An overcompensation of nouns
I’ve no idea if children are taught about collective nouns in schools these days. I hope so, because they make for some marvellous images – contrast a piteousness of doves with an exaltation of larks; be captivated by a charm of finches but beware a deceit of lapwings; does an unkindness of ravens lead to a lamentation of swans? And really, a rout of snails?
The origins of these so-called terms of venery are to be found in the late middle ages and the fashion at that time of developing specialist vocabulary around hunting. Then, being able to apply the correct terminology was viewed more as a sign of one’s position in society than a genuine attempt at being understood. In a hopefully more interesting than usual segue into this my latest blog, I would suggest that over five hundred years later the language of officialdom performs much the same role.
Moreover, one of the devices by which it does this is another category of abstract noun: the nominalisation. Here too, abstract nouns (i.e. not physical objects) are formed from an original verb. Hence, an overcompensation of nouns or a deployment of nominalisations – or as I would put it, the practice of transforming perfectly capable verbs into rather pompous-sounding nouns. Consider this real-life example below:
‘The initial stages of the inspection involved the dispatch of a questionnaire, known as an overarching protocol, from W for completion by X being inspected. External scrutiny of financial management during the inspection was provided by Y. The inspection also involved collaborative scrutiny with Z in relation to X’s race equality scheme.’
And now consider the following re-wording:
‘In the initial stages of the inspection we sent out a questionnaire or protocol for X to complete. We are grateful to Y for examining on our behalf how X manages its finances and to Z for its help in assessing X’s race equality scheme.’
I hope you will agree that not only are the verb forms perfectly capable of conveying the intended meaning, they are a great deal slicker at it.
The usual charge against nominalisations is that they make for turgid and passive language; that is, by removing the verb they remove a sense of action too. I agree and I have a couple more objections to add.
The first is that they also impede the flow of sense. Look again at the “collaborative scrutiny” sentence above. It takes longer to grasp the meaning of this term than it does its replacement, “help in assessing”. The same could be said of the entire original extract and its revised version. Hence nominalisations require more effort from the reader in order simply to understand what is being said.
If imparting information is your main goal, then overusing these stylistic devices is likely to be self-defeating. For the public sector, which appears to nurture some of the worst offenders while striving to be open and transparent, the caution is particularly apposite. As the Roman rhetorician Quintilian justly urged: one should not aim at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
So why do so many persist in writing in this way? Well, to my second point. As far as I can see much of the use of nominalisations is about aggrandizement. In our example, the simple acts of sending out a questionnaire and so on are given a makeover in order to paint them as somehow more impressive or deserving of our regard. The premise may sound a little ludicrous; but the truth, I suspect, is not that far off.
If you remain unconvinced, then consider this last aberration – sortation facility. It reached me courtesy of an email from a well-known delivery company, alerting me to the fact that my parcel had reached what most of us would know as its sorting facility. Why would anyone change a perfectly explanatory and familiar term with something needlessly contrived?
Despair not, though. How often do you come across specialist hunting vocabulary these days?😉
