among natural landscape, built landscape and living person starting from the ways in which they are named or illustrated, respectively. Reference is made to theoretical and research contributions which pointed out how it is possible to establish structural isomorphism relationships among elements belonging to different domains of the tangible reality. These relationships are then described through a series of examples derived from literary and artistic heritage, as well as through a few clinical evidences on psychiatric patients.