Reflection on Nominalization and My Writing Style

Is the word "nominalization" an example of nominalization?

I was hard put to find many examples of nominalization in the texts for my classes this term, so I don't think that nominalization is a common source of abstraction in the texts used by English majors. However, many literary critics do use the passive voice to eliminate agency. I believe that literary critics often use the passive voice because there is an ongoing debate in the literary circle over where things “come from” in a work – from the writer, the reader, the work itself, etc. I am guessing that a literary critic would use nominalization if he or she were unsure of the agent. When a critic finds something in a literary work, who or what has produced it? Was it the work, the author, the context surrounding the work, the culture of the reader, or the reader? Critics can (and do) use the passive voice and nominalization to acknowledge the extent to which literary works have multiple and indeterminate agents.

I am a much more confident writer because of this class. I still make many of the same mistakes, but now at least some of them are visible to me. When I find things in my writing that I am unsure about or wish to change, I have the tools to correct myself or clear up doubts I have had in the past.

Stylistically, I have tried to be more explicit in my writing. Nearly all of my English teachers have told me that my writing is insightful but hard to follow. Instead of eliminating all of my complicated sentences, I have tried to add shorter, more explicit sentences before or after the more complicated sentences. That is, I add summation sentences. I don’t want to “reduce” the ideas in my sentences, but I don’t want my ideas misunderstood or lost either. Also, perhaps because of this class, most of my sentences make the agent of the action explicit. This might not be an actual change in my writing. However, I am certainly much more able to identify the presence or absence of agency in my sentences.