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I was much impressed by this.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-ambiguous-grammar
We have finally fully arrived at the ultimate in passive voice: the past exonerative tense, so named because culpability is impossible when actions no longer exist.
Makes perfect sense to me.
I don't get it
That's a good read.
I don't get it (as in I don't get what's remarkable about it).
All the right words, not necessarily in the right order
I don’t get it (as in I don’t get what’s remarkable about it).
Disinterest in language declares as much.
I don’t get it (as in I don’t get what’s remarkable about it).
Passive voice is frequently used by police (and politicians, etc.) to avoid taking responsibility for misdeeds(i.e. "exonerative tense"). The article uses the "quick brown fox" sentence to illustrate the convoluted grammatical transformation involved in going from, "Police officers tragically shot a bystander in a case of mistaken identity," to "The police department was involved in an officer involved shooting."
What thols2 said.
By making it passive (e.g. 'this happened' rather than 'someone did this') you're making it sound like no-one was at fault, in other words you're covering up for the person who may have done wrong.
Used to have a Mcsweeneys subscription, way back when they delivered cheaply to the UK. Always excellent reading if you enjoy short stories and unusual longer sort of factual pieces. The web version is a treasure trove of bite sized distractions.
Disinterest
<Fry meme>
They let themselves down a bit with “we are working as quickly as possible to get details”.
Quite active there, they should have gone for “work is being done so details will emerge”.
They let themselves down a bit with “we are working as quickly as possible to get details”.
The trick is to take active credit for something positive, passively avoid any connection to anything negative.
E.g. Police officers rescued hostages after armed standoff.
Several bystanders were shot after gunfire broke out as an arrest warrant was being served.
I like this. It really helps understand just how language is used, and by whom, to disseminate 'information'.
A good read, on how information is used to create a particular narrative, is 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' by Jean Baudrillard:
The use of the passive voice to defer blame is something I have been teaching in classrooms for over twenty years.
Or should that read...the use of the passive voice is something that has been taught in classrooms for over twenty years! 😉
Depends whether your students use it mostly as a defence mechanism for their own failures or as a means of detecting misrepresentation in others. Who knows…
That is excellent.
Thanks for sharing.
It really helps understand just how language is used, and by whom, to disseminate ‘information’.
Showing that you understand how it's used should be compulsory before watching BBC news these days. (Edit : any news at all, I've just got a bee in my bonnet about BBC lately!)