Multivalent Markers
Multivalent markers are the heart of our project of connecting spatial images to feeling and thus creating our imagined geography. Through these multivalent markers we hope enhance our understanding of Russian identity, at least in this period. Multivalent markers are specific examples or instances in which a geographically definable location (for example, Volga, Urals, Kazan’) or an unmappable metaphor of place (for example, home, homeland, abroad, idyll, paradise, hell, north, west) is connected to a place-based concept (PBC). Here mere geographical “space” becomes meaningful “place” endowed with emotional valence and significant personal or political associations.
