CAPITULO III – LA NOCIÓN DEL E-PACIENTE
9. Las hipermediaciones
Egregio (‘distinguished’, ‘eminent’) is even more restricted in use than Gentile,because it is only used in combination with LEI and with professional titles, which may or may not be
preceded by Signore, or with Signore by itself in letters to people whom the sender does not know well or not at all. It is usually reserved for male recipients, and only very few examples of Egregia are attested in the CORIS-CODIS corpus. In no case Egregio can be combined with
TU and with bare first names (*Egregio Giorgio) or kinship terms (*Egregio papà); first names may be used, but always preceded by Signore, e.g. Egregio Signor Mario.
The contexts of use of Egregio are similar, but not identical to those of Gentile; for example, Egregio Professore is not used by students in e-mails to a lecturer; it may be used by someone external to the university who writes to a professor. Like Gentile, Egregio can be found in letters to the director of a newspaper, as in (29):
(29) Egregio Direttore,
Forse è un problema di proporzioni ed anche noi nel nostro piccolo contribuiamo ad alimentare il marciume. [...]
Distinti saluti,
(first name and surname) Egregio Direttore,
Perhaps it is a matter of proportions and we, too, despite our little power, contribute to enlarge this badness. […]
Distinti saluti
(first name and surname)
(Letter to the editor of Libero, 17/8/2015)
Another typical use of Egregio is a letter to representatives of the institutions, like the Prime Minister or the President of the Republic, where the collocation Egregio Presidente is used (example 30 in the Appendix). Other typical “titles” which collocate with Egregio are Dottore and Professore. The necessity of being followed by Signore or by a professional title indicates that Egregio is reserved for eminent, distinguished people whom the sender does not know. This is, after all, the meaning of the adjective egregio, from which the salutation derives:29
Che esce dall’ordinario, che ha pregi singolari, insigne, eccellente. Si adopera specialmente negli indirizzi e nelle intestazioni delle lettere, con significato generico. È preferibile riservarlo a persona di sesso maschile.
Extraordinary, with special merits, eminent, excellent. Used especially in address and in the headings of letters, with a generic meaning. It is preferable to reserve it for male addressees.
29 http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/egregio/. Etymologically, the word means ‘out of the herd’, therefore someone who
distinguishes themselves from other people.
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An “outstanding” or “distinguished” person is, in NSM terms, ‘someone not like many other people’ and someone about whom ‘people think some good things’. In fact, to distinguish Egregio from Gentile, a component ‘people can think some very good things about this someone’ can be posited for Egregio, as Egregio is one level above Gentile in the scale of Italian opening salutations. I suggest that these two ideas make up the dictum of Egregio, which can be paraphrased as: “I say: I think about you like this: ‘people can think some very good things about this someone, not many people are like this someone’”.
Taking this into account, the combinability options of Egregio can be explained in terms of precise semantic rules, which can be clearly stated in NSM. As discussed in Chapter 6, the idea “I think about you like this: ‘this someone is not someone like many other people’” is part of the meaning of Italian professional titles. Essentially, Egregio matches and reinforces the way of thinking expressed by the “title”, and therefore could not be combined with forms of address which do not express the same idea, e.g. first names. By itself, a first name is not sufficient, therefore if one wants to address the recipient of a letter as Egregio the least one can do to “elevate” the recipient is to add Signore.
In sum, the interactional meaning of Egregio can be explicated as follows:
Egregio (Direttore, Signore, *Gianni, *nonno) I want to say some things to you now in writing [m]
before I say these things I want to say something good to you,
like people sometimes say when they want to say some things to someone in writing [m] I say: “I think about you like this:
people can think some very good things about this someone not many people are like this someone’”
when I say this, I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’”
There is an intentional difference in the phrasing of the second component between the explication of Gentile and that of Egregio: to capture the fact that Egregio is much more
restricted in use than Gentile, ‘sometimes’ has been used instead of ‘often’ in the second component.
Perhaps more than Gentile, the Italian Egregio represents a novelty for many cultural outsiders and often a challenge for translators. In the English translation of the following extract from the novel Sostiene Pereira (1999) by Tabucchi, the combination Egregio dottor Pereira (as well as the LEI form) is “lost”:
(31) Egregio dottor Pereira, purtroppo sto attraversando un period infausto. Avrei
bisogno di parlare con lei, è urgente, ma preferisco non passare dalla redazione. Dear Dr. Pereira, unfortunately I am going through a tricky period. I urgently need to talk to you but I’d rather not come to the office.
(Antonio Tabucchi, Sostiene Pereira, 1999 | Pereira maintains,translated by Patrick Creagh, 2010)
The translator could not use anything but Dear, given that there is no equivalent for Egregio in English. Both the lack of an English equivalent and the presence of Egregio in Italian are culturally rooted. The expression of certain meanings is encouraged in certain cultural worlds but not in others, and as I see it the meanings expressed by Egregio reflect Italian society and its cultural values. The use of a specific salutation expressing the meaning “I think about you like this: ‘people can think some very good things about this someone, not many people are like this someone’” reflects the need to distinguish between people in Italian culture, particularly through language. The underlying cultural assumption is that it is good to be someone not like many other people and someone about whom people can think some very good things, and if my interlocutor is such a person I have to acknowledge this in language. By contrast, the absence of an expression comparable to Egregio in English suggests that the expression of meanings which hint at social differences is heavily discouraged in Anglo culture, and this is the case parrticularly in “egalitarian” Australia (Chapter 13).
8.7 Conclusion
The analysis of the interactional meanings of Caro/a, Gentile and Egregio has highlighted a complex system of meanings expressed in Italian at the beginning of letters and e-mails, as well as important differences with the meanings expressed in English in this context. Of the three opening salutations, Caro/a is the one used most broadly and the one with the broadest range of combinable forms of address. As I will show in Chapter 12, there are specific closing salutations which match each of these opening salutations.
The analysis of the meaning of Caro/a has highlighted important differences with the meaning of the English Dear. The two salutations are similar because both express the message “I say: ‘I feel something good towards you’. However, in Italian Caro/a competes with another salutation, Gentile, and can be combined with both TU and LEI address forms, whereas in
English Dear does not have specific combinatorial options. This means that Dear is broader in meaning than Caro/a and that the two are anything but equivalent.
The lack of competing forms for Dear also means that there is no English equivalent for the Italian Gentile and Egregio. The absence of an English equivalent for these two salutations suggests that the interactional meanings expressed by Gentile and Egregio are not encouraged in English, and this is another case of important difference in cultural assumptions guiding the linguistic behaviour of English and Italian speakers.