Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 February 23

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 23

Another Term for Strategic Thinker

I was looking for another term to refer to someone as a "strategic thinker." I have been a little repetitive in my use of the term "strategic thinker" and feel that the use is lessening the quality of my writing at this point. I was wondering if anyone knew of a phrase/term or another kind of wording that could be used to essentially say, "Jim is a strategic thinker."

EncycloShoe (talk) 01:14, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

"Long-term planner" ? You might also use forms like "somebody able to" ... "see the forest for the trees", "conceptualize/visualize the overall situation", "plan all the moves like a chess grandmaster", etc. StuRat (talk) 01:37, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

(e/c) Is there some reason you don't just call the person a strategist? Thesaurus.com has this to say about "strategist" and this to say about "planner". Matt Deres (talk) 01:42, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Tactician? Bus stop (talk) 01:48, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

As I understand the terms, strategy is for the long term, tactics is for the dragon in front of you. —Tamfang (talk) 09:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow! These are a lot of great ideas. Thank you so much! EncycloShoe (talk) 02:25, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. StuRat (talk) 04:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

Eating your seed corn is a good tactic to survive the winter, but a horrible strategy for surviving the next. μηδείς (talk) 00:23, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Oddly, I couldn't find any article explaining seed corn--it's the grain you don't eat after harvest so that you still have grain to plant the next year. μηδείς (talk) 03:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

• Avoidance of repetition is a worthy goal in general expository writing, but not in technical writing. In technical writing, it is much better to use one term to refer to one concept. I speculate that your writing is closer to technical than expository. If your paper is specifically about the concept of "strategic thinker", you may need to define what you mean by the term precisely and then use the term consistently. It your conception is more precise than the generally idea, you may need to coin a term for use in your paper. -Arch dude (talk) 05:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Are people illiterate if their native language does not have a written form?

Or is illiteracy based on the inability to read in a culture that has a written form of the language? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 17:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Looking at literacy, I would say the answer to the first question is no, and to the second is yes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:31, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

My reading of the lead section of literacy is that the answer to the first question is yes. It says

"Literacy is traditionally understood as the ability to read, write, and use arithmetic.[1] The modern term's meaning has been expanded to include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture.[2] "

and

"The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society".[4]"

Neither of these gives an exemption for one's native language not having a written form. Loraof (talk) 18:42, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

You may have missed this part: "Before colonization, oral storytelling and communication comprised most if not all Native American literacy. Native people communicated and retained their histories verbally—it was not until the beginning of American Indian boarding schools that reading and writing forms of literacy were forced [sic] onto Native Americans." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:50, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

(e/c) In anthropology, societies without written form are sometimes referred to as "preliterate" rather than "illiterate". This is sometimes criticized as being normative to literacy, but has nevertheless caught on. "Nonliterate" is maybe more neutral, but doesn't seem as popular (AFAIK). The individuals of said societies are also sometimes referred to using the same terms, though it's usually phrased indirectly "King X of the preliterate society Y..." Matt Deres (talk) 19:17, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There's a difference between literacy (which is the use of a written form of a language, reading and writing) and Language proficiency (sometimes called "fluency") which is the competence in using a spoken language. A person may speak eloquently, naturally, and with full Linguistic competence, but if they aren't writing, then there is no literacy involved. The word "literate" (and related terms like literature) almost always relate to writing. It doesn't make spoken proficiency invalid, it doesn't make oral story telling or spoken proficiency less "worthy", but if we're going to use accurate language, to use the word "literacy" correctly, it refers to competence and proficiency with written language. --Jayron32 19:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

• Literate is normally a relative term, one has to be literate in some language just as someone has to be proficient at some skill. Simply demanding whether someone is "skilled" without saying or imply proficient at what is meaningless, a form of category mistake. Keep in mind the epic poetic traditional works such as the Torah, Homer, and Beowulf, which were believed to have come from oral traditions before they were written. One can't ask for "the meaning" of an undefined, ambiguous, and out-of-context term. Terms do suffer different definitions--the speaker needs to give the context. μηδείς (talk) 00:21, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• Maybe the other answers have gotten at your meaning correctly, but your words could mean something else, "do you have to read and write in your native language to count as literate, even if it doesn't have a written form". If you're able to read/write in another language, you count as literate regardless of whether your native language has a written form. Maybe you'd be classified as "literate in [second language]", but you'd not be classified as illiterate. Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

seconded. one can easily imagine a scenario where someone learns to read and write at a later age, 18 say, in a language that is not their native tongue. the result is they are fluent in their native language but are illiterate in it, and they are literate in the second language but don't speak it well. Asmrulz (talk) 10:05, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

This exact thing happens with many native speakers of American sign language and other sign languages; they have a fluency in their sign language, but are literate in a written language based on their local culture. Notably, speakers of American sign language and British sign language cannot converse (they are not closely related languages) but often both groups will learn written English, and can thus converse by writing rather than signing. --Jayron32 15:48, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

In the eighties I had a colleague who was an Azeri from Iran. In Iran, his language had no status and was effectively unwritten - he used to write to his mother in Farsi. I certainly described him as "illiterate in his own language", though of course he was literate in at least Farsi and English. (There was a brief period of freedom in the early eighties when he got hold of an Azeri grammar published in Iran - written in Farsi, with the Azeri in Roman script). Of course, across the border in Soviet Azerbaijan, Azeri was an official language, regularly written in Cyrillic script. --ColinFine (talk) 12:17, 25 February 2017 (UTC)