Creeping passive voice in public discourse

Here’s an observation on passive voice by Michael Rubin:

A writer with whom I spoke about two weeks ago pointed out a very interesting trend in the press reporting and political commentary about the war on terrorism.  All too often, reporters and politicians use the passive voice.  Take British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in yesterday’s USA Today: “”It’s widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalizing and discrediting influence as it is a safeguard for security.”  Well, who argues? A McClatchy story yesterday read, “Nearly 2,700 Iraqi civilians were killed in the city in September.”  Well, who killed them?  Baathist insurgents or Iranian-backed militias?  If the public read that Iranian-backed militias killed nearly 2700 civilians, we might be less willing to reward their murderers.  From today’s New York Times: “Most of the 500 municipal workers who have been killed here since 2005 have been trash collectors.”  Again, someone did the killing.  Why hide it?  It’s important to know what we are up against.  I’d submit two conclusions:  Journalists do not use the active voice because they do not know the subject of the action—in which case their editors should send them back to ask tough questions—or the editors wish to absolve the subjects for political reasons.  Either way, it’s poor journalism and irresponsible punditry.

I hate flogging this, but this horse ain’t dead: Watch out for passive voice. Yes, there are times when it’s perfectly appropriate for what you’re trying to say. But much of the time, it’s a cop-out.

Related posts:

Passive-agressive, Part 1

Passive-agressive, Part 2

Comments

[bob]

I think the ideological power of the passive voice can trump stylistic preferences for the declarative. Removing agency, which the passive voice does, accomplishes exactly what the writer wants--to background the "who" in 'who did it'.

Grammar is political. It's cultural too. We don't savour the thought, 'We killed Iraqis'; it sounds unbecoming, abrupt, even distasteful. But to say that 'Iraqis were killed' serves up a seemingly more palatable message.

We should be glad to see this mode in play because it tells us so much about the message-maker.

You and I may not like it, but at least we have a better understanding of the text's semantics by drawing direct attention to the choices made by the writer. In this case, we draw attention to the passive voice as a rhetorical device.

We might go further. We could interpret the use of the active voice in the same context--"We killed Iraqis"--as highly politicized, as in deliberately foregrounding the subject-agent as killers.



Bob