On Nominalization, A Rhetorical Device in Academic Writing

(with special attention to Electronic Engineering research articles)

Abstract

Writing for science and technology is indubitably proliferating nowadays, which results in scientists being under ever-increasing pressure to write and publish their articles. To fulfill the goal of writing on different scientific domains and publishing, it is of paramount importance to be familiar with the peculiarities of the written style of the language of the discourse community. As far as engineering disciplines are concerned, foremost with electronic engineering in mind, of all various stylistic problems in scientific/technical writing, “nominalization”, as one of the most distinctive linguistic characteristics of academic writing, deserves a lot of attention. Since academic writing is often characterized by high frequency of nominalization, in the hope of providing a new insight into the development of writing for engineering, the present article aims to reveal the importance of the salutary effects of this systemic resource that will put the students and academics on the path of academic excellence.