PORTFOLIO ENTRY #12.

NOMINALIZATION: FOR or AGAINST?

What is nominalization in English grammar?

Nominalizations are nouns that are created from adjectives (words that describe nouns) or verbs (action words). For example, “interference” is a nominalization of “interfere,” “decision” is a nominalization of “decide,” and “argument” is a nominalization of “argue.”

TS

Are nominalizations always a bad choice?

No. Sometimes, nominalizations can be useful:

• When the nominalization is familiar to your reader as a character (happiness), it can be treated as a character. Example: Happiness has many causes and effects.

• When you are making a general statement that focuses more on the idea than the actual actors in the sentence. Example: The distribution of the pizzas was fair.

Be sure to remember that even in a case where a nominalization is appropriate, you should not use them too often in too short of space.

Examples of nominalization from Video 1

We need to keep the park so children have somewhere to play

OR

We need to keep the park for children's recreation

Because the President failed to remove the troops, many deaths occurred.

OR

The failure to remove the troops resulted in many death

We also nominalized using the verb present participle form of the verb (singing, running, illing) or add suffixes such as:

 frustrate - tion

argue- ment

propose- al

He sang his heart put

OR

The heartfelt singing

She ran very fast

OR

Her fast running

VIDEO 2: AGAINST NOMINALIZATION.

Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats, and business writers.  The author calls them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings:

Example: 

The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency toward pomposity and abstraction.

The sentence above contains no fewer than seven nominalizations, each formed from a verb or an adjective. Yet it fails to tell us who is doing what. When we eliminate or reanimate most of the zombie nouns (tendency becomes tend, abstraction becomes abstract) and add a human subject and some active verbs, the sentence springs back to life:

At their best, nominalizations help us express complex ideas: perception, intelligence, epistemology. At their worst, they impede clear communication.

A paragraph heavily populated by nominalizations will send your readers straight to sleep. Wake them up with vigorous, verb-driven sentences that are concrete, clearly structured and blissfully zombie-free.