Nominalisation

Choosing the right style for your audience

We said near the start of this lesson that nominalisation is often a trade off between being easier to understand, and being more precise and efficient.

Let's look at how one scientist, Ilissa Ocko, balances these needs when communicating her research about methane and global warming.

The header of a published open letter with Ilissa Ocko as first author.

 

First, let's take a look at an excerpt from one of her research papers. Highlight any nominalisations you spot.

Given methane’s short-lived presence in the atmosphere, deployment of these mitigation measures would have a near-immediate impact on slowing down the rate of warming.

Acting rapidly to deploy readily available methane mitigation measures by sector can immediately slow global warming(2021)

It's similar to the kinds of snippets we've been looking at in this lesson. Very compressed; very dense.

Ilissa Ocko stands on the TED stage, speaking

 

Now take a look at this snippet from her TED talk about the same topic. Highlight the nominalisations.

Methane only lasts in the atmosphere for around a decade. This means that every time we reduce methane, we can reduce a lot of warming right away.

The fastest way to slow climate change now(2021)

Only one nominalisation, and it's a very simple one. This basically isn't compressed at all!

Why do you think Ocko has chosen to express herself differently in the article vs. the TED talk.

There are two things driving the differences between these two texts: audience and format.

The article is a written text aimed at people with some expertise in atmospheric chemistry and the greenhouse effect. This means:

  • It's assumed readers will have more background knowledge that they can use to understand special terminology, or unpack abstractions or summary.
  • Expert readers often prefer a compressed style because it's easier to scan for terminology or key phrases to see whether the content is relevant to them.
  • Readers can re-read anything that they don't understand straight away. (But you should still aim to be as clear as possible when writing!)

The speech is aimed at a novice audience who might not know much, if anything, about atmospheric stuff.

  • Audience members are likely to have very little or no background knowledge. That means they will find it harder to unpack any terminology or abstractions.
  • Because it's a live speech, listeners can't go back and re-listen to anything they didn't understand the first time. Shorter clauses and more connectors puts less load on the audience's working memory—they don't have to remember as many words at a time to make sense of what the speaker is saying. (Technically someone listening to the recording could go back and re-listen, but that's still a lot more fiddly than re-reading written work.)
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