In a recent article in the Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker adduces evidence from President Obama’s speech on the Gulf of Mexico oil-well blow-out to suggest that his speaking style is more female than male. Apparently Obama’s speech “featured 13 percent passive-voice constructions, the highest level measured in any major presidential address this century.” The use of the passive voice is, supposedly, a characteristic of female speech – the sort of gender myth that drives Deborah Cameron crazy (see my previous post G is for Gender).
In refuting Parker’s cod-linguistics, the Atlantic Wire quotes University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman, who “finds that Obama’s speech was only 11.1 percent passive, and that Bush used more passive voice anyway. Liberman finds that Bush’s Katrina speech was 17.6 percent passive”.
In any case, he adds, “there isn’t the slightest evidence that passive-voice constructions are ‘feminine’… The ‘passive is girly’ prejudice seems to be purely due to the connotations of (other senses of) the term passive.”
Newspaper columnists are not alone in misrepresenting the significance of the passive. Student grammars are also at fault. A trainee of mine recently brought to my attention the following explanation of the use of the passive in a reputable grammar reference text:
Active and passive sentences often have similar meanings, but a different focus.
Active sentences focus on the agent (the person or thing doing the action). Millions of people read the magazine. (The focus is on the people.)
Passive sentences focus on the object (the person or thing receiving the action).
The magazine is read by millions of people. (The focus is on the magazine.)
Assuming that by ‘focus’ is meant ‘the important information’, this is so wrong as to be the exact opposite of the case, and is a good example of what happens when you try to fabricate rules out of de-contextualised examples. So, let’s create a plausible context:
The National Geographic is an American institution. The magazine is read by millions of people.
In the second sentence, the magazine refers back to a previously mentioned topic (The National Geographic). In other words, it is “given information” (the definite article indicates as much, even in the absence of the context). The new information is everything that follows (is read by millions of people), and conforms to the convention in English (and in many other languages) that new information is placed towards the end of the sentence – what is called “the end-weight principle”. The rule given in the grammar book – that “active sentences focus on the agent” and “passive sentences focus on the object” – wrongly implies that the so-called focus of a sentence is its subject. The focus (if by focus we mean ‘the important information’) is in fact everything that is not the subject, i.e. everything that follows the main verb. Thus, the passive is one of several devices available to move new information to the end of the sentence, even when that new information is the agent of the verb. Compare the following two ‘mini-texts’:
- Ludwig von Beethoven was a German composer. He composed the Pastoral Symphony.
- The Pastoral Symphony is a beautiful work. It was composed by Ludwig von Beethoven.
In the second sentence of Text 2, a passive structure is enlisted simply to push the new information to the end of the sentence in order to ‘focus’ on it. (The end-weighted matter, incidentally, also receives the most stress when spoken – a further indication of its ‘focal’ value). Compare Text 2 above with the less convincing – albeit grammatically well-formed – alternative:
2a. The Pastoral Symphony is a beautiful work. Ludwig von Beethoven composed it.
Curiously, the same point came up in a teaching practice class this week. In her reflections on a lesson, a teacher recounted the following:
On the board I wrote:
In the 1880’s, the telephone was invented.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
I asked students, “What is the focus of each sentence?” They did fine on the first two, but answered, “by Alexander Graham Bell,” for the third. At this point, I said well actually the focus is on the telephone. The meaning of the structure is to place emphasis on the noun (subject) that fronts the sentence. The students not knowing this, couldn’t make sense of the concept check question.
In fact, as I pointed out to the teacher, the students were right!
A magnificent debunking of hand-me-down received ‘wisdom’.
Why have I never seen your explanation anywhere else? Are you the only person in the world who understands the passive (apart from me, now).
Thanks Glennie.
In fact, in the original edition of An A-Z (2006) I analyse the passive in identical terms:
Delighted to see this old chesnut debunked. So what guidelines do you like to give students (if any)? I feel pretty comfortable with Swan’s explanation – if we’re interested in what people or things do, we generally use active forms. If we’re interested in what happens to them, we generally use passives. How do you feel about that?
Hi Vicki – first of all I would distinguish between the ‘long passive’ (i.e. the construction where the agent is identified in a prepositional phrase: “My aunt was abducted by aliens”) and the ‘short passive’, where no agent is mentioned “Caesar was assassinated”. In the case of the long passive, the rule of end-weight seems to apply, and is best dealt with as a feature of discourse. On the other hand, the short passive:
(An A-Z of ELT)
But, even then, discourse features, such as the distinction between given and new, will apply.
For the given/new distinction, one exercise I like to use is to ask learners to continue a text by choosing the best follow-on sentence. So:
1. The first person to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong.
a. He led the Apollo 11 mission.
b. The Apollo 11 mission was led by him.
2. Armstrong collected rocks from the moon’s surface.
a. Scientists all over the world have studied these rocks.
b. These rocks have been studied by scientists all over the world.
3. Armstrong left scientific instruments on the moon.
a. The instruments sent information to the earth.
b. Information was sent to the earth by the instruments.
etc.
Wow, that’s terrific. Thanks Scott, that’s really clear.
A colleague has problems with the idea of ‘focus’. I think he sees focus as a synonym of topic (rheme?), and not as a synonym of what you have to say about it.
So would it be fair to say that, given a certain co-text (previous sentence/utterance), the passive enables the speaker to choose a topic and say something about it?
Hi Glennie. Good question. The problem is really with the the term ‘focus’, which is used in the student grammars, but is not (as far as I know) used by grammarians or discourse analysts – who – as you rightly point out – prefer the term ‘topic’ (for whatever takes subject position) and ‘comment’ (for whatever is said about the topic, and which is typically ‘new information’). As it is, students and teachers tend to think of ‘focus’ as being ‘what’s important’ – i.e. the newsworthy information, aka the comment – as opposed to the starting point of the utterance, i.e. the topic. If the student grammar I quoted in my post had said:
they would have been on safer ground.
Maintaining topic consistency is another function of the passive. Here’s what I have to say about it in Beyond the Sentence (Macmillan 2005):
Thanks for that.
Scott. Once again thanks for an entry that gets one thinking. As I routinely knocked my teacher trainer students’ inane exercises: “Change the following setences from Active into Passive”, “Change the following sentences from Passive into Active” I used to comment that Active/Passive was more a question of style than anything else. I could not detect any other important difference in meaning between “Shakespeare wrote ‘ Hamlet’ and ‘Hamlet’ was written by Shakespeare. Is that / was that over-simplistic? Dennis
Style does have a lot to do with the use of the passive – in the sense that the passive is more common in certain text types and registers. As I point out in An A-Z:
But because it is more common in some registers than in others does not mean that its use is arbitrary. Its relative frequency in academic writing is a direct result of its capacity to create agent-less sentences.
As for your example (Shakespeare wrote ‘ Hamlet’ and ‘Hamlet’ was written by Shakespeare) I would say that the difference is not at all stylistic, but is discoursal, in the same way as my Beethoven example. Compare these two mini-texts:
Switch the second sentence around, in each case, and the texts lack cohesion.
Scott. Checked on various definitions of style: discourse, but would much appreciate it if you could repeat yours. Dennis
Willingly, Dennis! Here are the relevant entries (or the beginnings thereof) in An A-Z of ELT:
So, the choice of passive rather than active may be a stylistic one if it is aimed at achieving a degree of formality (“Unauthorised photocopying is not permitted”) or it may be motivated by discourse considerations, e.g. maintaining topic consistency in the interests of cohesion: “‘Hamlet’ was written in 1601. It was first performed a year later…” (I invented the facts, by the way, so don’t quote me – or correct me!))
How lovely to find such considered discussion on points of grammar and style and yet there are people who still doubt the value of the Internet.
I wonder if the advice to prefer active voice comes from fiction/storytelling? In fiction/storytelling it makes sense to make the focus of the sentence the subject, as your overriding concern is to create a protagonist acting with will in an antagonistic world.
And that advice has perhaps slipped into corporate writing perhaps because of marketeers (like me!) trying to persuade folk to give personality to their writing?
Just a thought. Thanks for the enlightening discussion.
Thanks Robyn for your enthusiastic comment. I think you’re right, that fiction favors the active voice, because narrative action assumes some kind of human agency – it would be odd to find a story whose protagonist was solely the passive recipient of other people’s actions!
But I think the prejudice against the passive stems more from the fact that, by eliding the agent, the passive is often used to obscure facts or to avoid attributing responsibility, or is seen as impersonal and hence insincere. Proof of which is the fact that the MS-Word ‘Grammar Check’ will seek out and destroy the passive on sight!
Dear Scott,
The discourse aspect of why passives are chosen is mostly neglected in grammars, especially grammars for students, and it is great to see it highlighted so clearly.
Some text level practice materials would also not go amiss, such as comparing two texts in active and passive and discussing how choice of one or the other affects cohesion, the balance of given vs new information and maintains a more or a less unified theme focus in each case.
Great idea, Marisa! This immediatelyt makes me want to design a text that is ALL passive or ALL active, and then give it to students to ‘correct’. The first of the two Napoleon examples (above), if extended, might serve as a model.
I have one which I regularly use as a sample lesson on the passive – you want, I send…:-)
Hello Scott,
Thanks for (yet another) interesting and thought provoking blog post.
Just today I read this from a course participant:
What happened to “Q is for quote marks”? Was it a sophisticated teaser tactic?
No, just an accident, Alex. But now you can read the full post!
Thoroughly interesting, especially in terms of discourse analysis. Thanks Scott, I’ve forwarded my EAP students the link to consider!
Also, Marisa… Do you have a copy of that passive text task that you could send me, pllleeeasse? You’ve got my email (Athens Celta)! Thanks again, I love the fact that this may completely change the ubiquitous ‘passive-active’ lessons that crop up in textbooks as Dennis mentions. Cheers! 🙂
I’ve lost count of the number of epiphanies I’ve experienced while reading this blog, and now you’ve added another. The role of the passive in maintaining cohesion in a text is the itch I have been unable to scratch in my advanced students’ written work. Many thanks for pointing it out.
Scott — Thank you so much for this post. I’m teaching the passive in an advanced grammar class next week for the first time, and as I was driving today thinking about my textbook (which gives an explanation of the passive very similar to the one you quote in your entry) and my lesson, I actually thought of a discussion we had in Language Analysis class last summer. We were discussing there is/there are, and you said that the structure is a result of needing to put the important information at the end of the sentence. So why, I wondered, does the passive do the complete opposite?
I came home, and fortunately had the good sense to look at this blog. The passive voice doesn’t do the opposite — my book was just wrong. Again, thank you! The idea of giving these isolated passive sentences some context is so brilliantly simple and doable. Now I just need to come up with some good examples using modals in the passive as that is the learning outcome I’m tackling.
Best, Amy
Hi Scott,
I’m writing an essay on micro-level discourse (specifically the given-new principle) and have found differences in the definition of ‘”end-weight”, which is confusing me. Your definition of end-weight – the tendency to place newsworthy information in the latter part of a sentence – is what some linguists seem to call “end-focus”. These linguists define end-weight being the tendency to place longer structures towards the end of a sentence.
I would appreciate any clarification you could offer.
Many thanks,
Aaron (English Teacher, Exeter, UK)
Hi Aaron: I hadn’t considered the difference between end-weight and end-focus before, but I think you are right. I’ve checked my available sources, and although Biber et al. (The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English) have no mention of end-focus, they do have this to say on end-weight:
And now, trying to find a definition of end-focus, I find that in Leech and Svartik (A Communicative Grammar of English, Longman,1975) both end-weight and end-focus are compared:
So, it just goes to show – you learn something every day!
Using the passive to avoid responsibility: “This is me playing the elephant on double bass unaccompanied. A few mistakes were made but I just deccided to upload it anyway!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH13DfqchoU