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In the context of Judiciary or Forensic Linguistics, this paper shows the results of a study on rhotic consonants in prepausal position (in the spontaneous speech of central peninsular Spanish) in order to assess their forensic value for identifying speakers. The variables that have been analysed are the number of components and the acoustic features of the first and second components of the consonant, which correspond to the closure and opening phases, respectively. The results have shown some significant differences amongst speakers, which is why the rhotics are considered a useful segmental element in comparing speech samples on judiciary purposes

The article analyses one of Japanese calligraphy’s (shodō 書道) particularities: the notion of “emptiness”, “nothingness”. This concept can be observed in different layers of the art: from the white of the paper, to the movement of the brush after it has been lifted from the paper to the interpretative process. In this way, there are instances of “emptiness” during several stages of creation and understanding of a calligraphic work. In order to illustrate this, our article will analyse two shodō 書道 works, pinpointing the use of “emptiness”, or “nothingness”, and the effect they create for the calligraphic work as a whole. We conclude that in order to grasp the transcendent meaning, one must take into account all elements present within a calligraphic work, including the instances of “emptiness”.

This paper proposes a novel source for –or at least influence on– the iconography of the Moon trump in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which preserves the design from the Tarot de Marseille. In fact, the Moon template appears to date back to the earliest days of the Tarot. The proposed source or prototype is a Greco-Roman talismanic design against the Evil Eye known as the “all-suffering eye”, which frequently occupies the reverse face of Byzantine copper/ bronze “Holy Rider” amulets. The paper identifies compositional elements that correspond in the Evil Eye and Moon card designs, presents reasons why the moon and the Evil Eye might have been thought of as cognates, and considers other likely inputs into the Moon card’s visual program.

The present paper discusses how various elements in shōjo manga (Japanese comics for girls) have been incorporated in works of Japanese contemporary literature. The connection between shōjo manga and literature was pointed out for the first time when the novel Kitchen by Yoshimoto Banana was published in 1987. This paper argues that this connection has developed further since then, focusing on one of the most active writers in contemporary Japanese literature, Miura Shion[1]. The paper briefly introduces the genre shōjo manga and describes its connection with the novel Kitchen before analysing a short story and an essay by Miura Shion, focusing both on their motifs and styles, to identify elements influenced by shōjo manga.

This paper is focused on private tomb scenes with mourners dated to the end of the 18th Dynasty located in the Egyptian Memphite necropolis, with a special interest on the artistic resources and the clear division of groups according to the gender of mourners, as mourning men in expressive attitudes are particularly rare in ancient Egyptian scenes. The presence of men in grief, together with the traditional female mourners, within the funerary procession is striking, portraying expressive poses which provoke feeling of empathy and sorrow in the beholder. Indeed, the expressions of feelings in mourning scenes and their diverse artistic treatment in Memphite tomb decoration reveals the innovation and originality of the artists, features that could be traced back to the reign of Akhenaten. This paper explores the complex process of creation of the funerary iconography of the Post-Amarna art, a period of religious, political and social changes which were mirrored in private tomb scenes.

The paper presents Eastern-Slavonic rushnyks (embroidered towels with a sacral meaning) with the images of death. Despite the fact that the origin of them was printed cross-stitch papers, these images became folklorized, as there have been many transformations in folk culture (both formal and mental). The aim of the article is to show different understandings of one and the same picture (a grave cross with guelder roses twigs wrapped around it and two birds sitting against each other on the twigs) and the typical inscription (“My grave is under the cross; my love is on the cross”) to it. This is possible by analyzing various combinations of mentioned visual and verbal formulas with others that were also embroidered on rushnyks in conjunction with the previous ones. The author makes the conclusion that hanging on the walls, Eastern-Slavonic embroidered towels with such formulas presented, for the most part, memento mori topic, demonstrating various forms and manifestations of passing away.

Chinese philosophy understood through the key philosophical terms has been made familiar to Western readers by first “Christianizing” it, and then by “Orientalizing” it. Many of new translations of these canonical texts are uncritically perpetuating the same formula for rendering key philosophical terms proffered in the earlier efforts at cultural translation. Those who are working with the Master of Confucianism in China reconsider the Confucian values and attempt to interpret Confucianism in Chinese philosophical context. This paper employs the qualia structure (Pustejovsky 1991) to verify the validation of three important Confucian concepts, rén (仁), lǐ(礼) and dé (德), of the total 92 Confucian conceptual terms from The Analects (Lúnyǚ,《论语》) and Tao-Te Ching (Dàodéjīng,《道德经》) as the case studies. The qualia structure investigates the semantic information of the core characters in both source and target text which can effectively clarify the correspondence in Chinese-English translation in that the equivalent semantic information can be regarded as the equivalent translation. Furthermore, through this research, misunderstandings can be avoided and foreigners will find it easy to understand Chinese culture.

Audiovisual translation and, more specifically, accessibility, have a fundamental role in the multicultural world we live in. Due to cultural and social diversity, there are groups of people who depend on media accessibility services in order to consume audiovisual products because of their physical impairments, one of these services being audio description for the blind and visually impaired people (AD). The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to how humour and cultural aspects travel in audiovisual comedies, and their influence on how audio described scripts are produced in different countries. For this purpose, we will carry out a corpus analysis comparing the Spanish and the American AD versions of the original comedy film Campeones (Javier Fesser 2018) and its remake Champions (Bobby Farrelly 2023). The main findings of this descriptive study suggest that the AD practice of humorous audiovisual texts in a multicultural context is indeed a complex issue that could be addressed by Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986), as suggested by Martínez Sierra (2009), although further research is needed.

Abraham Ibn Daud is known as the philosopher who in his Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah (written originally in Arabic c. 1160) transplanted the Aristotelianism of the Muslim falāsifah al-Farabi and Avicenna to Jewish soil. Some 250 years later, Ḥasdai Crescas subjected this system to a severe criticism in his Or Ha-Shem (c. 1410). In his introduction Crescas classifies Ibn Daud as an Aristotelian philosopher but does not refer to him any further. Drawing on previous research by other scholars the paper examines the question to what extent Ibn Daud’s work was relevant for Crescas. Exact literary parallels that point to a unique influence of Ibn Daud on Crescas regarding philosophical doctrines are hard to uncover because Ibn Daud’s philosophical sources are the same as Crescas’s. Moreover, Ibn Daud’s thought displays many similarities to that of Maimonides and also to Gersonides whose views Crescas criticizes. The area of Biblical exegesis yields more results: Crescas can be shown to have drawn on Ibn Daud’s use of certain Biblical verses. Ibn Daud’s interpretation of Psalm 139 in relation to the key problem of God’s knowledge as well as his use of the light metaphor is likely to have inspired Crescas to ponder the question of the relation between philosophy and religion.

This article examines the issue of heterogeneity in relation to workers' representation within digital platforms. Specifically, the research analyses the regulatory process that took place within the food-delivery sector in Italy, investigating how the heterogeneity of couriers is reflected in the Just Eat Takeaway agreement signed in 2021. The novel contribution of this paper is to relate two perspectives – those of workers and unions – that have rarely been considered together in the literature on digital labour platforms. Based on extensive qualitative research in Milan, the heterogeneity of riders is synthesized into a threefold typology identified by three metaphors: the explorer, the entrepreneur and the labourer. It is argued that the introduction of a standard employment contract has led to an increase in workers’ rights and social protection. However, the current form of the agreement favours less vulnerable riders – the explorer – at the expense of those who are more numerous and dependent on platform income – the entrepreneur and the labourer. We conclude that this agreement can be interpreted mainly as a means for trade unions to legitimise their institutional role in the socio-economic arena and strengthen their power resources for future negotiations.

This paper explores how concepts from two influential strands of liberalism, new liberalism and neoliberalism, are represented in a sample of online media articles by analysing news coverage of the Trade Union Act (2016). The analysis centres on internet news items published on the websites of The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Sky News, and BBC News. To systematise the analysis, three thematic axes were constructed: a) Democracy, Law and Order; b) Civil and Labour Rights; c) Military Metaphors, Privileges and Trade Unions.

It is argued that legal language should be formal, precise and clear to avoid ambiguity and/or misunderstanding. As rights and duties are communicated through modals, clarity and precision in drafting and translating them is crucial. Otherwise, there is a possibility of conveying loose messages in the source text or different and/or inconsistent messages in the target text. However, the drafting of Arabic modal expressions does not follow clear guidelines, and their translation differs from one translator to another. This paper investigates how deontic modality of obligation and prohibition is used in The Leeds Annotated Parallel Corpus of Arabic-English Constitutions in comparison to The Leeds Monolingual Corpus of English Constitutions. More specifically, the paper presents a classification of these modal expressions and investigates the different lexical variants expressed in a Corpus of Arabic Constitutions. The paper uses corpus-based tools to analyse the different lexical forms used for deontic modality of obligation and prohibition in Arabic and how they are rendered into English. Results of such analysis are compared to a non-translated Corpus of English Constitutions to find out whether the deontic meaning of the modals is comparable to the set of deontic modals used in the constitutions originally drafted in English. The corpus-based analysis gave a detailed classification of a variety of modal expressions used in the Arabic Corpus. It also showed that the translation of deontic modals of obligation and prohibition from Arabic into English is influenced by the source text lexical variations; however, the corpus techniques employed in the study managed to capture some comparable modals in both corpora.

This paper works on the notion of transgenre (Monzó-Nebot 2001a, 2002a, b), its uses and possibilities in the study of translation as mediating intercultural cooperation. Transgenres are discursive patterns that develop in recurring intercultural situations and are recognized and used by a community. Based on the reiteration of communicative purposes and individuals’ roles in translated situations, interactions are conventionalized to streamline cooperation between cultural and social groups, thereby engendering a distinctive set of taken-for-granted assumptions and meaning-making mechanisms and signs which are particular to a translated event. The paper will first argue how this concept takes a step beyond the existing proposals from cultural, social, and linguistic approaches, especially the third space, the models of norms and laws of translation, and universals and the language of translation (translationese), by focusing on the situatedness of textual, interactional, and cultural patterns and providing a means to model and measure the development of translation as a discursive practice, as such influenced by historical, cultural, social, cognitive, ideologic, and linguistic issues. Then existing applications of the concept and new possibilities will be identified and discussed. The results of existing studies show translations build a third space of intercultural discursive practices showing tensions with both source and target systems. The legal translator is at home in this third space, resulting from their own cultural practices, which are linked to translators’ specific function in a broader multicultural system.

This paper shows that in the philosophy of Sánchez Vázquez the basis for creative praxis is not innovation but the activity of practical consciousness, to which that Marxist philosopher describes as dialectical unity of the subjective and the objective. Furthermore, the paper argues that, in the sense of such unity and mutatis mutandi, creation has a place in non-practical human activity.

The paper examines the roles of Crescas and Spinoza in the transition from the medieval to the modern conception of the universe. Crescas is presented as an illustrative example of the tension between Aristotelianism and revealed religion and how the latter brings about the dissolution of the former, thus paving the way for the modern conception of the universe. It is then showed how this modern conception is embodied in Spinoza’s thought, which radicalizes some of its defining traits. This radicalization undermines the traditional conception of the Deus absconditus and leads in Spinoza to the replacement of religion by philosophy as the true divine revelation.

This paper focuses on the process of empowerment of roma women. Considering the intersection of inequalities that they face, the article points out that an analytical turn of these processes is needed in order to approach them from an intersectional view. In this context, the introduction of this perspective in the consideration of the empowerment of roma women is seen as a necessary step in order to inspire and rethink the democratization in terms of recognition of this collective. The article tackles the following question then: what does intersectionality tell about the empowerment of roma women? With this objective, the text discusses the life’s testimonies of five roma women collected through in-depth interviews. Through the analysis of the tensions emerging during their processes of empowerment, the paper concludes with some proposals in order to overcome these obstacles.

U.S. involvement in both theatres of WWII, i.e., in Europe and in the Pacific, has been widely reflected in literature, film, music, and art. This paper investigates the way American intervention in the Pacific is showcased in Terrence Malick’s film The Thin Red Line (1998) and the miniseries The Pacific (2010), directed by, among others, Jeremy Podeswa, and produced by, among others, Tom Hanks. I seek to analyze the aesthetics and ethics of U.S. war in the Pacific that these two media project. Do the chosen examples justify American intervention? How was the war in the Pacific different from that one in Europe? Were U.S. soldiers ready to fight in the Pacific? How did the war influence its participants? These are some of the questions the paper will meditate upon in large detail.

Through the analysis of the incunable and postincunable editions of Plautus’ comedies, this paper establishes that Francisco López de Villalobos uses a 1497 Italian edition (even a 1495 one) as source text for his translation of Amphitruo. This paper also sustains that Villalobos translated Amphitruo into Spanish –at least an initial version of it– in Salamanca before August 1498. This hypothesis is supported by the analysis of Villalobos’ glosses, by his translation of verses (attributed to Italian humanist Ermolao Barbaro) that Villalobos inserted in the abovementioned edition Amphitruo, and by several characteristic features of the life and work of the Zamoran doctor. Therefore, the first translation into Spanish of a comedy by Plautus coincides in time and space with the production of the first printed version of La Celestina.

In the northwest of Cáceres there is a Romance variety with controverted affiliation. The recent book of Costas (2013) gathers several works that defend a Galician origin, explained by medieval processes of repopulation. One section contains a selection of words that have acquired a meaning in that variety; this list could be used as an evidence of the special character of this language with respect to its neighbours and to point out its distance from Portuguese. Nevertheless, this paper proposes a contrastive analysis between those words and Castilian and Portuguese dialectal materials that reveals that the situation is far from Costas’ description. In fact, almost half of the meanings that were presented as specificities of the fala are well documented in dialectal Portuguese. This paper aims to claim the need to consider dialectal materials produced close to the Valley of the Ellas, since they are essential to reach rigorous conclusions about the origin of the fala.

This paper analyses the latest Spanish reforms regarding domestic work. The Spanish legislator, doubtlessly influenced by the ILO Domestic Work Convention nº 189 – which, however, was not later ratified in Spain- made a deep reform on domestic work in 2011. This legal reform implied a striking change that affected both working conditions and social security of employees in the family home. The aim of this reform has been to bring the regulation in domestic work closer to the general regulation for other workers, although maintaining certain specialties. Regarding working conditions, their setting as “particular employment relationship” has been held. However, the differences between this relationship and the common ones have been reduced. As for social security, domestic employees have been incorporated into the General Social Security System, but with important specialties, thus erasing the Special Domestic Employees System. The paper also examines the legal changes that have taken place in this field after the new Government arose.

Over the past ten years in Italy, Spain and France, the demographic pressure and the increasing women’s participation in labour market have fuelled the expansion of the private provision of domestic and care services. In order to ensure the difficult balance between affordability, quality and job creation, each countries’ response has been different. France has developed policies to sustain the demand side introducing instruments such as vouchers and fiscal schemes, since the mid of the 2000s. Massive public funding has contributed to foster a regular market of domestic and care services and France is often presented as a “best practices” of those policies aimed at encouraging a regular private sector. Conversely in Italy and Spain, the development of a private domestic and care market has been mostly uncontrolled and without a coherent institutional design: the osmosis between a large informal market and the regular private care sector has been ensured on the supply side by migrant workers’ regularizations or the introduction of new employment regulations . The analysis presented in this paper aims to describe the response of these different policies to the challenges imposed by the current economic crisis. In dealing with the retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduced households’ purchasing power, Italy, Spain and France are experiencing greater difficulties in ensuring a regular private sector of domestic and care services. In light of that, the paper analyses the recent economic conjuncture presenting some assumptions about the future risk of deeper inequalities rising along with the increase of the process of marketization of domestic and care services in all the countries under analysis.

The aim of this paper is to explain the connection between discursive rules and moral norms in the frame of discourse ethics. The paper begins with an analysis of the difference between action and operation and with a reconstruction of the concept of discourse. After that, the difference and the relationship between law and obligation are presented. The conclusion is that the connection between action and possible discourse is implicit in the notion of moral responsibility.

The Royal Decree-Law 16/2012 for sanitary regulation, led to the elimination of certain benefits for people not registered in the Spanish National Security Social System. Thus, this means the end of the universal and free health care for all citizens who live in Spain. This recent regulation creates an unequal access to a recognized basic human right. This paper aims to provide an assessment of the impact of the elimination of such health care rights for immigrant people, specifically by exploring their implications for immigrant women, and the consequences of the implementation of the Royal Decree-Law on violence against women and on sexual and sexual and reproductive rights. In addition, this paper also seeks to collect the efforts of organizations who work in defense and for the vindication of the universality of the health in Spain. This paper will address, particularly, the case of Catalonia.

This paper discusses some aspects of the ontological problem of bioartifacts in order to develop, within the vocabulary of philosophy of technical artifacts, a deflationed notion of bioartifact capable of revealing a meaningful distinction between those processes arisen from a natural dynamics not intentionally intervened, and those arisen from intentional intervention. With this purpose two ways of interpreting the nature of these entities (intentionalism and reproductivism) are reconstructed and evaluated. Finally this paper collects the previous arguments and tries to make explicit the levels of intentional intervention and the conditions to be a bioartifact.

This paper tries to approach the analysis of the composition of the XIII century Sicilian poetic school, those of the dialogic gender of the tenzone, in which there appears a debate about elements relative to the theory of love. In this textual corpus the paper studies the stylistic rhetorical signs used to develop the argumentation and the expressive formulae that poets use to engage, the so-called debate and discussion.

The paper examines Amartya Sen’s seminal work Development and Freedom (1999) in relation to his underlying conception of justice and particularly in relation to the tension that arises in the correlation between basic freedom and basic goods. The idea is to address the question as to which of the two elements (basic goods or basic freedoms) takes precedence to the enactment of global justice. The paper advances a particular distinction between a foundational approach and a functional approach when addressing the question of the priority and primacy of any of the two elements and sheds light on a contentious answer, namely, that basic goods are foundationally primary in relation to basic freedoms and that such a primacy does not rule out the functional priority of basic freedoms.

This paper traces the deterioration of gender equality in Canada as governments failed to understand how badly the 1991 recession affected women's economic status well into the mid-2000s, and then as an anti-feminist conservative government took office in 2006. The author provides examples of how anti-recession and economic recovery policies formulated by a government antagonistic to women's demands for equal treatment accelerated the economic deterioration women continued to experience between 2008 and 2012. The paper includes gender impact data on women's employment, access to unemployment benefits, participation in infrastructure stimulus programs, shares of personal income tax cuts, and the growing wage gap in Canada.

This paper provides a profound reflection on how the importance our society accords to a good image –which is based on three factors, beauty, youth and thinness– is mirrored in our linguistic expression. Firstly, we explain how our society forces us to pursue rigid aesthetic ideals, which are reflected in language. Then we analyze the cultural perception of the above-mentioned attributes and its reflection in our linguistic environment. Finally, we put forth our conclusions, where we summarize the main ideas dealt with in this paper.

This paper explores the possibilities for cyber-action from the articulation of cyber/ecofeminism. The subject of discussion is the renewed space of the Public Sphere and the new tools provided to some political cyberactivism. Specifically, the paper focuses on the problems of the private, the use of voice online and the digital divides. Finally, the paper offers a representative sample of the presence of the eco-feminist movement in the Net.

This is an analysis of queer theory bearing in mind sexual identity. This paper is critical of the universal duality considered as a sociopolitical construction which has been maintained through History until the 1970s. This paper also reviews the theories of the main mid. XX century thinkers concerning historical constructions on sexes and their relationship.

The paper tries to situate Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist work within the tradition of feminist theory. We consider her work to be a bridge between Enlightment feminism and the so named Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. The paper does a philosophical grounding of the cycle of vindications and points out the critiqueof androcentrism.

This paper is intended to highlight the role played by Simone de Beauvoir and, to be more precise, by her work The Second Sex, in the period in which the first studies on Women's History were carried out. In particular, it will deal with de Beauvoir's theoretical analyses of the construction of femininity as a social and cultural process, and of the patriarchal image of woman as the other. One of the aims of this paper is that of showing the extent to which concepts such as gender and alterity, even identity, are present in her work; likewise, it is concerned with presenting the mechanisms that legitimate a certain social order, i.e. the patriarchal model, and, more specifically, with explaining what gave rise to those mechanisms, and how the identification of women with the weak gender guaranteed their continuity.

This paper compares the way Aristotle explains how one body gets alive or the way one mind manages to understand, with the way Wittgenstein discusses some questions as how is it possible to get meaning from the sign, or to follow a rule. The paper’s goal is not to establish a real influence of Aristotle on Wittgenstein, but to explore some logical aspects of their explanation patterns, with the aim of clarifying several notions of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

According to Etchemendy, in attempting to offer an analysis of the modal features of the intuitive concept of logical consequence, Tarski has committed a modal fallacy. In this paper, I consider the thesis according to it is posible to analyze the modals properties of concept of logical consequence through of a generalization on set-theoretical interpretations. As is known, some philosophers have tried to argue for the transit from the general to the modal by showing that there are enough settheoretic interpretations so as to be able to represent the modal features of the intuitive concept of consequence. As is also known, those people have encountered a lot of difficulties. In the present paper, I will try to show that those problems are related not with the specific possibility of accounting for the modal features by means of a set-theoretic notion of model but with the possibility of coming up with a precise mathematical theory for the concept of interpretation, and, as such, they can be solved by way of appealing to the usual solutions to this problem.

This paper sums up the various pretexts Rousseau argues as reasons to defend women’s subordination. It seemed interesting to organise the paper in the two parts. The first one intends to decide whether Rousseau’s writing until 1755, date in which his Second Discourse was published, can be object of feminist criticism. The second, on the contrary, means to reconstruct historically the political, pedagogical and religious convictions which Rousseau makes use of in order to exclude women.

In this paper I wish to comment on the way we conceive of sexual life today, in connection with Michel Foucault’s characterization of “Sex” as something that is part of a “device for sexuality”. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, I attempt to analyze and criticize some major components of our conceptions of sex, namely (a) our belief that sex is a private matter, (b) the view that erotism succeeds to be a philosophical clue to the Subject-Object predicament (G. Bataille), and (c) the thesis that a new civilization based on Eros might be born (H. Marcuse). In the second part, I focus on Foucault’s position, which has been widely misunderstood. Foucault’s general argument was that the mechanics of power in our contemporary societies required a well organized device for sexual practice, theory, medical care and so on, since power required close control over the private life of individuals and the disciplinary training of bodies. He opposed the (c) thesis, which he called the “repressive hypothesis”. He also opposed the (b) view, substituting a “genealogy of the man of desire” for Bataille’s conception of erotism. Finally he opposed the (a) belief, by bringing in debate the spectacular counter-example of Ancient Greek and Latin conceptions of sexuality, to the understanding of which he devoted the last years of his life. The third part of this paper then develops Foucault’s basic assumption that in our present time, to resist power will be possible only if we become able to constitute ourselves as individuals in a new way. I argue that the enigma of sex in our lives essentially exhibits our political, philosophical and ethical weakness. With respect to politics we are deprived of the “power to act”, since every confrontation between individuals and the City has become delu- sive, thus making the art of Greek tragedy barely impossible. With respect to philosophy, we meet the major challenge of a new characterization of the Subject. With respect to ethics, we face the reality of violence everywhere. Our “private tragedies” demonstrate that we recoil into private life mainly because we feel that we have lost the world.

This paper proposes an interpretation of the flowers and other plant motifs present in some late medieval images of four Marian themes: the Virgin Enthroned with Child, the Virgin of Humility, the Sacra Conversazione and the Coronation of the Virgin. By supplementing certain unjustified conventions that, without any argument, see these flowers as natural symbols of Mary’s love or virginity, our iconographic proposal is based on multiple evidence by prestigious Church Fathers and medieval theologians. By commenting some significant passages of the Old Testament, all of them praise the Mother of the Savior in terms of flowers and plants as metaphors for her holiness and virtue. Thus, on the basis of a solid patristic and theological tradition, this paper attempts to interpret these botanic elements as symbolic figures of purity, humility, charity, sublimity of virtue and absolute holiness of Mary and, as the essential core, her perpetual virginity and virginal divine motherhood.

Contradicting the superficial and unjustified conventional interpretation of the lily in the images of the Annunciation, this paper proposes two new deep theological explanations of that flower in this biblical episode. Based on the analysis of an abundant amount of quotes of the Church Fathers and medieval theologians, which show a well- established doctrinal tradition about this issue, we will try to demonstrate that the stem of lilies at the scene of the Annunciation symbolizes both the Mary’s virginal divine motherhood and the supernatural human incarnation of God the Son, Christ. The current paper seeks also to relate these textual analyses of patristic and theological sources to twelve Spanish Gothic Annunciations which include a stem of lilies.

This paper examines how immigration policies on migrant care workers are both pragmatic ‘policy solutions’ and also reflect and construct social ideas and relations about gender, labour and nation, with a particular focus on the UK. It first considers the regimes that construct the supply and demand for low waged workers in social care to analyse how the creation of a migrant workforce results from the intersection of a wide range of policies and ‘systems effects’. The role of migrant labour in the care sector is however, not reflected in immigration policy, and the paper examines the crucial symbolic dimension which can be overlooked in policy literature. To look at this more closely it considers the two immigration categories that have been available for care work in private homes, au pairs and domestic worker visas, which reflect and construct assumptions about the doing of domestic work in the UK, about the relation between family and work, and ideas of equality, slavery and freedom.

This paper aims to emphasize the importance of interpretation in the translation process, the implications deriving from it, as well as their effect on the reader and the way they affect his or her reception and cultural use of the text. This subject matter will be examined through one of Italo Calvino’s best-known works, more specifically The Invisible Cities (translated by William Weaver). This is a work that can be ascribed to one of the branches of travel literature, namely the imaginary voyage, and that can be read as a sort of philosophical vademecum. Precisely because of its nature, it can undoubtedly be considered a text characterised by a structure, a style and a language that make it susceptible to different interpretations.In the translation analysis of this work, the focus will be on how translation can sometimes move away from the so called intentio operis that is, from interpretation in semiotic terms, from what the work wants to communicate on the level of signification, expressing it through its intrinsic textual coherence (Eco, 1990). Specifically, through the examination of certain stylistic, grammatical and lexical choices made by the translator, some portions of the text will be highlighted in which the construction of the meaning differs from that of the source language, thus distorting the textual cooperation whose protagonist is the reader (Eco, 1979).

Hungary became host to various business services through relocations of these activities from other, higher cost locations, especially from Western Europe and through opening up new capacities. Locational advantages determine which countries are chosen as hosts to new or relocated service centres. For the case of Hungary, the analysis is carried out on the basis of eight detailed company case studies. The majority of these is vertical FDI (close to 100 % of export/sales ratio), and two companies represent a confluential case of vertical and horizontal (domestic market oriented) FDI, where sales to the domestic market are also important, though not dominating. The paper’s main aim is to make an attempt at contributing to filling some gaps in the literature, in terms of analysing locational advantages for vertical FDI in services, specifically in business services. It shows that locational advantages, taken into consideration by vertical and horizontal FDI differ from each other to a great extent. It identifies the various elements of locational advantages connected to the different elements of investment motives, in terms of cost reduction, reducing costs of disintegration of production, reducing other costs, and motives arising from the confluence of vertical and horizontal FDI, and the paper relates these elements to the specificities of the business services sector.

Despite differences between EU member countries, most experience demographic change characterised by a decrease in mortality and fertility rates leading to a growing proportion of older people with effects on the working population. This poses a range of economic challenges in terms of financing health care and retirement as well as maintaining the employment skills base. This paper is based on a research project with the aim of identifying what policies employers and employment related organisations need to adopt in order to extend the labour market participation of older workers. Between 2005 and 2007 the ESF Article 6 funded CAWA (Creative Approaches to Workforce Ageing). This project was carried out by four European partner institutions based in: Spain, Austria, Sweden and the UK with further input from Bulgaria. The project partners had strong links to trade unions, employers organisations and regional authorities, facilitating multilayred debates related to raising awareness of demographic change among policy makers and developing best practice guidelines. The findings presented relate to key employment areas and are explored from employers’ and workers’ perspectives. The organisational identities/commitment literature provides a conceptual framework to gain understanding of the push and pull factors associated with workforce ageing. The paper concludes by arguing that the debate on workforce ageing among trade unions, employers and policy makers needs to be focussed on deeper understanding of the work and non-work related identities of older workers and aim to facilitate flexible working arrangements.

Gold glass bottoms generally found in Roman catacombs, are some of late antiquity’s most enigmatic objects. Originally conceived as vessels, once they were broken, their bases were reemployed to be embedded in the mortar sealing of the slabs of certain loculi. Drawing on the different hypotheses on the origins of the bowls or glasses these bottoms were obtained from, and reflecting on the reasons for and ways of using these glass bottoms to decorate loculi, this paper aims to reassess the position of gold glass in the culture of late antiquity by questioning its pertinence or link to "popular" culture.

Muu dancers are one of the most common elements in the funerary processions represented in the private Theban tombs of the New Kingdom, especially in the 18th dynasty. This paper aims to analyse the main characteristics of the representation of these male individuals that appear only on private tombs located in different necropolises. It will also try to understand the ritual meaning of these dancers through the attested images, an enigmatic procedure that has been interpreted in different ways by several authors. In addition, the distribution of these scenes both inside and outside the Theban necropolis will be analysed to understand the diffusion of this type of representations during the Egyptian New Kingdom. Thus, firstly I will make a description of the funerary processions painted or engraved on the walls of the private tombs. Secondly, I will describe the muu dancers following Brunner-Traut’s classification and include the representations attested, comparing them to analyse the common features of these male dancers.

The paper investigates how Christians of different denominations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth described the Tatars and the Turks in the legends related to the miraculous image/icons of Virgin Mary. It includes both the use of topoi of Tatars devastating the icons during Tatar incursions in the 13-16 centuries, general vision of the Turks and Tatars by the 17 and 18-centuries’ authors, and presentation of them as military enemies in the setting of wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as reflection of these plots in the visual art. The research is based on the analysis of legends and miracles dating back to the 17-18th century and available visual material. It was shown that Christians of three main denominations –Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics– represented the Turks and the Tatars in a similar way and the representation corresponded to the representation of other military enemies independently of religious believes.

After the expeditions of wealthy merchants and Franciscan missionaries during the 14th century, the Chinese empire under Ming rule did not engage profusely with the European world, and vice versa. This period of artistic and intellectual silence and detachment was broken in the late 16th century when the Jesuit missionaries reconnected two worlds –Europe and China– reactivating previous medieval commercial, artistic, and intellectual routes. Silk –the product par excellence commercialized along the routes connecting China and Europe– was then accompanied by other precious products, including Chinese ceramics reaching various European courts and European paintings that reached the Ming court in Beijing. This paper addresses the complex and challenging popularization of Roman Catholicism through objects and images during the early modern era. In particular, it focuses on the diffusion of devotional images and objects used by Roman Catholic missionaries and the religious practices related to them.

The paper deals with one famous plot on Ukrainian rushnyks. This is about a scene of beating a man by his wife and the appropriate inscription to it “A woman was beating a man taking him by the forelock”. Notwithstanding the fact that nowadays it is mostly perceived as a humorous scene, the meaning of it may vary up to the sacred one. Is it connected with the fact that Ukrainian rushnyks had been regarded as things of particular significance? The author traces the roots of this embroidered plot in popular culture, showing changing of senses according to the context. Oral culture (folk humorous and dancing songs, narratives, sayings), lubok literature and fictions, Ethnographical features of Ukrainian married men and women are taken into consideration. Also, the issue of renewing the old jokes is considered. When the comic scene became irrelevant or not enough humorous, embroideresses combined it with other scenes to make it more ridiculous. The author concludes that absolutely all folk meanings of one and the same plot have right to exist.

This paper deciphers the badly damaged and barely discernible wall paintings of Saydet el Rih in Enfeh (Lebanon) using graphic surveys. This procedure consists of copying all traces of the paintings and recording their chromatic values and stratigraphy, in order to understand and visualise the creative process behind them, both stylistically and iconographically.

This paper analyses the military use of holy relics, images, and other Christian apotropaic devices in the Roman-Persian wars. I examine a wide range of literary evidence from the 4th to the 7th century exploring where, why, and how different Christian objects were used in military contexts. Moreover, I consider different factors, as the local religious practices or the rivalry between the Christian Roman Empire and Zoroastrian Persia. I argue that the earliest military uses of relics and holy images happened in the context of the Roman-Persian conflict and frontier region, and that, during the 4th-7th centuries, these uses were much more common there than anywhere else. Also, that some local practices of this region could have been adopted by military officers and the Imperial elite. I propose that three factors could explain this: First, the intensity of the cult of relics and images in Syria and the Near East. Second, the growing identification of the Roman Empire as a Christian power between the 4th and 7th centuries. Finally, the Roman-Persian conflict and the climate of religious confrontation that grew over the course of the Byzantine-Sassanian wars.

Translation supports the construction of a national identity through the selection of foreign texts to be transferred to the target language. Within this framework, the effort made in the 1960s by Italian editors and translators in giving new dignity to comics proves emblematic. This paper aims to reconstruct the reception of American comic strips in Italy going through the issues of Linus published in 1967 and 1968: the selected cartoonists (e.g. Al Capp, Jules Feiffer, and Walt Kelly) participate in the cultural debate of the time discussing politics, war, and civil rights. The analysis of the translation strategies adopted will reveal the difficulty of reproducing the polysemy of metaphors, idioms and puns, trying to maintain consistency between the visual and the verbal code, but primarily the need to create a purely Italian cultural discourse.