ROME: 6th June '04 (Feast of the Holy Trinity) --  It could be the Feast, with its wonderful but  linguistically torturous past, or it could just be the ongoing work with Lexisdb that has brought this on, but here is something which may interest somebody.  It is to do with the word 'department' which this writer employs, as do also many others, in daily discourse around the hallowed halls of the Salesian General Administration - in it's Italian version (dicastero) for the most part, but 'there's the rub', as the famous Bard once said.

 

The fact is that the official language of the Congregation does not use 'dicastero'.  It does not appear in the Constitutions nor in the Regulations.  Instead, the term 'sector' is used, as for example in C. 133 where it describes the make-up of the General Council with Vicar General and Councils in charge of 'settori speciali'.  The English version of the same text consistently translates the term 'settore' with 'department'.  Npr can the matter be easily resolved in terms of capital 'S' versus small 's'.  So what is the real story?

 

Lexisdb works on the basis of a corpus by now of a million words drawn only from official texts, like the aforesaid C&R, or letters of the Rector Major, Ratio, and so on.  Corpusdb, as it could be termed, can trace the story.  Nearly one quarter  (23% in fact) of official texts use/have used, 'dicastero' in place of 'settore' in its particular sense of C. 133.  Fr. Vigano used it at least 10 times in his own writing, in this way.  Fr. Vecchi too, was quite explicit in his use of 'dicastero' as, for example when he says "I have entrusted to the [Dicastero] for the missions...".  Under Fr. Chavez, the term marches on!  32 examples in all so far, though it has to be said that he would not be directly responsible for about 30 of these, since they appear as a consistent use in the Plan for the Six Year Period 2002-8.  But one use in particular would clearly be his when he says in his 'Near you or far away..' letter (I'll give you the Italian version) "di questo settore nel Dicastero della Pastorale Giovanile".  Here the English has little choice but to use 'sector' in the first instance and 'Department' in the second, but of course 'sector' here is used not in the constitutional sense but in the general sense.  And note the capital 'D' which appears in both Italian and English in this instance.  What has occurred here is a typical case of creating a 'minimal pair', a linguistic term which sets up opposition in meanings traceable to a single factor - in this case the 'opposition' between 'sector' and 'Department'.

 

It goes on - the Ratio, in its Italian version, is happy with 'dicastero' (and of course the English).  So can we draw any conclusions?  Linguistically speaking there are no surprises here.  It is common enough in organisations for there to be more than one level of usage, but given the discrepancy between the Italian (therefore official) version and the English version (the only version known to many English speaing readers) it does raise the question for the future.  The common voice, which includes all levels in the Congregation, falls in easily enough with the common understanding of 'sector' [settore] which has a broader meaning and seems to resist being limited to a particular one! It seems to prefer 'department' [dicastero], and perhaps that's as much as can be said about the issue for now.  If you are a betting man, the odds are against the survival of 'settore'.

 

If I can be allowed a rare personal note, three things: yesterday's announcement  (#851) of those defending theses was inaccurate with one date - not 6th but Monday 7th, obviously, for those at the UPS.  The writer also appeared to be confused about the region's correct terminology.  It is East Asia-Australia, not 'australasia'.  And I omitted to mention that the writer has himself just received word of his graduation from the University of the South Pacific (in May) with a Master of Arts in Linguistics!