Abstract
The focus of this project is on cross-cultural aspects of multimodal interactions in route descriptions, with a focus on landmarks. Landmarks are not only essential parts of route descriptions and map drawings, but they activate conceptual knowledge that goes beyond the navigation field. They become anchors for memorizing routes, a characteristic that makes them interesting items for research. In this proposal I argue that landmarks are influenced by factors such as individual, cultural and language variables, factors which have been largely neglected so far. This project proposes several studies on multimodal navigation communication, in particular on the influence of individual (visual intelligence), and social/cultural variables on producing, interpreting and evaluating navigation landmarks.