[jonahbenton]

I don't have an Economist sub so can't read the whole piece and didn't bother reading the paper but the strategy of using nouns rather than verbs seems very familiar.

When writing this is called passive writing. In verbal communications when trying to effect something is colloquially known as passive aggressiveness.

Defining new nouns as abstractions is also key to the practice of dehumanization. None of this seems remotely novel.

I would be interested in studies that correlate brain activity with receiving predominantly verb/active vs predominantly noun/passive communications. Maybe the piece gets into work in that area, I don't know.