About us

Codex Mundi is a scholarly atlas of intercultural misunderstandings - gestures, words, dress codes and symbols that radically change meaning when crossing a border. Project led by Marc Legris, assisted by artificial intelligence Claude (Anthropic).

Perimeter

The corpus targets 500 cards, organized into 16 thematic categories: kinesics (gestures), oculesics (gaze), paralanguage (silence, laughter, vocal volume), proxemics (interpersonal distance), haptics (touch), chronemics (relationship to time), linguistic false-friends, greetings, symbols, business, table, gifts, life rituals and dress codes.

Methodology

Each fact sheet follows a canonical outline structured into five sections: (1) the gesture and its expected meaning, (2) the geography of the misunderstanding, (3) historical background, (4) documented incidents, (5) practical recommendations. The fact sheets are based on a hierarchy of sources from tier-1 (academic authorities) to tier-3 (specialized encyclopedias).

Sources

Tier 1. Tier 1 - academic authorities in non-verbal communication and anthropology: Desmond Morris, Paul Ekman, Edward T. Hall, Fernando Poyatos, Adam Kendon, David Matsumoto, Roger Axtell, David McNeill, Anthony Corbeill, Marcel Mauss, Erin Meyer, Geert Hofstede, Margaret Visser, Annemarie Schimmel, Michel Pastoureau.

Tier 2. Tier 2 - quality international press: Financial Times, The Economist, New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, Die Zeit, El País, BBC, Asahi Shimbun.

Tier 3. Tier 3 - sector-specific documentation, specialized encyclopedias, museum archives (Te Ara, ADL Hate Symbols Database, etc.).

Translations

The files and interface are translated into 9 languages (French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Arabic) via the DeepL Pro API. Automatic translations preserve the editorial structure but may contain slight idiomatic inaccuracies. Corrections are welcome.

License

Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. You are free to reproduce, quote and adapt the content, provided you acknowledge Codex Mundi as the source and share your adaptations under the same license. CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗

Warning

This site is a collaborative encyclopedia under continuous construction. Information sheets are marked as "complete" or "under development". The practical recommendations are intended to inform the traveler, expatriate, diplomat or international professional; they are not a substitute for careful observation of the local context and advice from native speakers.

Report an error

If you identify an inaccurate reference, a clumsy translation, or a poorly documented cultural fact, please report it through the channels indicated on the project's source repository. Any corrections will be made in the following commit.