Wordplay, world‐play, and interdisciplinary imaginations

Abstract

By mapping examples of geographical portmanteau words, this paper aims to elucidate several interdisciplinary imaginative practices. It presents examples of verbal invention in the publications and rhetorical practices of three geographers, Francis Galton, John Frederick Heyes, and Halford Mackinder, which demonstrate individual words, especially neologisms and portmanteau words, can reflect concepts of space and disciplinary spaces. The paper traces perceptions of the relations between word‐making and world‐making via examples of re‐scaling, including magnification and shrinkage of words, as well as the moving, subtraction, and addition of syllables or letters in certain words, including geography, philosophy, and geosophy. In drawing on the wordplay of these figures, it argues that portmanteau words evidence parallels between late 19th‐century and early 20th‐century chemical and geographical practices that have important implications for 20th‐century geographies and languages of knowledge‐making.

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