| 词组 | passive voice |
| 释义 | passive voice 1. A large number of commentators agree that sentences in which the verb is in the active voice are preferable to those in which the verb is in the passive voice. The passive has long been discouraged as the weaker form of expression. In spite of generations of textbooks, use of the passive has increased and, ironically, studies show the passive to be much more frequently used by the educated than by the uneducated. The passive has its uses, as we shall see. Even grammarians and usage commentators find it useful, or perhaps subtly enticing. Joseph M. Williams caught these two specimens for exhibit in College Composition and Communications, May 1981: • Emphasis is often achieved by the use of verbs rather than nouns formed from them, and by the use of verbs in the active rather than in the passive voice —S. J. Reisman, ed., A Style Manual for Technical Writers and Editors, 1972 • ... the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active —George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946 Orwell's dictum in the same essay is "Never use the passive where you can use the active." Orwell's essay is interesting in another regard. Bryant 1962 reports three statistical studies of passive versus active sentences in various periodicals; the highest incidence of passive constructions was 13 percent. Orwell runs to a little over 20 percent in "Politics and the English Language." Clearly he found the construction useful in spite of his advice to avoid it as much as possible. There is general agreement that the passive is useful when the receiver of the action is more important than the doer; Bryant's example is "The child was struck by the car." Orwell also uses the passive for this purpose in "Politics and the English Language": • ... noun constructions are used instead of gerunds The range of verbs if further cut down.... • ... banal statements are given an appearance of profundity The passive is also useful when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or perhaps too obvious to be worth mentioning. Bryant exemplifies each of these with • The store was robbed last night. • Plows should not be kept in the garage. • Kennedy was elected president. Orwell makes use of the passive in this way too: • People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. The passive with the unknown or unimportant doer is disapproved in some instances by quite a few commentators who consider it evasive. Copperud 1970 gives as an example of evasive use, "It is felt that your request must be denied." Whether this evasion is useful or not depends on your point of view: if it is your request that is denied, it is irritating not to know who denied you; if you are some poor functionary whose duty it is to inform people that their request has been denied, it may seem most helpful. Orwell in the passage just cited is generalizing rather than evading. The force of his statement would not be much strengthened by using the active with a general subject: • Totalitarian regimes imprison people for years without trial ... ; they call this elimination of unreliable elements. Indeed, the absence of a named agent might be seen as part of the writer's point. A few commentators find the passive useful in scientific writing (one even believes it to be necessary) because of the tone of detachment and impersonality that it helps establish. The point, finally, is that sentences cast in the passive voice have their uses and are an important tool for the writer. Everyone agrees you should not lean too heavily on passive sentences and that you should especially avoid awkwardly constructed passives. The few statistical studies we have seen or heard of indicate that you are likely to use the active voice most of the time anyway. 2. Lounsbury 1908 devotes several pages to the problem of the passive followed by a retained object, as in "He was refused admittance" or "I was promised venison." This was an 18th- and 19th-century issue, apparently; no one questions the construction any more. |
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