In this thread Very simple grammar question - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board , I assert that some usage rules are conducive to better thought.
Specifically, I said that one shouldn’t use the word “Christian” as an adjective. I was told that by a very good Lutheran theologian, Bill Lazareth, nearly 35 years ago, and it still works.
Does anyone have any similar recommendations?
You think in English?
How about, “Feel free to use ‘Christian’ as an adjective, just like most people do”?
Seriously, I am all for accurate word usage, but I just do not see the issue here. In what way is using ‘Christian’ as an adjective conducive to sloppy thinking?
Your more general point that some usage rules are conducive to better thought is probably true. It is a good idea to distinguish ‘disinterested’ and ‘uninterested,’ for instance, although you are not exactly ‘wrong’ if you do not.
Since you don’t have a question here and you want recommendations on things that aren’t generally agreed on, why did you put this in General Questions?
Looks like a MPSIMS thread.
I understand what you’re trying to say. Often times in a discussion about Christianity, it is not helpful to lump every single person who identifies as a Christian into one category.
But context dictates usage. When the discussion is centred around say, the Vatican, the term ‘Christian’ will be generally understood as meaning ‘Catholic’. Unless a person says something like ‘Well, the Pope is proof that Christians are nuts!’ then there’s not really any problem with this usage. When we generalise in discussion it is commonly understood that we don’t literally mean everyone. Unless you feel like being a pedantic twit.
Correct use of language should be a case by case process. Arbitrarily creating rules that you think everyone must follow in every situation is not helpful and ultimately futile. Language works on the basis that we all understand what specific sounds mean. Written language is a representation of those sounds. So if most people understand what I mean by the word ‘Christian’ in a specific context, then there is no problem.
Um, ‘Christians’ is a noun in that sentence, so it is not relevant to the OP’s claim. The fact that ‘Christian’ (like almost any other category word) may sometimes be too general to convey the intended meaning (and may in other contexts be too specific), has nothing to do with whether it is functioning as a noun or an adjective.
Regarding the OP’s example, are you referring to usage like “That’s very Christian of you”? In that sense I can understand avoiding the word, but not in the more general sense of an adherent to Christianity.
So what is the difference between using “Christian” as an adjective, or using “Lutheran” as an adjective as you have done here? Are you saying it would be incorrect to call someone a Christian theologian?
Yes, which synod, please?
Seriously, I suspect you’re taking Mr. Lazareth a bit too literally. I would imagine that the point he was trying to make is that we must be careful about lumping all Christians and Christian things together when there are relevant distinctions to be made. And I think this is good policy, not just for Christianity, but for any grouping of people, things, ideas, etc.
However, sometimes, the distinctions aren’t relevant. I mean, for pete’s sake, if we can’t say all Christian things are alike in some ways, then how can we possibly talk sensibly about “liberal/conservative ideals”, “adult responsibilities”, or “human tendencies”? We can, and do, because within certain contexts, these very large groupings share common properties that can be discussed and considered without regard to their internal differences. Yes, often these terms do paint with too broad a brush, but in some cases, they can be perfectly acceptable.
For instance, we can say that Christian theology: is based on the idea that Jesus was the son of God, is monotheistic, uses the Bible as its primary sacred text (and believes the New Testament to be equally valid to the Old), shares roots with Jewish and Muslim theology, and so on.
But all that aside, it seems you’re objecting not to “Christianity” or “Christians”, even though they denote exactly the same broad ideological category as the adjective “Christian” does, because they’re nouns, and not adjectives.
This makes no sense, as pulykamell points out:
Indeed - why wouldn’t you be at a loss in either case? “Gee, he’s a Christian, but is he a Roman Catholic? An Evangelical? A Methodist?” How does the noun form impart more precision or detail than the adjective? The point is, it doesn’t.
So if you’re simply exhorting people to choose their words carefully, that’s fine. If you’re saying that words are meaningless if they’re general, that’s wrong. If you’re saying that general nouns are okay, but general adjectives aren’t, that’s just silly.
Not to speak for anyone else, but the objection I’ve heard is that one shouldn’t use the word “Christian” as an adjective to apply to things. As in, “I went to the Christian bookstore today, and I bought some Christian music, a Christian bumper sticker, and a Christian coffee mug.”
What, is the bumper sticker saved? Has the coffee mug acccepted Jesus as its personal Lord and Savior? What does it mean for music to be “Christian,” and who decides?
You also said there are rules for language, so you lost any argument you had right there.
There are no rules, other than basic grammar. Usage is style and style changes with every application. Formal style is not colloquial style is not verbal style is not academic style is not children’s style is not…
The one and only point you made that might have some value to it is that at certain times, in certain formulations, to certain audiences, the use of the adjective Christian may need more nuance.
That is simply not at all the same as saying that Christian as an adjective can never be used. It can and should be used in a variety of contexts. It is used that way and is almost always properly understood.
Your objection is similar to the one that dismisses the use of liberal and conservative, right and left, North and South, and the myriad other dualities that people use as shorthand to make a conversation bearable without hundreds of pages of tedious fine print to nail down hard and fast definitions that no other person on earth will ever agree to. The looseness of terms is what makes conversation possible. Yes, it will lead to confusion and imprecision and accusations of deliberate dishonesty. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever found a way around that.
As a professional writer I am thoroughly and profoundly in favor of precision in usage. I’m equally aware of the limitations of language. You raise one of them. Fine. Everybody agrees with the problem. Nobody should agree with your solution.
ETA: Started this earlier and came back and I see Heart of Dorkness has said something very similar. I’ll put this up to reinforce that.
Buckminister Fuller objected to using the words sunrise and sunset, saying they reinforced the (mistaken, pre-Galileo) idea that it is the sun that is moving. And that having/speaking such ideas distorted your thinking.
His proposed alternatives were sunsight and sunclipse, which seem pretty good to me.
Except you can see the sun any time during the day, so “sunsight” is not specific to the first time you can see the sun in the morning, which is what “sunrise” means."
OK, so what adjective should one use for a store that sells material pertaining to Christianity, or music about themes relevant to Christianity, or a bumper sticker that espouses the ideals held by Christians?
Ah, I get it:
-Don’t use the word “rewind” because it reinforces the (pre-CD/DVD) idea that something is being wound on a spool. This distorts people’s thinking.
-Don’t use the word “starfish” because it reinforces the mistaken belief that a starfish is a kind of fish. Use “seastar”.
-Don’t use the word “woman” because it reinforces the mistaken belief that a woman is a kind of man. Use “personwo”.
-Don’t use the word “Islamic” as an adjective.
-Don’t use the word “Jewish” as an adjective.
-Don’t use the term “press” as in “news press” or “printing press” because it distorts your thinking. It reinforces the mistaken belief that ink is pressed onto the page. That is outmoded technology.
-Don’t use the word “Tuesday” because it reinforces the mistaken belief in Tiw, a one-handed combat god in Norse mythology. Instead, call it “weekday 2” (that’s how the Chinese do it).
I could go on and on…
ETA: But don’t call them Chinese, because it reinforces the mistaken belief that they’re still under the Qin dynasty.
Here’s as good and simple an example as I can come up with. When I grew up in the 50s in small town Minnesota, there was a store on the main street called, “The Christian Book Nook.” Should I have expected to find both Oral Roberts and Teilhard de Chardin in stock? Hardly. They claimed Christianity, but only reflected a part of Christianity.
Christians are so diverse that the use of the word as an adjective is generally misleading, in that it doesn’t reflect the diversity. Indeed it seems to limit it.
But if folks don’t buy this particular example, am I completely wrong in asserting that there are usages that help prevent misguided thought?
Of course nobody will buy this particular example. There are untold numbers of Christian book stores in America. That usage is deeply ingrained in American idiom. How can you possibly claim to extol language and not understand that?
The other half of that sentence is equal piffle. Of course language can always be phrased to be more specific, to promote precision, and to convey nuances of thought. Hey, I’m doing so right now. But your argument beats one drum over and over without ever addressing any of our objections. All words have many shades of meanings. All of them. If we drop the ones that might be misleading what are we left with?
What’s your answer?
You could say the same thing about “European”, yet it’s still a useful adjective.
Sometime you need a general word, sometimes you need a specific one. The only dog eating the dog food in the closet may be a dachshund, but that doesn’t mean I should call it dachshund food.
If anything, that’s misleading advertising, not bad usage. If we found a similarly named store that did carry those two authors, would we then come to the opposite conclusion, that’s it’s good to use ‘Christian’ as an adjective?
But a woman is a kind of man. Technically.
Woman comes from wif-man, a compound invented to distinguish the original meaning of wif (“woman”) from its later alternate meaning, “wife”. At the time the compound was invented, “man” was gender-neutral, “wer” being the word for a specifically male person. So woman literally means “woman-person”, and “man” just means “person”. You can see how the later usage developments reflects a certain non-PC view of the world…