Nominalization

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, nominalization is definitely a problem for me. In fact, I had to rewrite that sentence just to figure out how to use the word right. The act, on the other hand, that I commit all the time. I just took a midterm and it's definitely how I right for history tests. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, because I seldom have much to say on history midterms and nominalization makes it look like you had more to write than you really did. I bet most teachers have caught on to this particular trick, though. I think, for the most part, it's what we do in writing, but not in speaking. In fact, when speaking I think we do the opposite. An English friend of mine said she thought it was funny the way Americans were always changing nouns into verbs. For instance, we would say "Are we gonna LUAS it" instead of "Are we going to take the LUAS" when we talked about whether or not we wanted to ride the train/tram thing into town. I guess it makes perfect sense that in talking we take the shortest route and in writing (specifically academic writing) we take the longest possible path to our meaning.

I guess I spent more time reflecting on how we verbify (yes, I know this isn't a word) our nouns rather than nominalize our verbs, but that's really all I kept thinking about as I read the section on nominalization.

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.

Nominalization

It is obvious that I, as an English major, have seen many examples of nominalization in texts for my major.  English majors are required to read all different kinds of texts which have almost all types of sentence structures.  A lot of times nominalization is used in poetry, for example.  The knowledge that I have gained from this class has changed the way I read.  I have also noticed that, as a result of my studies in this class, my writing has changed.  Instead of taking language for granted in my writing, I am now able to analyze and think through my choices.  It has also, in a way, corrupted me because I tend to overanalyze my language and think too much about what sentence structures I am using.    

Writing

Now
About you
With blue ink
To scrawl cliches
Since my mind can’t think.

Looking (Final Draft)

Forward

To the future

A new time and place

To move on with my life

Because it’s finally time to grow up

Yeah . . . I'm with Hillary: I didn't know what to change.

One Last Change

Flaming
Silently
Above my hair
A verdant candle
To eat the heavy (used to be lightsome) air
Before I feel the snuffing

I am changing the word "lightsome" to "heavy" because "lightsome" is the exact opposite of what I meant the air to be like. I only discovered this once I printed it out and read it aloud.

Crying

Endlessly

Over you

Tiny rain drops

Running down my cheeks

Because you left me alone

I didn't know what to change!