Representing actions with nouns
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Forms of nominalisation | page 2 of 8 |
Differences between spoken and written English
Spoken English differs from written English in a number of ways. Consider the following example, in which a caller is greeted with a less than cordial response:
A: Er, good afternoon. Could you connect me to Mr Wong, please. B: He's not here now. You phone back later. (Hong Kong Receptionist)
Now imagine that the caller wished to express their dissatisfaction with the receptionist's manners, in a letter. In order to reflect what happened during the brief telephone conversation, they might write something like this:
My polite request for a connection to Mr Wong was met with rudeness.
It is interesting to compare these two versions of the same event, because they
illustrate the very different ways we can represent an event according to whether we are
speaking or writing 
. One of the most striking features in the second example is
the writer's use of nominalised forms to summarise and interpret the encounter:
My polite request for a connection to Mr Wong was met with rudeness.
These nominalisations are all abstract nouns, which contrasts quite strikingly with the nouns in the spoken example, which are all human actors: you, Mr Wong, he, you.
If we look at the nominalisations one by one, only the noun connection can be traced back to an actual word, the verb connect. The noun request is a summary of the caller's words "Could you connect me to Mr Wong, please?" Note that the adjective polite can be traced back to both the modal could, and the politeness marker please. The noun rudeness is the caller's perception of the receptionist's manner, rather than a summary of the actual words.
Other pages in this file will outline the three main types of nominalisation.
Introduction
Differences between spoken and written English
