adjectives - Is a lengthy combination of words with hyphens like “the worst not-technically-in-a-recession year in American history” a new fashion of writing?

I found a hyphenated word , “not-technically–in-a-recession” in the sentence of September 28 New York Times’ article titled “Why Obama Is Winning,” written by co-ed columnist, Ross Douthat. It reads:

“Today, just as he predicted, the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent. The year’s second-quarter growth rate was just downgraded to an anemic 1.3 percent, real household income dipped in the month leading up to the two political conventions, and the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis suggests that 2012 might turn out to be the worst not-technically-in-a-recession year in modern American history”.

I was interested in the format, “not-technically-in-X” deliberately combining six words into one word with hyphens. Why doesn’t the writer simply say “2012 might turn out to be the worst year, (though) not technically recession, in modern American history” without linking words with repetitive hyphens.

Is it a fashon, or is it a normal way to say or write “not-technically-in-an-X.”?

Do you normally write “The report is arranged with not-technically–in-statistic-accuracy?

Does a doctor inform his patient that their cancer may turn out critical not-technically-in-clinical-database?

P.S.

I witnessed ubiquity (or abuse) of hyphen-linked-phrasing in the following sentence of Time magazine’s (Oct. 22) article – “The Third Debate: Obama Wins on Style and Substance” written by Joe Klein.

“This may seem petty, but it is part of the other-than-reality-based world of RushFoxland — like the alleged Apology Tour that wasn’t. That world, so far as foreign policy is concerned, came crashing down tonight.”

Answer

It is not considered a standard way to write things, is not particularly formal, and like many other informalisms, is only recently appearing with any real frequency in print.

Creating a modifier that acts like an adjective (coming before the noun in a list of modifiers) occurs in speech more than in print. Even though it is not used in formal standard speech it is more characteristic of informal academic writing, in an attempt to pack in more modifiers and qualifications.

Litotes can be used this way. (just to be clear the given example is not one of litotes, just litotes can be used to create interesting but unwieldy preposed modifiers. For example:

The not unskilled beginner...

'not unskilled' is not a single word adjective, and would normally only be allowed as the predicate: 'The beginner was not unskilled'.

A much simpler version of the given example would be to just have the prepositional phrase before the noun in the place an adjective would go (a prepositional phrase is a noun modifier too just normally after the noun):

...the worst in-a-recession year...

or even

...the in-a-recession year...

Most native speakers would balk at these shorter examples and accept the longer one (that's my reaction), but the pattern is not unheard of and can work in some circumstances (like the given one).

The standard and straightforward way to write the sentence would be:

... 2012 might turn out to be the worst year in modern American history not technically in a recession.

As to the use of hyphens, it actually makes things a bit easier to follow since the pattern is not that common. If it weren't for the extra hyphens one might attempt to parse the sentence differently, leading down a garden path.

As to the trend (is it more popular lately?), I think it has existed for a while, but the acceptance of informality in print (especially opinion editorials) has made it more easily seen.

The phenomenon of stringing along an almost a sentence before the noun (that is, not as a relative clause) occurs regularly in German and other Germanic languages.