In the previous posts, I wrote about Grammatical Metaphor as a framework to analyse nominalisation phenomenon, which could pose a challenge for Korean translators. In this post, I will delve into more detailed review on the concept of nominalisation.
Definition of Nominalisation
Nominalisation, which is a type of Grammatical Metaphor, can be described as replacing of verbal group with noun group. It is the result of reconfiguring Processes (verb) to nominal group. Let's look at an example as below.
Example (1) She was shocked by her son’s rebellion.
Example (2) The shock on her face meant that the other family would have no dinner that day.
Example (3) Such starvation was the last thing that her family could endure, so they all started to blame her son who caused this disaster.
The examples show the constant tendency of reshaping into things. ‘She was shocked’ in example (1) was reshaped to ‘the shock (on her face), and ‘that the other family would have no dinner’ was changed to ‘such starvation’. This kind of shifts to nominal group is called Nominalisation.
Implications of Nominalisation on Texts
Nominalization as a key feature of ideational metaphor shifts process to noun, and by doing so, adds ‘thingness’ in the clause. The ‘thingness’ is a result of encapsulating and condensing effect of nominalisation, which has some implications on texts.
More economic use of words in building relations in discourse
Textually, nominalisation allows the originally non-nominal group to play a variety of roles as Participant, especially as Theme. Because of this, a clause can be referred more economically in the following discourse.
Example (1) ‘she was shocked’ and example (2) ‘that the other family would have no dinner that night’ were nominalised to ‘her shock’ and ‘such starvation’ respectively. These in turn become the Themes of the clauses in the example (2) and (3).
In example (2), nominalisation ‘the shock on her face’ and the Rheme of the clause (meant that the other family would have no dinner that day) are connected by Process ‘meant’. More congruent expression of this clause would be ‘Because she was shocked, the other family would have no dinner that night'. The nominalisation in this example establishes the logical relation of the Theme and Rheme more economically.
Distinctive feature of written text
Nominalisation is also the distinctive feature of written text and most recognisable in academic writing, especially in scientific texts. Congruent expression of example (2), that is, 'Because she was shocked, the other family would have no dinner that night' is more likely to be found in spoken text, whereas example (2) itself is more likely to be seen in the written text.
One of differences between spoken texts and written texts can be explained in terms of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. Halliday says that "the written version is more complex in terms of lexical density, while the spoken version is more complex in terms of grammatical intricacy". Due to the condensing effect of nominalisation, grammatical complexity decreases while lexical density increases.
For example, many expressions with nominalisations are realised in a simple clause, mainly in relational clause (A is B type). In this type of clause, two nominal groups are linked by a Process (usually 'is' as a verb). The first nominal group encapsulates the previous message and the first and the second nominal groups together become the subject of encapsulating in the next message. Via this kind of structure, the nominalisation enables taxonomies and progression of arguments in an economic and logical way. It is a characteristics of written texts.
Salient Feature of Specialised Writing
Nominalisation has function to negotiate meaning as something non-negotiable. It establishes meaning as something that already exists by ‘nouning’ the non-nominal group. By doing this, it often makes texts less accessible because the nouning assumes existing shared knowledge. This in turn can lead to limited readership, as in specialised science texts.
Noun is preferred over verb because of the advantage of nominality. Compared to verbal style, nominal style is more effective since it orients writers to focus on the content that they are writing rather than the stylistic aspect. It makes the writing more impersonal, which in turn makes nominalisation the salient feature of specialised areas.
At the same time, it has implications for the relationship between writer and reader. Condensed words through nominalisation are often specialised terminologies and they can create a barrier for the ordinary general readers who do not have the presumed background knowledge in the field. Conversely, by unpacking nominalisation, the readers can find the text more inviting and access the writing more easily, which will close the gap between the writer and the readers.
Conclusion
In this post, we explored what nominalisation means and what effect it can have on texts. Nominalisation, an important characteristics of written texts, achieves the effect of economic building of relations in a clause and depersonalising of the texts. In the next post, I will introduce Korean nominalisation from the perspective of Grammatical Metaphor.