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| hmm…. can a passive be said to be sneaky? |
Scanning
the pages of endless style guides, Geoffrey
Pullum was startled at the amount of ruthless criticism devoted to the
passive voice. Authors, journalists and writing tutors continuously discourage
the use of the passive in writing, describing it as evasive, and somehow linking it to a lack of responsibility. But not
only do these critics lack a coherent definition of the passive, they also seem
to do little to justify their position. So the researcher set out to thoroughly
describe the passive from a syntactic perspective. He cuts the language mavens'
arguments to ribbons.
Passives
come in all sorts, from the canonical The
president’s authority has been much diminished to Marie got photographed by a journalist. Contrary to popular belief,
passives may specify the agent very clearly, usually by means of a by-phrase, as in It was thrown at them by hooligans – where we know exactly who is
responsible for the action. Now and then passives occur without be or a past participle, for instance, That said, however, Korea is Korea, not the
Philippines.
Pullum
identified four kinds of criticisms in relation to passives. They are alleged
to be
· sneaky or evasive
· avoided by good writers
· dull and static
· weak
Item number one refers to the vagueness of responsibility. As Sherry
Roberts put it:
A sentence written in
passive voice is the shifty desperado who tries to win the gunfight by shooting
the sheriff in the back, stealing his horse, and sneaking out of town.[1]
There are two ways of dealing with this criticism. First, in some cases
the agent cannot or need not be specified at all. It can be irrelevant or
unknowable, as the two sentences below demonstrate:
When the patient was
first diagnosed with cancer her symptoms were minor.
Perhaps the mysterious
mound was constructed as a memorial.
Second, a so-called long passive (with a by-phrase) can be an effective device to emphasize agency, as it gives details of the
agent.
Another supposed fault of the passive is that they are omitted by good
authors. In his essay Politics and the
English language George Orwell, a celebrated writer, warned: ‘Never use the
passive where you can use the active’[2].
Yet in the very piece of writing containing this advice, 20 % of the transitive
verbs are passives! An average writer passivises only about 13% of verbs, which
means that, in fact, Mr. Orwell resorted to this construction rather
frequently.
As regards the two other criticisms, weakness
and dullness, these are much more
dependent on the content of the text, rather than on a specific syntactic construction.
To sum up, the holy war against the passive voice, launched by style
guide authors and writing tutors since the early 20th century, has
little to do with the passive as such. When used appropriately, it can be as
dynamic, powerful and accurate as any other form of language. The key question
is to use it wisely and appropriately.
[1] http://www.editorialservice.com/writing-and-editing/11ways.html#7,
in Section 7, ‘Be Active’
[2] Orwell,
G., 1946. Politics and the English language. Horizon, 252–264
-----------------------
Geoffrey K. Pullum (2014) Fear and loathing of the English passive. Language and Communication 37: 60-74.
doi. http://dx/doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom2013.08.009
This summary was written by Maryna Myntsykovska
