Folk Theories of Terrain and Direction-Giving among Young Residents of a Chinese Mountain City
This study examines how young residents of Shiyan, a mountain-valley city in northwestern China, conceptualise the relationship between local geography and direction-giving. We analysed 110 substantive responses to an open-ended questionnaire item on terrain influence and 39 supplementary comments on direction-giving practice using thematic content analysis. Of the 110 substantive responses, 71.8% affirmed an influence of geography, 9.1% denied it, and 19.1% expressed an intermediate view. Mountains (33.6%), rivers (30.0%) and built landmarks (26.4%) were the most frequently mentioned features, while recruitment of terrain features as reference points was the most common mechanism (31.8%). Supplementary comments highlighted navigation-app delegation, addressee-sensitive adjustment, migrant-city identity and time-distance expressions. The findings provide a descriptive account of speakers' own ecological and interactional explanations for spatial discourse. For cross-cultural translation, these explanations are best treated as source-side pragmatic assumptions that may need to be preserved, clarified or adapted, rather than as direct evidence of actual direction-giving behaviour.
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