Max Weber describes a coherent ideal type of mystic, characterized by passivity and "living on berries in the woods, or on alms." This way, Max Weber disregards the paradoxicality of mystical discourse, selecting a coherent path in a contradictory semantic universe and producing a semiotic ideology, functional to his argument about the relation between capitalism and Protestantism. On the contrary, mystics operate inside the social world and take sides in its conflicts. They react to social crises, such as war, by linking a spiritual reading to their bodily experiences. Eco's notion of "semiotic labor" can be useful to analyze how this semiotic relation is produced in mystical writings through metasemiotic statements. The paper focuses on two case-studies: Padre Pio's letters and Ludwig Wittgenstein's diaries, both written during World War I. The analysis will highlight a common structure: both mystics associate spiritual values with pain, anguish, and fear through catalysis, interpreting them as divine trials. This is done thanks to metasemiotic assertions introduced and validated by speech acts. This structure is interpreted as a semio-technique, producing the semantic values with which the subject wishes to join.

In cultures based on foundational or sacred texts, the contrast between different interpretative styles is the crux of important political questions: who has the right to interpret the sacred texts, and therefore to exert authority over the community? Which Senders have the right to sanction interpretations? In Roman Catholic culture, two main interpretative styles can be identified. The first is the intellectual and rational approach that most characterizes theological discourse, the Magisterium and canon law; the other is the experiential and mysterious approach characterizing mystical discourse, which is scrupulously - and sometimes severely - evaluated by the ecclesiastical authorities, especially in the case of women interpreters. In this paper, I look into one facet of the clash between these two interpretative styles. I first present some reflections about the relationship between holy characters and political engagement, pointing out how and why mystics are endowed with a particular authority and leadership in their communities; I then focus on the mystical interpretative style and related enunciative strategies, showing how the authority of the woman interpreter is built through a stratification of the authorial subjectivity, with particular reference to the case of Maria Valtorta.

Current conceptions of human language include a gestural component in the communicative event. However, determining how the linguistic and gestural signals are distinguished, how each is structured, and how they interact still poses a challenge for the construction of a comprehensive model of language. This study attempts to advance our understanding of these issues with evidence from sign language. The study adopts McNeill's criteria for distinguishing gestures from the linguistically organized signal, and provides a brief description of the linguistic organization of sign languages. Focusing on the subcategory of iconic gestures, the paper shows that signers create iconic gestures with the mouth, an articulator that acts symbiotically with the hands to complement the linguistic description of objects and events. A new distinction between the mimetic replica and the iconic symbol accounts for the nature and distribution of iconic mouth gestures and distinguishes them from mimetic uses of the mouth. Symbiotic symbolization by hand and mouth is a salient feature of human language, regardless of whether the primary linguistic modality is oral or manual. Speakers gesture with their hands, and signers gesture with their mouths.