Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Zombie Nouns

Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or horizontal another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. Youve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right?

Nouns formed from other separate of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business organisation writers. I call them zombi spirit spirit nouns because they cannibalize active verbs, resume the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings:

The proliferation of nominalizations in a wandering(a) formation may be an indication of a temperament toward pomposity and abstraction.

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

Writers who overload their sentences with nominalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract.


Only one zombie noun the separate word nominalizations has been allowed to remain standing.

At their best, nominalizations help us expressage complex ideas: perception, intelligence, epistemology.

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At their worst, they impede clear communication. I guard seen academic colleagues become so enchanted by zombie nouns like heteronormativity and interpellation that they forget how ordinary people speak. Their students, in turn, absorb the dangerous message that people who use well-favored words are smarter or at least step up to be than those who dont.


Elena Giavaldi
In fact, the more abstract your subject matter, the more your readers will appreciate stories, anecdotes, examples and other handholds to help them assay on track. In her book Darwins Plots, the literary historiographer Gillian Beer supplements abstract nouns like evidence, relationships and beliefs with vivid verbs (rebuff, overturn, exhilarate)...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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