The semantics‐pragmatics divide in cartographic representation

Philosophers who take maps to have a semantics (i.e., rules that assign contents to cartographic marks) also typically hold that semantics fully determines the truth‐conditional meaning of maps. In this paper, I tackle this form of literalism, which assigns no truth‐conditional role to pragmatics, by investigating the semantics‐pragmatics divide in cartographic representation. I rely on examples from Google Maps, whose widespread use makes it possible to draw general conclusions about the communicative behavior of maps. This behavior, I argue, supports a form of contextualism, on which pragmatics pervasively influences the truth conditions of maps by altering semantic elements.