Word: aphasia
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...must give a name to Le Clézio's disease, perhaps semantic aphasia will do. Semantic aphasia is that numbness of ear, mind and heart-that tone deafness to the very meaning of language-which results from the habitual and prolonged abuse of words. As an isolated phenomenon, it can be amusing if not downright irritating. But when it becomes epidemic, it signals a disastrous decline in the skills of communication, to that mumbling low point where language does almost the opposite of what it was created for. With frightening perversity-the evidence mounts daily-words now seem...
...china factory. Though Peppard was once a ne'er-do-well, amnesia has instantly transformed him into a decent chap who knows he is incapable of murder and irresponsible profiteering. He finds a kindred soul in his father-in-law (Herbert Marshall), a tycoon smitten with aphasia and therefore exempted from many a dull speech. Reels later, the hero's name, his wife's pretty neck, his marriage and the fine china are salvaged. Actors Peppard and Ashley, a romantic duo off screen as well as on, toil in vain to capture the thrill...
Receptive & Expressive. Beyond a stroke victim's physical difficulties there is another more variable, less understood, and-until recently-more neglected problem: language disability. The technical name, aphasia, covers far more than its literal meaning, "loss of speech." Usually, neither innate intelligence nor accumulated knowledge is destroyed, but access to each is cut off from the patient by a breakdown in his communications system. This breakdown may damage the receptive (reading and listening) functions, or the expressive (speaking, gesturing, writing), or both, in infinitely various combinations...
...first act he performs a grotesque dance, and, when commanded by Pozzo to think, makes his only speech, "Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattman of a personal God quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the height of divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown..." and so on for a hundred lines more. The speech elevates Pozzo to an exquisite suffering, and eventually he silences Lucky. When they return in the second...
Alexia? The language is that of a literary acrobat cockily performing newly-learned tricks and listening slyly for applause. In one neon-streaked passage, Durrell preens so obviously that his arrogant virtuosity is amusing: "I question myself eagerly. Is this amusia, aphasia, agraphia, alexia. abulia? It is life.''* The narrator, a knockabout literary sort named Lawrence Lucifer, gloats over sex, happily flexes his ability to shock ("I am afraid to shake hands with him, for fear that the skin will slip the bony structure of the hand and come away. It would take so little to produce...