When most English professors or professors of composition went to school to get their official qualifications, they were too busy being mind-dumped by the inane writing of Derrida, Lacan and the rest of various postmodernist and structuralist schools that few if any had the time to study the English grammar. In place of substantiative learning, when they need to actually say something about English grammar, as is often required in their teaching profession, they latch on to whatever prescriptive memes they happen to hear and run with them. Many of the arbitrary grammar rules that children are taught that originally began as an idle parroting of Latin and Greek have survived on the tongues of a flock of thoughtless sheep who can't help trying to replace their lack of knowledge about their own subject matter with unnecessary and invented recommendations.
Nothing could be so frustrating to me as an English teacher telling his students to artificially adopt (or I suppose 'to adopt artificially') the nonsense of saying things like "I like his doing that" instead of the actual English "I like him doing that." And Hell is doubtlessly filled with English teachers having told their students to not begin sentences with "and" or "but" or to not use prepositions to end sentences with. The worst of course by far is the prohibition on passive voice. Barring a part of language so fundamental to expressiveness from one's person lexicon is no different from suffering from a stroke and losing a significant portion of language competence and cognition.
Imagine, of course, the title of this essay, "Why Passive Voice Should Be Used." In what other equally neutral and straight way could this be stated? You might say, "Why You Should Use Passive Voice" but the use of "you" makes it direct and personal, with the feeling that the essay is about the reader at least in a general sense. "Why One Should..." is another possibility, but using "one" is quite a bit higher on register and is somewhat too pretentious, not for myself naturally. Maybe "Why People Should..."? Of course that sounds like a child speaking (Oops I mean a child's speaking), besides the fact that it, like "you," has a directness implying that my goal in writing this is to make direct personal exhortations.
The common line is that passive voice shouldn't be used because a passive construction can omit information that its active equivalent requires. This ridiculous recommendation of form ignores the common cases of when the agent of the sentences is unknown, general, unimportant or any combination of these. That for example the following:
Barack Obama was elected in 2008.
I cannot conceive of an equivalent active sentence that expresses this information more economically and non-redundantly. What would be the proper active prescription?
The American people elected Barack Obama in 2008.
Voters elected Barack Obama in 2008.
The Electoral College elected Barack Obama in 2008.
The people who voted for Barack Obama elected him in 2008.
There is simply no reason to express an agent in this sentence because aside from the agent being ambiguous and difficult to describe, the reader understands entirely the complete nature of Barack Obama's election without it having been stated explicitly and clumsily. Most of the time, the use of passive voice even without its agent carries all the meaning of its active form because passive voice is generally used in situations where it would be redundant. Additionally in the above case, we can presume that Barack Obama is the topic of the paragraph containing that sentences, rather than "voters" or "the American people." Again, take the following:
He was diagnosed with cancer.
Is
it really important by whom he was diagnosed? Would it add any
information to say, "His doctor diagnosed him with cancer?" Of course
not, and it seems on these points passive voice is equally expressive, less awkward and more economical that the use of the active form in most of the cases in which it is actually used.
Now whenever an extra item is expressed in a sentence, especially at the outset, the emphasis of the sentence can greatly change. Take, for example these two sentences:
Is there any reason that Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize?
Is there any reason that the Nobel Committee gave Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize?
The first sentence seems to question the extent to which Yasser Arafat deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. The second does the same, but it additionally implies that the Nobel Committee may have had an ulterior motive in awarding him it. It's a safe bet that an answerer would begin an answer to the first with "He... (Arafat)" while the second would be answered starting with "They... (the Nobel Committee)."
The
fundamental difference between active and passive voice is one of
implications and topics. In unrestrained speaking and writing, we
naturally place emphasis on whichever element is most important or forms
the narrative; but when using only active voice, we are generally
required to emphasize only the agent even if the sentence says what we
don't mean to imply. As it happens in everyday speech, active voice is
quite a bit more common than passive, but somehow those
pseudo-analytical English teachers with Derrida pumping through their
veins over-generalize it to mean that it should never be used.
We like to think that language exists solely to exchange information, but it has two other important purposes: one, to not exchange information and two, even better, to exchange disinformation.
Language is built to house lies and omissions and even wannabe English
grammar "Nazis" can notice that passive voice can aid it in doing so. In
a way, many passive constructions exist because they can communicate
less; they are able to communicate less; that ability is crucial and should not be counted among passive voice's alleged faults.
So what is the specific element that is deplorable of a passive construction? Is it the passive participle in its self? Is it the equation of the passive participle with the verb be? Is it the combination of the participle with a prepositional phrase beginning with by?
In a strictly grammatical sense, and as any student of Greek or Latin could tell you, English doesn't really have a real
passive voice; that is, verbs are not inflected for passivity. Even a
beginning Latin pupil, racked by repetitious conjugations can tell you
that the comparatively clumsy passive sentence "I was being watched" can
be summed up in one pithy Latin word: "Spectabar."
English's
"passive voice" is just a ragtag agglomeration of the copula verb, the
perfect passive participle and sometimes a "by" with an agent, but there
is certainly no essential core to it. All of these elements can be used
in sentences alone or in different combinations often without being
noticed by superficial prescriptivists. Thence, the passive construction
is often collapse-able and can be added in partial form to other
sentences to double the meaning for half the periods.
The
strange thing is that in isolation, the passive form exudes a formality,
logic, and professionalism that connotes a higher register of speech
and writing. While most prescriptions forbid novel innovation in
speaking and un-Latin ways of expression, the prohibition of passive
voice bars its followers from using a grammatical form in constant use
from Proto-Indoeuropean before remembered history as some kind of
inferior or useless form.
When teachers recommend the equally
silly rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition, at least it
makes students produce sentences that are perceived as more professional
and fluent. Contrarily, as in the examples above, using the active
voice in a place the passive would be naturally used nearly necessarily
brings unneeded emotion, connotation, and childishness into the text. If
anything, teachers should act to rid compositions of the General You, a
general "people" and further redundancies in favor of the more professional and neutral passive form.