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The Passive in English (2011)

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#11

Post by yamtaddle »

coliveira wrote: post #9

I aways took the aversion of English speakers against the passive voice as a sign of linguistic incompetence. Instead of teaching students how to write well on the passive and active voices, they prefer to reduce the language to its minimum denominator. The confirmation is in [1]: many journalists and writers don't even know how to define the passive. It is a sad thing to watch. [1] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/p…

The aversion comes from high school English, where getting students to avoid passive voice results in a quick, cheap improvement for nearly 100% of them. Since most people never get much better at writing than they are in high school, this is a net-good.

The bigger lesson, which students who keep working at writing learn, is to be aware that active and passive exist and that it's worth keeping an eye out for sentences that read better with one or the other.

But, for whatever reason, high school students use way the fuck too much passive voice, and they use it inappropriately. If the only rule you can get them to internalize is "stop using passive voice", that helps a ton. It stops being a "rule" if you know what you're doing, but they don't.

Source: I'm close with a few English teachers, and with some authors.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#12

Post by msla »

oh_my_goodness wrote: post #7
msla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

Absolutely. The grammarians George Orwell and E.B. White are infamous for doing nothing with language except complaining about it.

Given what they wrote about language itself, they didn't understand it as well as they thought they did.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#15

Post by tshaddox »

oh_my_goodness wrote: post #4

I felt the essay was undercut by overcomplicated and repetitive explanation. The passive voice is pretty easily identified.

Yeah, I was confused. The author explicitly sets up how complicated and deeply technical the true meaning of passive is, so I was prepared for some juicy learnings, then they just…repeat the simple definition that I learned in school when I was 12.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#17

Post by LudwigNagasena »

msla wrote: post #3
tkgally wrote: post #2

I enjoyed this rant at the end of the article: “[T]he people who criticize the passive the most tend to use it more than the rest of us. George Orwell warns against the passive in his dishonest and rhetorically overblown essay "Politics and the English language". E. B. White does likewise in the obnoxiously ignorant little book by Strunk that he revised and put his name on, The Elements of Style. Both of these author…

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#18

Post by defrost »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17
msla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

Another again to be some kind of bizzarro universalist . . .

[1] is a funeral with Hawaiian shirts, [2] is a funeral but likely not as you know one.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#19

Post by LudwigNagasena »

defrost wrote: post #18
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

Another again to be some kind of bizzarro universalist . . . [1] is a funeral with Hawaiian shirts, [2] is a funeral but likely not as you know one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM

Sorry for the tacit assumption of the audience of HN, but I think that demanding constant awareness of all possible cultural differences is quite inadequate.

Anyway, I don’t see how those links disprove my point? Those cultures have different expectations; and my point is that those expectations are valid.

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