Cultural Geography Overview

Cultural Geography Overview Cultural geography is one of the two major branches of geography (versus physical geography) and is often called human geography. Cultural geography is the study of the many cultural aspects found throughout the world and how they relate to the spaces and places where they originate and then travel as people continually move across various areas. What Is Cultural Geography? Some of the main cultural phenomena studied in cultural geography include language, religion, different economic and governmental structures, art, music, and other cultural aspects that explain how and/or why people function as they do in the areas in which they live. Globalization is also becoming increasingly important to this field as it is allowing these specific aspects of culture to easily travel across the globe. Cultural landscapes are also important because they link culture to the physical environments in which people live. This is vital because it can either limit or nurture the development of various aspects of culture. For instance, people living in a rural area are often more culturally tied to the natural environment around them than those living in a large metropolitan area. This is generally the focus of the Man-Land Tradition in the Four Traditions of geography and studies human impact on nature, the impact of nature on humans, and people’s perception of the environment. Cultural geography developed out of the University of California, Berkeley and was led by Carl Sauer. He used landscapes as the defining unit of geographic study and said that cultures develop because of the landscape but also help to develop the landscape as well. In addition, his work and the cultural geography of today is highly qualitative rather than quantitative - a main tenant of physical geography. Today, cultural geography is still practiced and more specialized fields within it such as feminist geography, childrens geography, tourism studies, urban geography, the geography of sexuality and space, and political geography have developed to further aid in the study of cultural practices and human activities as they relate spatially to the world.

Coordination in English Grammar

Coordination in English Grammar In English grammar, coordination or parataxis is the joining of words, phrases, or clauses of the same type  to give them equal emphasis and importance. The common conjunctions and, but, for, or, not, yet and so to join the elements of a coordinate construction. Clauses joined by coordination are main clauses or coordinate clauses, and a sentence containing two or more clauses linked by coordination is called a compound sentence; this acts in contrast to subordination, which joins the main clause of a sentence with a subordinate clause. This important distinction can be simplified by saying that coordinate constructions are composed of elements that are equally important, while subordination relies on two or more elements wherein one relies on the other to provide context and meaning. Commonality and Usage Chances are as a native or non-native English speaker, you have been using grammatical coordination just about as long as youve been able to form complete sentences. This very sentence is a coordinate construction in itself, and when speaking its truly the conjunction words that define a sentence as a coordinate construction. In the written form, coordination can help maintain a pace, rhythm and flow to a writers piece, providing a means to string along a complex thought without interruption of periods and their subsequent verbal pauses. Primarily though, these function best in comparison and comparative essays.   Disjunctive conjunctions like or or either...or serve the opposite purpose in contrasting phrases and clauses; therefore, a well-written compare-contrast essay utilizes both disjunctive and conjunctive  conjunctions to create a fluid and eloquent observation on the given topics, exploring their similarities and differences without confusing the intended audience. Gapped Coordination and Joint Coordination There are two types of coordination that are additionally utilized, providing special rules for when the verbs of both clauses are the same: gapped coordination or joint coordination. Oftentimes, these are used without thought, but in order to identify them, there are a few unique differences between the two. In gapping the verb is omitted from the second clause, leaving a gap in the middle of the clause. For instance, the sentence Kyle plays basketball, and Matthew plays soccer could be rewritten Kyle plays basketball, and Matthew soccer and still make grammatical sense. This process maintains conciseness in writing as well as speech. On the other hand, joint coordination is used when a noun phrase cannot be separated into separate clauses because the words function as a unit. For instance, the sentence Pete and Cory are a dynamic duo, would not make sense if rewritten as Pete is a dynamic duo, and Chris is a dynamic duo. Joint coordination, then, forms a dependent noun-verb phrase wherein the noun phrase of Pete and Cory function as a unit.