KiwiInOz wrote:
Kirbmarc - Can you cast a linguistic eye over my preference for saying that "I am atheist" rather than "I am
an atheist" over there? It is a personal preference of mine, and feels right, but others have raised reasonable exceptions. I may be making much ado about nothing.
"I am atheist" uses "atheist" as an adjective, "I am an atheist" uses it as a noun. Most English dictionary definitions of "atheist" state the word is a noun, so "I am an atheist" should be the standard English use (what language prescriptivists would call "the grammatically correct use").
However natural languages (unlike formal languages) aren't shaped by dictionary definitions, but by use. Dictionaries simply collect the most commonly accepted use at the time when they were written. Adjectival uses of "atheist" are actually rather common.
Out of a sample of 100 uses of "atheist" in the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) 29 were adjectival uses, where "atheist" was use either to modify the meaning of a noun or after a copula (an use of the verb "to be" which establishes a link between a subject and a complement). Examples include "atheist groups", "atheist thinkers", "China is atheist", etc.
However searching "I am atheist" in the COCA produces no results, while "I am an atheist" produces 11 results. Similarly "you are an atheist" produces 4 results, while "You are atheist" produces no results. The same thing is true for "he is an atheist" vs. "he is atheist" (3 vs. 0), "she is an atheist" vs. "she is atheist" (2 vs. 0) or "they are atheists" vs. "they are atheist" (1 vs. 0).
However while the COCA includes 520 million words, so it's a good sample of the English language, it's not wholly representative of the use of a language can also use the web as a corpus. Searching "I am atheist" on Google produces 84.600 results, while "I am an atheist" produces 459,000 results. The pattern is shown by "you are an atheist" vs. "you are atheist" (429,000 vs. 142,000) "he is an atheist" vs. "he is atheist" (652,000 vs. 139,000), "she is an atheist" vs. "she is atheist" (605,000 vs. 83,800) and "they are atheists" vs. "they are atheist" (301,000 vs. 138,000).
Compare and contrast "I am a Christian" (11,300,000 results on Google, 75 in the COCA) vs. "I am Christian" (411, 000 results on Google, 14 in the COCA) and "I am a muslim" (459,000 results on Google, 19 in the COCA) vs. "I am muslim" (463,000 results on Google, 3 in the COCA).
In general it seems that the form "Subject+Copula+Nominal form of a word which describes religious/non religious affiliation" is more common than the form "Subject+Copula+Adjectival form of a word which describes religious/non-religious affiliation".
We can speculate as to why: Is it because the Nominal describes an individual, and religious faith or lack thereof is perceived to be an individual belief in countries where English is spoken? Testing this hypothesis would require comparing the English use of words which describe religious beliefs of lack thereof to other languages.
Conversely, is it because religious beliefs or lack thereof are perceived to be part of one's personal identity?
However languages are constantly in flux and changing. What is a non-standard form of the language today can become more common in the future. Linguistic experimentation is how changes begin (just like random mutations fuel natural selection).
There's nothing wrong with saying "I am atheist" instead of "I am an atheist" unless one believes that the English language is a fixed, immutable reality, which isn't the case. We can speculate as to what different meaning is conveyed by the two different uses.
Is "I am an atheist" 'perceived to be describing a personal sense of identity, while "I am atheist" only describe a characteristic? If so, are people more likely to use "I am atheist" instead of "I am an atheist" when they don't want to be associated to word "atheist", with all its common connotations?
I hope this answer was useful and interesting to you.
