Casa ESL · C2 Mastery · Unit 15 of 20 · Step 2
Nominalisation at scale — converting verbal to nominal style
Name
Date
Vocabulary
liquidity
nounThe availability of cash or easily convertible assets in a market or economy.
"The central bank injected liquidity to prevent a credit freeze."
amortisation
nounThe gradual reduction of a debt through scheduled payments; or the allocation of cost over time.
"The amortisation schedule spreads repayment over twenty years."
capitalisation
nounThe total market value of a company's outstanding shares; or the conversion of income into capital.
"The firm's market capitalisation exceeded $2 trillion."
divestiture
nounThe action of selling off subsidiary business interests or investments.
"The conglomerate's divestiture of its media arm signalled a strategic realignment."
arbitrage
nounThe simultaneous buying and selling of assets in different markets to profit from price differences.
"Currency arbitrage exploits momentary discrepancies between exchange rates."
securitisation
nounThe process of converting illiquid assets into tradeable securities.
"The securitisation of sub-prime mortgages played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis."
deleveraging
nounThe process of reducing the level of debt by rapidly paying off existing obligations.
"Post-crisis deleveraging constrained economic growth for several years."
recapitalisation
nounThe restructuring of a company's debt and equity mixture to stabilise its capital structure.
"The bank required emergency recapitalisation to meet regulatory capital requirements."
Grammar Focus
Nominalisation at scale — converting verbal to nominal academic style
Nominalisation converts verbs and adjectives into nouns, increasing information density and formality. "The company expanded rapidly" becomes "The rapid expansion of the company." "They decided to invest" becomes "The decision to invest." At C2 level, nominalisation is used systematically to create the dense, impersonal prose characteristic of academic, legal, and financial writing. Patterns: verb → noun (investigate → investigation, regulate → regulation); adjective → noun (unstable → instability, complex → complexity). Nominalised prose packs more information per sentence but can become impenetrable if overused.
Verbal: "The government regulated the market because prices were unstable." → Nominal: "Government regulation of the market was prompted by price instability."
Verbal: "They decided to divest and restructured the company." → Nominal: "The decision to divest precipitated a comprehensive restructuring of the company."
Verbal: "Banks failed to capitalise adequately, which caused the crisis." → Nominal: "Inadequate bank capitalisation was a primary cause of the crisis."
Exercises
Exercise 1
Convert each verbal sentence into nominalised academic style.
1. Verbal: "The currency depreciated sharply." Nominal:
2. Verbal: "They acquired the company and then restructured it." Nominal:
3. Verbal: "Regulators failed to intervene, which destabilised the market." Nominal:
4. Verbal: "Investors lost confidence because the bank was not transparent." Nominal:
5. Verbal: "They securitised the loans and then sold them to investors." Nominal:
Exercise 2
Match each verb to its nominalised form.
Reading
The Density of Financial Prose
The language of international finance is characterised by an exceptionally high density of nominalisation — the systematic conversion of verbs and adjectives into nouns, which compresses information and depersonalises agency. Consider a typical sentence from a central bank communiqué: "The deterioration in global trade conditions, coupled with persistent inflationary pressures and the tightening of monetary policy, has necessitated a reassessment of growth projections for the forthcoming fiscal year." Unpacked into verbal prose, this single sentence would require perhaps three or four: "Global trade conditions have deteriorated. Inflation has remained stubbornly high. Central banks have tightened monetary policy. Because of all this, economists have had to reassess how much the economy will grow next year." The nominalised version is denser, more formal, and — critically — it obscures agency. Who deteriorated trade conditions? Who tightened policy? The nominal style treats these as events without agents, phenomena rather than decisions. This is not accidental: in financial and institutional discourse, nominalisation serves an ideological function. By converting actions into abstract nouns, it naturalises policy decisions, making them appear as inevitable outcomes rather than deliberate choices. The student of C2 English must be able both to produce such prose and to read through it — to identify the agents and decisions that the nominal style has rendered invisible.
1. What does the passage identify as the "ideological function" of nominalisation in financial discourse?
2. How does the passage demonstrate the difference in information density between nominalised and verbal prose?
Speaking
Discuss these questions with a partner or your teacher.
Writing
Write the same economic event twice (80-100 words each): once in clear, verbal prose accessible to a general reader, and once in dense, nominalised academic/institutional style. Then write one sentence reflecting on what is gained and lost in each version.
Example: Verbal: "Several large banks lent recklessly during the boom years. When borrowers could not repay their loans, the banks ran out of money. Governments stepped in and used taxpayer funds to rescue them." Nominal: "Excessive lending practices during the preceding period of economic expansion, followed by widespread borrower default, precipitated a systemic liquidity crisis necessitating government intervention through public recapitalisation of affected institutions." Reflection: The nominal version is denser and more formal but conceals who lent recklessly, who defaulted, and who decided to use public funds — converting choices into impersonal events.
Answer Key — For Teacher Use
Exercise 1
1. The sharp depreciation of the currency · 2. The acquisition of the company was followed by its restructuring. · 3. The failure of regulators to intervene resulted in market destabilisation. · 4. The loss of investor confidence was attributable to a lack of transparency on the part of the bank. · 5. The securitisation of the loans facilitated their subsequent sale to investors.
Exercise 2
1. regulate → regulation · 2. divest → divestiture · 3. amortise → amortisation · 4. capitalise → capitalisation · 5. deleverage → deleveraging
Reading Comprehension
1. By converting actions into abstract nouns and obscuring agency, nominalisation naturalises policy decisions, making deliberate choices appear as inevitable, impersonal outcomes rather than decisions made by specific actors. · 2. It shows that a single nominalised sentence from a central bank communiqué requires three or four verbal sentences to express the same content when unpacked, illustrating the compression achieved through nominalisation.