Words That Hide the Guilty
Grammar: Nominalisation
A Level 6 English lesson exploring society.
What's in this lesson
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL lesson on society, practising nominalisation. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Words That Hide the Guilty
In 2003, a senior UK government spokesperson issued a statement containing the phrase the presentation of intelligence data required recalibration. No minister failed. No official misled. No person did anything at all. The presentation — a noun — simply required something, as though documents make decisions independently of the people who write them. This is nominalisation in its most politically consequential form: the systematic conversion of human action into abstract process, stripping agency from language so completely that accountability becomes, in the most literal grammatical sense, impossible to locate.
Vocabulary
- bureaucratic register
- deeply contested
- rhetorical distance
- vested interest
Grammar: Nominalisation
- What nominalisation is
- The reduction of costs began last year. — a verb or adjective converted into a noun phrase
- Agency disappears
- The failure occurred in Q3. — no subject acts; the noun phrase replaces who failed
Discussion questions
- Have you ever read an official statement and felt it said nothing at all?
- Why do you think governments rarely say 'we failed' in public?
- Which sounds more trustworthy — simple language or formal language, and why?
Words That Hide the Guilty
Grammar: Nominalisation
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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