ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether the metaphor of conversation can assist in this endeavour, by providing a channel for animal voices into landscape studies. Indeed, animals are in a very literal, or rather, audible sense, through their often resonant vocalisations, integral partners to almost any landscape conversation. It looks at some of the interesting ways in which animals have been brought into academic attention lately. Then an attempt is made to situate animals within the broad phenomenological approach to landscape which the conversation metaphor entails. Jakob von Uexkull's concept of Umwelt receives particular attention here. The chapter argues that, when coupled with the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, this concept can indeed be useful for landscape research that purports to be more than human, because it extends the acknowledgement of phenomenal worlds beyond humans and radically remaps the categories of nature and environment in relational terms.
