Finding your way

A word of explanation

SELECT takes Salesian terms in their original language.  For 99.9% of terms this will be Italian.  SELECT is interested in what happens to the term in its original Salesian form, and equally interested in what happens as that form enters another language and begins another, sometimes very different journey. 

ETYMOLOGY

Most people would, correctly so, consider etymology to be the search for the history of words.  Essentially it is that, but rather more as well: the Greek etymon is 'the true meaning of a word'.  Etymology is interested in origins and in historical development of linguistic forms; it likes to trace changes in form and meaning, trace changes from one language to another, identify cognates and so on.  The Salesian experience of language has to be said to start with the birth of St. John Bosco in 1815.  Linguists will tell you (prove to you if needs be) that language starts in the womb, but it doesn't end in the tomb.  Words live on.  There is an etymology of Salesian language, of that there is no doubt.  Salesian etymology is concerned more with the changes that have taken place and are taking place because Salesians use them rather than in the history of the words themselves.  Salesian etymology applies, for example, when Italian is translated into English or any other language, or when English (or any other language) begins to add its own terms to the Salesiolect. (For this term see immediately below)

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LECT

A 'lect' is a variety of speech, something that belongs to a speech community. Hence we have dialects; we also have sociolects.  And it would not be inappropriate to call a speech community with 16,000 plus members a sociolect (many 'plus' once we add in the same number of FMA, and other members of the 'family').  If there is enough to distinguish this speech community's language, there is nothing to stop us calling it a Salesiolect.

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TERMINOLOGY

Today, in applied linguistics, terminology is a hybrid science and one very much in demand.  Terminology is understood to be a structured set of concepts and the terms used to represent them in a specific subject field.  It works in closely with  the computing field to represent this information to the world.  Anybody who uses Google or Yahoo, to name but two of the world's great search engines, is already benefiting from terminological science.  Any international organisation these days is faced with the need to manage its terminology, since it is an integral part of its mission and its vision - and its image to the rest of the world.  That Salesians are concerned with their mission and vision and image is undeniable.  It follows that they will benefit from application of terminological principles.

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 ANALYSIS

The analysis performed on texts in SELECT has been done with the use of Wordsmith Tools, a specialised programme for lexical analysis, and Leximancer, a powerful content and content relationships analysis tool.  An additional program has  been used, Concordance, which does much the same thing as Wordsmith, but has occasional advantages over the other.  Some 247 Salesian texts have so far been saved as simple text (TXT) files.  At present these texts are mainly from the period beginning with Fr Viganò, though a group of Don Bosco's own texts are included, namely his Memoirs of the Oratory, some of his biographies of young heroes, his cenni storici, his account of his meeting with Ratazzi, and so forth.  The corpus thus provided is already well over one million words, closer to two million in fact, and is an adequate representation of the post-Vatican II period of Salesian tradition.  The DB elements are a handy 'anchor' and comparative reference.  Eventually we will add text which cover the periods of Rua through to Ricceri to complete the task.  The corpus and the subsequent analysis is beginning to take up a lot of computer space!

The technical side of the analysis is explained where necessary as part of  SELECT 's service.  Usually matters can be explained without too much technical information, and in 'natural language'!  We can tell you simply, for example, that a search on pastorale giovanile (youth ministry) in the DB texts will reveal a find of 0.  No surprise there.  Search on giovanile and it turns up just 5 times.  Pastorale only 3, and each time in reference to a Bishop's pastoral letter. That is a small surprise.  We know that a search on giovani will reveal 188 examples, fanciulli 65 and so on.  But it is clear that DB's references are all in the concrete - and as Fr Viganò points out on one occasion, his reference to Oratorio was in fact what today he might have called pastorale giovanile.  So you see, there is very little technical language in that explanation!

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OTHER PRODUCTS

SELECT is but one application of linguistics to Salesian language.  It makes substantial use of Lexisdb, a lexical database containing some 800 terms found in regular Salesian use over the period of our tradition and which is continually being added to.  It is available as a database at www.bosconet.aust.com ,however, most of the contents of Lexisdb are available within the search on each term in SELECT.

The Salesian Thesaurus and Glossary is another version of Lexisdb, a little less technical but containing much of the information in the former.

For those who are regularly involved in translation from Italian to another language, there is Glosdb, an extensive translation memory.  These are intended to be used within either low or high end translation programs, and consist of the simplest database format known to humankind - the tab delimited database. 

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CONCEPTS

There are just 32 concepts listed below.  They are capable of holding any term in use within the Salesiolect.  Clicking on one of these will take you to the terms associated with that concept.  You can then click on any one of the terms.  The concepts below are listed first in English then in Italian.  Either group can be searched.