passion

(:zapform key=Note:) '+Other notes+' [Room here for more personal observations, private opinion if felt to be useful] (:zapend:) >><< (:pos1: N/phrase:) (:pos2: ---:) (:type1: EntryTerm:) (:type2: ---:) (:equivit: passione:) (:equives: :) (:equivfr: :) (:equivpt: :) (:def: :) (:status1: General:) (:status2: ---:) (:syn: zeal:) (:des: It has become apparent to the ear - and the eye - that Fr Pascual Chávez has spoken often of a certain idea as he has moved around provinces, been reported in news, spoken to confrères, preached homilies, written for the Salesian Bulletin, addressed one or other gathering from the highly academic (receiving honorary doctorates for example) to speaking with youngsters. The idea can be characterised by a particular word - ''passion''. We can discount the plural use - in an entire and very representative corpus (70 texts of every shape and nature since 2002) the RM has used it in its plural form (usually in the sense of `human passions') but two or three times. So we are interested in its use in the singular. There are various statistical measures for calculating the importance of a concept. A fairly gross but obvious approach is to count the number of times a word appears. If you want it that way, we have a score of 82 times. It is slightly more helpful to know that those 82 appearances are in 31 out of the 70 texts, 44% or thereabouts. It might even be a little more helpful still to know that it appears in all but 4 of the 15 AGC Letters, if we wanted to regard them as containing the most important of the RM's themes for the Congregation. Actually the first of those 15 is not a letter in the way we normally understand it but the introduction to the GC25 documents. However, these are raw statistics based on simple surface appearance of words. We know that human speech ties words together, makes sense in phrases and sentences (as well as other levels at paragraph or discourse level). Another statistic, then, is interesting. Across all 70 texts, what words does 'passion' statistically link to most frequently? We can make an assumption that five words either side, if we regard `passion' as the central term, would be about the limit. Beyond that, the meaningful linkage between 'passion' and another term would be minimal. There is a measure we can use that suggests the importance of terms that correlate across the distance I have mentioned. It has various names, but let's call it a `mutual information score' or MIS. When we run an MIS on all of the RM's language across the 70 texts in relation to 'passion', the winner is clear: ''animas'' (the MIS score is 10.5. There is nothing higher). ''Mihi'' gains an equivalent score and the next one down is vissuta (lived, experienced) at 8.9 so we know what we are talking about here. `Da' doesn't feature at this point because as a preposition it links with too many words to feature statistically for a single term. Mihi only correlates with one term in our context, we know. The conclusion then is that ''Da Mihi Animas'' is what gives us the meaning of 'passion' as used by Pascual Chávez, or the other way around if you wish: 'passion' gives us the meaning of 'Da mihi animas' (DMA) in the context of this man's discourse. Yet another statistical measure is to consider relative word frequencies - this is not quite the same as a mere frequency count. The question becomes, what kind of percentage appearance does 'passion' make, and what other terms have much the same or greater percentage? This too is instructive, especially once we have established the link between passion and 'DMA'. The highest percentage is 3.99 - words with this kind of score are function words like of, a, the… This is to be expected. We don't reach a substantive (noun) until 1.483 (life), but then other major substantives start to come in at 0.24 (God, Church, Don Bosco… communication just makes it over 0.1). After that we are into the 0.09 and below group. Terms that come in at 0.03, other than passion, include pedagogy, freedom, growing, disciples, experiences, accompaniment, solidarity, salvation, poverty, fidelity, challenges…. This is not to establish semantic relationships between 'passion' and any of these words, but just to say that 'passion' is in good company! We now need to dig a little deeper. Can we describe this link outside of statistical issues? Yes, we can. The reference is essentially to a sentence in n. 20 of GC25, ''Ogni comunità è formata da uomini, immersi nella società, che esprimono la passione evangelica del “da mihi animas, cetera tolle” con l'ottimismo della fede, con la dinamicità e la creatività della speranza e con la bontà e la donazione totale della carità''. Each community expresses the Gospel-based passion of the 'da mihi animas'. So while the RM doesn't actually mention the term 'passion' as the very first thing he wrote to the whole Congregation by way of the introduction to the GC25 documents, he is introducing a document that does, and he soon takes up the twin terms 'passion' and 'da mihi animas' in subsequent letters anyway. We can say that they were there from the beginning of his consciousness as Rector Major. The central idea expressed by GC25, then, finds development in a gamut of repeated phrases in the RM's public discourse up to the year 2006: it is largely a 'passion of' and a 'passion for', or passsion + adjective - for the world, for God's holiness, for Christ, for men (people), for our mission; of Don Bosco, of (St.) Paul; educational passion, Gospel passion, pedagogical passion, intense passion. :) (:context: :) (:equivot: :) (:note: :) CH(:nl:)