In Italian, a good number of nouns are used to address people who exercise particular, prestigious professions linked with a degree: Professore/Professoressa for male and female teachers from middle school onwards, Dottore/Dottoressa for male and female medical doctors, Avvocato for lawyers, Ingegnere for engineers, Ragioniere for accountants, Architetto for
architects, Notaio for notaries and Maestro for a male musician. Of these, only Dottore and Professore have a feminine counterpart, whereas all the other nouns are used gender-neutrally as forms of address despite being syntactically masculine (e.g. Salve Avvocato said to a lawyer who is a woman).15 Furthermore, the titles Dottore and Professore are polysemous: there is a Dottore1 used to address medical doctors, and a Dottore2 used to address uomini di legge, “law people” like magistrates and high-rank police officers;16 there is also a Professore1 used to address teachers and a Professore2 used to address doctors who are Heads of Departments in a hospital (primari) and also lecturers in medicine. The polysemy results from a difference in the professed way of thinking about the addressee inherent in the interactional meanings, to be discussed in 6.3.3 and 6.3.4. All professional titles share the same syntactic and semantic properties to be discussed in the next two sub-sections.
6.3.1 Syntactic properties of Italian professional titles
Italian professional titles used as forms of address have two major syntactic properties: the first concerns the combinability options and the second is the possibility of being repeated a few times in the same exchange to address the same person. In relation to the first property, in most cases professional titles are used as forms of address on their own, but can also be combined with a surname and rarely with signore/signora. However, they cannot be combined with the
TU address form and with linguistic items which take TU, for example Ciao and first-name address, with the exception of Maestra (see 6.3.5):
(20) Mentre aspettavamo le parole del medico, mio padre ha rotto il silenzio. «Dottore, vorrei che fosse molto sincero, voglio sapere la verità, senza mezze parole.»
15 Further discussion in section 6.6. Some speakers commented that Maestra is sometimes used to address female musicians.
For a full criticism of the predominance of the masculine gender in Italian titles see Sabatini (1984, 1987).
16 There is also a Dottore
3 used to address any graduated person, which for reasons of space cannot be discussed here. The
broad use of Dottore has generated the popular saying “In Italia siamo tutti dottori” (‘in Italy we are all dottori’, Treccani 2011:91).
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As we waited for the doctor to say something to us, my father broke the silence. «Dottore, please be (LEI form) very sincere, I want to know the truth and with nothing left unsaid.»
(Fabio Volo, Il tempo che vorrei, 2009, my translation)
(21) “Avvocato Vallucci, buongiorno! Come mai da queste parti?” si sentì ad un tratto chiamare.
Alex alzò lo sguardo e riconobbe un suo cliente: “Ah, è lei, ragionier Manni...come va?”
“Bene, grazie...posso offrirle qualcosa, avvocato?” “Grazie ragioniere, ho già ordinato.”
“Avvocato Vallucci, good morning! How come are you here?” he suddenly heard himself being called.
Alex raised his eyes and recognised one of his clients: “Ah it is you (LEI), Ragionier Manni…how are you?” (lit. how is it going?)
“Fine, thank you…may I offer you (LEI) anything, Avvocato?”
“Thanks, Ragioniere, I’ve already ordered.”
(Salvatore Brandanu, Paese, 2014, my translation)
(22) “Ecco, signor avvocato,” riprese il Piccirilli, dando un’ingollatina. “Abbiamo ricevuto una citazione.”
“Assassinio, signor avvocato” proruppe di nuovo la moglie.
“Well, signor lawyer” continued Piccirilli, swallowing a bit. “We have been asked to appear in court.”
“Murder, signor lawyer” bursted again his wife.
(Luigi Pirandello, La casa del Granella, 1905, my translation)
Examples like (20) are quite old and in general there is very little evidence for combinations with signore/signora in literary texts of the last one-hundred years. This suggests that this kind of combination is not used in current Italian, and this hypothesis is consistent with the comments of the speakers whom I consulted, who did not report using or hearing combinations like Signor Dottore/Signora Dottoressa.
Example (19) illustrates the second syntactic property of professional titles, the possibility of being repeated a few times in the same exchange to address the same person, also illustrated by (21):
(23) GIACOMINO: Non mi tocchi! Non mi s’accosti, professore! Lei mi sta facendo soffrire una pena d’inferno! […]
TOTI: Ma perché, che hai?
GIACOMINO: Vuol sapere che ho? Glielo dico subito. Mi sono fidanzato, professore. Ha capito? Mi sono fidanzato.
TOTI: Fi...fidan...fidanzato?
GIACOMINO: Sì! E dunque basta! Basta per sempre, professore! Capirà che ora non posso più vederla qua, comportare la sua presenza in casa mia.
TOTI: Mi...mi cacci via?
GIACOMINO: No, no...ma se ne vada...è bene che lei...che lei se ne vada, professore.
GIACOMINO: Don’t (LEI form) touch me! Don’t (LEI form) come close to me, professore! You (LEI) are making me go through hell suffering! […]
TOTI: But why, what’s wrong with you?
GIACOMINO: You want to know what’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you straight away. I am engaged, professore. Do you (LEI) understand? I am engaged.
TOTI: En...engaged?
GIACOMINO: Exactly! And so that’s enough! Enough forever, professore! You (LEI) will understand that now I cannot see you (LEI) again here, I can’t bear your presence
in my house.
TOTI: Are...are you sending me away?
GIACOMINO: No, no...but please leave (LEI form)...you(LEI)’d better...you (LEI)’d better leave, professore.
(Luigi Pirandello, Pensaci Giacomino!, 1916, my translation)
As with generic titles, this property suggests a cultural script which encourages speakers to repeat the title with which they address the interlocutor several times in the same exchange. This script will be discussed in Chapter 11.
6.3.2 The semantics of Italian professional titles
Semantically, Italian professional titles can be interpreted as ways of saying something good to the addressee with one word of one kind. This something good consists in a professed way of thinking about the addressee which includes two different cognitive scenarios: ‘how I think about you when I say this’ and ‘how I don’t think about you when I say this’. The first part of the cognitive scenario, ‘how I think about you’, includes, first of all, some good things which the speaker knows about the interlocutor: the fact that the addressee does a job which requires a deep knowledge of a specific subject and which not many people can do, and the fact that this job is prestigious and earns the addressee a good position in society.
This second element is important, because it distinguishes nouns like Avvocato from nouns like infermiera (‘nurse’).17 Arguably, a nurse, too, is someone with specialised expertise who
does a job which many people cannot do. The difference between a nurse and a lawyer is that in Italian society the job of the nurse is not regarded as prestigious as that of a lawyer, and therefore does not generate in the speaker’s mind the same image of the addressee as that of a lawyer. Essentially, there are no “good things” which people can know about the infermiera because of the job which she does. The fact that Avvocato can be preceded by signor whereas the combination signora infermiera is not attested supports this hypothesis; the meaning of signora includes the component “I think about you like this: ‘people can know some good things about this someone’” (see 6.2.1) and the fact that infermiera does not combine with signora suggests that there is incompatibility of meanings due precisely to this semantic component.
A number of components can be posited to capture the scenario ‘how I think about you when I say this’. A first plausible component is ‘this someone is not someone like many other people’, which captures the idea that the addressee is a “distinguished” person because of the job which they do. Two other components specify in what way this person is ‘not like many other people’: ‘this someone can do things of some kinds, not many other people can do these things’ and ‘this someone knows many things of some kinds, not many people know these things’. In addition to these, the components ‘people can know some good things about this someone’ and ‘people can think something good about this someone because of this’ can be posited to capture the speaker’s acknowledgement of the addressee’s position in society.
The cognitive scenario ‘how I don’t think about you when I say this’ captures the way in which the speaker purports to relate to the addressee during the interaction by calling him/her Avvocato or Professoressa. To know some good things about the addressee does not mean that
17 This noun is not discussed here.
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the speaker knows the addressee well. In fact, in Italian one would not address a close friend or a relative as Avvocato, even though one knows that this person is a lawyer. Moreover, the fact that all professional titles with the exception of Maestra are incompatible with TU and with first-name address suggests that they are semantically incompatible with the expressed attitude ‘I think about you like I can think about someone if I know this someone well’ (Chapter 12). By contrast, compatibility with LEI suggests that the attitude expressed in the semantic invariant of professional titles is “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’.
Another key element emerging from the examples is the difference in position or role between the interactants. A bottom-up relationship between speaker and addressee characterises examples (18), (20) and (21), whereas in (19) the interactants are different people doing completely different jobs. These differences suggest the presence of another component in the interactional meaning: “I don’t think about you like this: ‘this someone is someone like me’”. However, this would imply that, for example, two doctors can address each other as Dottore, and this case needs qualifying. The doctors among the speakers whom I consulted commented that they do not address a colleague who works in the same hospital and whom they know well as Dottore, but they go for collega (‘colleague’) or first name in combination with TU. They would only call a colleague Dottore if they do not know the interlocutor well
and if the addressee specialises in a different area from their own one. Similarly, the teachers whom I consulted commented that they do not address a colleague working in the same institution as Professore, whereas they would go for Professore if the interlocutor were someone with more working experience or more publications whom they do not know well. Interestingly, many teachers commented that they still address their former school teachers as Professore; this practice can be explained assuming that in this case the speaker puts themselves in the position of ‘student’ when interacting with the former teacher, and this kind of relationship supports the expressed attitude ‘I don’t think about you like this: ‘this someone
is someone like me’”. Two lawyers can address each other as Avvocato when they represent different positions in court, accuse and defence. In this sense, there is a difference between them.
Taking these elements into account, I posit a composite component “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well, this someone is someone like me’” for the invariant meaning of Italian professional titles used as forms of address. This component captures one composite expressed attitude, not two separate ones, because a component “I don’t think about you like this: ‘this someone is someone like me’” would totally exclude that two people doing the same job could address each other with a professional title, and this is not the case. The proposed component, by contrast, allows two colleagues to use a title to address one another and captures the tone that a speaker might want to express towards a colleague.
In addition to the semantic properties already mentioned, there is another one emerging from the examples which is fundamental for cross-linguistic comparison: the irrelevance of the contextual factor of ‘place’, in contrast with the English titles analysed in the previous chapter. In (19), two people address each other as Avvocato and Ragioniere in a café and in (21) the student calls his teacher Professore at home, not at school. These examples suggest that, unlike in Australian English for example, the attitude expressed by Italian professional titles is not limited to the context of a specific institution, but reflects how the speaker professes to think about the addressee in general.
In sum, all the proposed semantic components are integrated in the following explication:
Buongiorno, Avvocato (Dottore1, Professore1, Ingegnere, Architetto, Notaio, Maestro)
[A] WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW
when I say this to you, I want to say something good to you at the same time I want to say something like this with a word of one kind:
“I think about you like this:
‘this someone is not someone like many other people
this someone can do things of some kinds, not many other people can do these things this someone knows many things about things of some kinds,
not many people know these things’ at the same time, I think about you like this:
‘people can know some good things about this someone
because of this, they can think something good about this someone’” [B] HOW I DON’T THINK ABOUT YOU WHEN I SAY THIS
when I say this to you, I don’t think about you like this:
“I know this someone well, this someone is someone like me” 6.3.3 Professore2 for medical doctors
Professore2used to address a doctor is formally, syntactically and semantically different from Professore1 for teachers. Professore2 is only used on its own and therefore can never be used in the shortened form Professor, which Professore1 takes when followed by a surname for phonetic reasons (e.g. Professor Rossi). Professore2 is used in exchanges between people who have different roles within the hospital, e.g. a patient or a doctor addressing a primario, a Head of Department. It can also be used by someone outside the hospital context, for example a journalist interviewing a head of department in a hospital. In most cases, a doctor addressed as Professore is also a lecturer in medicine, which is why the form of address for teachers and lecturers is used for this kind of doctor. In (22), an extract from a play by Dario Fo, Professore is said by one of the characters, a politician, to a surgeon:
(24) “Entri qui, in sala operatoria, proprio in un momento delicato...mentre mi infilano aghi e capelli nel cranio...”
Interviene il professore: “Non si preoccupi, presidente, anzi, se si crea una situazione per cui lei è portato a distrarsi dal clima operatorio, è meglio. E lei, signore, cominci con lo svelarci la sua identità.”
“Professore, è meglio che lei non lo sappia. Sarei più tranquillo.”
“You (TU) enter here, in the surgery, at such a risky moment…while they are inserting needles and hair in my skull…”
The doctor speaks: “Don’t worry (LEi form),presidente, it is better if there is a situation in
which you (LEI) can get distracted from the operation. And you (LEI), signore, start (LEI
form) by revealing your identity.”
“Professore, it would be better if you (LEI) didn’t know it. I’d feel more at ease.”
(Dario Fo, L’apocalisse rimandata, 2008, my translation)
The differences between Professore1, used to address teachers, and Professore2, used to address doctors, are two: (i) Professore2 is never used in combination with a surname; Professore2 is only used non-reciprocally and expresses the idea that the addressee is seen as being someone above other doctors in the hospital. The professed way of thinking can be captured with a composite component ‘I think about you like this: …’ which includes the components ‘this someone is someone of one kind’ and ‘people of this kind can do many good things for other people in a place of one kind’, and another component ‘this someone is someone above many people of this kind in this place’.
In addition, considering that Dottore1 and Professore2 compete as forms of address for medical doctors, I suggest that there is also a difference in tone between the two nouns which needs to be captured. On the view of many native speakers, there is a nuance of “superiority” and “importance” in Professore2, related to the fact that the doctor addressed as Professore is a renowned doctor who does things which other doctors cannot do. This difference can be captured with the same components posited for Dottore1 without the prime CAN: ‘people know
some good things about this someone’ and ‘people think something good towards this someone’. In sum, the interactional meaning of Professore2 can be explicated as follows:
Buongiorno, Professore2 (for medical doctors)
[A] WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW
when I say this to you, I want to say something good to you at the same time I want to say something like this with a word of one kind:
“I think about you like this:
‘this someone is someone of one kind
people of this kind can do many good things for other people in a place of one kind this someone is someone above many people of this kind in this place”
at the same time, I think about you like this:
‘people know some good things about this someone
because of this, they think something good towards this someone’” [B] HOW I DON’T THINK ABOUT YOU WHEN I SAY THIS
when I say this to you, I don’t think about you like this: “I know this someone well”
6.3.4 Dottore2 for police officers and magistrates
Dottore2 used to address high-rank police officers and magistrates is often mentioned in dictionaries,butit has never been clearly distinguished from Dottore1 used to address medical doctors, and this has created the wrong assumption that the nouns used to address police officers is the same as that used to address doctors.18 In fact, Dottore2 presents the same formal and syntactic differences which distinguish Professore1 from Professore2; Dottore2 is only used on its own and cannot take the form Dottor which Dottore1 takes when followed by a surname (e.g. Dottor Rossi). The semantic difference with Dottore1 lies in the professed way of thinking about the addressee; unlike Dottore1, Dottore2 is only used non-reciprocally in exchanges between people who have a bottom-up relationship, because the addressee is above the speaker in the police rank. In (23) Dottore2 is used by an inspector to address his superior, a superintendent:
(25) QUESTORE: Certo che ha frainteso…Lasci parlare me, commissario...