Sarah is a young deaf woman in revolt, refusing to speak. She marries James, an orthophonist who works in a special school for the deaf. However, what gradually emerges in the course of their relationship is the latent suffering caused by what each of the partners isn't getting. James, tired of acting as Sarah's interpreter, frustrated by the limits of what they can share, shouts out:

The experience of the body, which all speaking subjects share, is at the origin of many corporeal metaphors and figurative expressions which are laced throughout all of our productions of language, and which reveal the diverse representations of the body as elaborated within linguistic communities. For instance, when the French say that someone “does nothing with his ten fingers,” to signify his inactivity or laziness, this expression reveals a representation of the hand, which is viewed as “THE SEAT OF ACTIVITY.”

During the past decades, the deaf in the United States, as well as those in other countries, have been trying to define themselves within society. They constitute, indeed, a “different” population group, insofar as they are “disabled,” and they also have their own language that they utilize for interpersonal communication. So, as a group, they are called “a group of disabled individuals,” “a distinct Deaf Culture,” “a linguistic minority,” “a society,” “a community,” “a sub-culture,” etc.

The Chinese are probably the most particular people in the world when it comes to their names. As the Chinese proverb says, “worse than being born under a bad star is to receive a bad name.” For this reason it is difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate the role of name signs in China without a certain knowledge of the Chinese tradition regarding the attribution of names. A legal Chinese name is made up of a family name, monosyllabic with some exceptions, followed by a monosyllabic or disyllabic first name. Theoretically, the 50,000 characters that make up the Chinese lexicon are potential choices for the composition of a first name. Due to the great number of homophones included in the Chinese language, it is difficult to identify the graphic form of a Chinese name by its pronunciation alone. Hence the custom of specifying the characters by writing them in the air or by indicating their signification, or even by simply presenting a calling card.

Displayed on school walls during holidays, attached to floats and triumphal arches in processions, emblems played a part in all public events organized by the Jesuits in the 17th century. These verbal-iconographic compositions, which were used to illustrate the principal themes of the ceremony, were not a mere period detail or an ornamental device but constituted a means of expression which, by virtue of the particular relations governing the association of text and image, mobilized complex rhetorical, moral, and spiritual elements simultaneously. By associating an image - seen as the “body” - with a textual element (inscriptio et subscriptio) - the “soul” - the emblem-maker sought to achieve a unity of meaning in which the two forms of communication complemented each other: it is precisely the way in which the two elements are connected, and the laws that regulate their composition, that constitutes the foundation of the language of the emblem. This language, which is used in a corresponding manner in a variety of other symbolic compositions (devices, hieroglyphs, symbols, coats of arms, medals, etc.), is based on the rhetorical operations of the metaphor, applied here as a model both for the word, with its mimetic properties, and for figurative codes. However, the metaphor, as a product of human ingenuity, is not only situated at the crossroads of a system of thought crystallized in a great number of inventions, but also bears witness to an ornamental aesthetic, typical of the 17th century's aristocratic culture and social rituals. While there does exist a vast bibliography of materials on the function and role of metaphor in Baroque culture, questions nevertheless remain about the numerous cultural practices to which the Baroque gave rise and the particular processes that the 17th century brought into play. My intention here is not to resolve all such questions but rather to provide an analytical framework by focusing my observations on emblematic compositions produced in the scholastic milieu of the Society of Jesus.

We are in Florence and Ferrara, between 1300 and 1600 A.D. At the beginning of this period the subjects of petty Italian potentates dream of a universal Empire and Church: a universal confined to the Latin world. Over the next three centuries this dream gradually fades; the idea of a universal Church is largely replaced by a discourse addressed to the individual conscience while in the political world sovereignty becomes synonymous with local power. The universal is progressively dissolved within a multiplicity of separate regimes, each rooted in its own territory; in other words, individual societies achieve spiritual legitimation by a transfer of sovereignty. Thus linked with the absolute, territorial sovereignty, rehabilitating the idea of the local, becomes the foundation of the many-sided flowering of the Renaissance. A reading of the poets is helpful in grasping the full complexity of this historical transformation. How were Dante, Petrarch and those poets who imitated the poets of Antiquity, the so-called Petrarchists, understood? This study will focus on the way in which the texts were created. By comparing them we will try to elucidate what makes for the importance and urgency of these poems.

Ecumenicism is a synthesis of syncretism and universalism. It combines, in fact, the religious totalization of syncretism with the human totalization of universalism, using syncretism to correct what might be unilateral in the universal religion, and using universalism to complete what might be particularistic in syncretism.