NOAM CHOMSKY AND GRAMMAR 173
Usage NoteMany writing teachers tell students not to use the passive in their work, and
they urge students to focus on “active” rather than “passive” verbs. However,
teachers usually do not link passive verbs to passive constructions but instead
identify them as forms ofbe,which creates quite a bit of confusion. For example,
students who write something like “The day was hot” might find their teacher
identifyingwasas a passive verb—even though it is not in this case—and recom-
mending a revision into something like “The sun broiled the earth.” Of course,
this revision entirely changes the meaning of the original, and in some contexts it
will be inappropriate. The injunction against passives is meaningful in the
belles-lettres tradition that has shaped the critical essay in literature, but it is mis-
placed in the broader context of writing outside that tradition.
In science and social science, the passive is a well-established and quite rea-
sonable convention. It normally appears in the methods section of scientific pa-
pers, where researchers describe the procedures they used in their study and
how they collected data. The convention is based on the worthwhile goal of
providing an objective account of procedures, one that other researchers can
use, if they like, to set up their own, similar study. This objectivity is largely a
fiction because anyone reading a scientific paper knows that the authors were
the ones who set up the study and collected the data. Nevertheless, the passive
creates an air of objectivity by shifting focus away from the researchers as
agents and toward the actions: “The data were collected via electrodes leading
to three electromyograms.” Moreover, contrary to what some claim, there is
nothing insidious about the fiction of objectivity.
The widespread use of passive constructions outside the humanities indi-
cates that blanket injunctions against them are misguided. It is the case,
however, that the passive is inappropriate in many situations. Even in a sci-
entific paper, the passive usually appears only in two sections—methods
and results. In the introduction and conclusion sections, writers tend to use
active constructions. In addition, most school-sponsored writing is journal-
istic in that it does not address a specific audience of insiders, as a scientific
paper or even a lab report does. Journalistic writing by its very nature is
written by outsiders for outsiders, and it follows conventions associated
with the goals of clarity, conciseness, and generating audience interest. Any
writing with these goals will not use passives with much frequency. Quite
simply, it is easier for people to process sentences in the active voice with a
readily identifiable subject.
Because the passive allows us to delete subject agents, many people use it to
avoid assigning responsibility or blame. Sentence 8 on page 172, for example,