Nominalizations are at the heart of modeling. It was once said that in order to model people, we need to focus on the de-nominalization in language in order to move “things” into “process”. A nominalization is basically an abstract noun (empowerment, love, essence, endearment, optimism, desire, etc) which encapsulates a process. This has an uncanny effect of turning it into a ‘thing’ and causes us to treat it as if it were a thing.
photo credit: sarvodaya.org
For instance, people who say “we have a problem with our relationship” will end up having no apparent solution. But when we de-nominalize the term ‘relationship’ we now have a process that is called ‘relating’. Now, this is something we can observe and even learn to improve.
Whenever I interview a role model for the modeling process, I actually request for details about the nominalizations (of course I won’t say ‘denominalize this’) and I end up being clearer about the processes he or she has in her mind.
As an exercise, just list down as many nominalizations you can think of on a sheet of paper, and learn to detect them in your conversations.
