Nature trails as multimodal "on-site knowledge": On the spatial-semiotic construction of different 'landscapes' and human-nature relationships in a national park

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nina Janich
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 581164016

Nature trails, often also referred to as "theme trails", "adventure trails" or similar, can be found in many forms in German-speaking countries – and almost always relate to the surrounding landscape (forest nature trails, for example, to the forest, wine nature trails to the vineyard). In this project, nature trails are understood as multimodal offerings for the transfer of knowledge 'on site', whose spatial or geosemiotic embedding in the landscape is relevant to the respective knowledge content as well as to the way in which it is conveyed. Based on a spatial semiotic and multimodal analysis of the 10 nature trails in the Rauris Valley in the Hohe Tauern National Park, which address different topics in a clearly definable area, such as alpine farming and agriculture in the valley, which has been cultivated for centuries, flora and fauna (e.g. the return of eagles and vultures to the national park), glacier history and historical gold mining, the project pursues three objectives: Firstly, the linguistic landscapes constituted by the nature trails along hiking trails and their complex relationships to place and space are to be made describable – following Blommaert and Maly – as historical, social and socio-semiotic constructions of 'landscape', thus opening up a new type of linguistic landscape in which rural and natural spaces meet 'educational spaces'. Secondly, nature trails are to be examined as multimodal knowledge transfer offerings 'on site' in order to assess which landscape knowledge is considered worthy of transfer in favour of culture-nature literacy in an alpine national park community that pursues, among other things, tourist interests. Thirdly, the aim is to identify which local and/or functional identities, ideologies and interests are reflected in and through the nature trails, and to what extent the landscape knowledge conveyed and the human-nature relationships depicted provide information about converging or diverging discursive positions of actors in agriculture, nature conservation and tourism within the land use discourse. The project therefore operates at the interface between linguistic landscape research and research on multimodal knowledge transfer, with a methodological focus on spatial linguistics and discourse linguistics (especially frame semantics). The choice of the Austrian national park community of Rauris is based on the diversity of the nature trails (already documented in photographs in 2025) in a clearly defined area, which various actors use to present their views on the landscape and the practices that shape it and are conditioned by it, and this in a protected area (Hohe Tauern National Park) where agricultural and tourist interests compete with nature conservation and a related educational mandate.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants