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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 ag

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 authors have a remarkably high frequency of passives in their work: more than 20 percent of their clauses with transitive verbs are cast in the passive, a distinctly higher frequency than you find in most of the prose written by normal people who don't spend their time pontificating hypocritically about the alleged evil of the passive.”

msla 4y ago
It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.
- oh_my_goodness 4y ago
  Absolutely. The grammarians George Orwell and E.B. White are infamous for doing nothing with language except complaining about it.
  - msla 4y ago
    Given what they wrote about language itself, they didn't understand it as well as they thought they did.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  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.
  - defrost 4y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      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.
      - defrost 4y ago
        You're explicitly discussing language and linguistics. Last time I checked in at /r/linguistics that covered more than just your tacit assumption of the world at large. Your point also seems to be both that cultures have expectations and that those that do not meet those expectations will receive criticism (that would be wrong to shrug off as "merely judgemental"). As someone who's travelled widely in the past few decades across a number of cultures I've frequently stood out like the only person in black in a sea of Hawaiian shirts; it's rare that I've been criticised, more common to have been thanked for attending. I find communities that critically judge differences to their expectations to be relatively rare, many communities recognise that others have other behaviours, I myself do find that those communities with a rigid set of expectations that are overly judgemental of those that do not meet those expectations to be worrisome.
      - MrJohz 4y ago
        But isn't that also the point of descriptivism in linguistics? That linguistics is the study of language as it's actually used in the context of different groups and cultures, rather than as an officially described, created thing? For example, the habitual be isn't part of any prescribed English dialect, but it still has its own grammar, and can be used correctly or incorrectly. The goal of descriptivism here is not to say "you can say anything you want, and others have to accept you", but rather to say "dialects spring up organically, and our job is to study them as they arise, rather than to define them from the top down".
torstenvl 4y ago
> more than 20 percent of their clauses with transitive verbs are cast in the passive I smiled. Brilliantly played.
- gjvc 4y ago
  as always, source required for this statistic
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
pm3003 4y ago
I read both these texts and made myself the same reflexion. I'm not as vehement and thought it was a matter of discourse (who they write as and for, where they write from etc). Anyway, I found Politics and the English language uninspiring.
pjc50 4y ago
The lesson in "Politics and the English language" is about the use of the passive voice to obscure responsibility. The canonical example from current discourse is "officer-involved shooting"; incidents involving police often engage in strange linguistic contortions to avoid assigning responsibility to the obvious person. https://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police-jargon-to-obscure-the-truth/ https://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police...
- Veen 4y ago
  But it does say "Never use the passive where you can use the active." That advice is harmful to clear and elegant writing. The passive really has nothing to do with politics and police and misleading people. It's a just a structuring device that can be abused in the same way as any aspect of language. It's just as easy to obscure responsibility in the active and attribute responsibility in the passive.

msla 4y ago

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

oh_my_goodness 4y ago
Absolutely. The grammarians George Orwell and E.B. White are infamous for doing nothing with language except complaining about it.
- msla 4y ago
  Given what they wrote about language itself, they didn't understand it as well as they thought they did.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
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.
- defrost 4y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    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.
    - defrost 4y ago
      You're explicitly discussing language and linguistics. Last time I checked in at /r/linguistics that covered more than just your tacit assumption of the world at large. Your point also seems to be both that cultures have expectations and that those that do not meet those expectations will receive criticism (that would be wrong to shrug off as "merely judgemental"). As someone who's travelled widely in the past few decades across a number of cultures I've frequently stood out like the only person in black in a sea of Hawaiian shirts; it's rare that I've been criticised, more common to have been thanked for attending. I find communities that critically judge differences to their expectations to be relatively rare, many communities recognise that others have other behaviours, I myself do find that those communities with a rigid set of expectations that are overly judgemental of those that do not meet those expectations to be worrisome.
    - MrJohz 4y ago
      But isn't that also the point of descriptivism in linguistics? That linguistics is the study of language as it's actually used in the context of different groups and cultures, rather than as an officially described, created thing? For example, the habitual be isn't part of any prescribed English dialect, but it still has its own grammar, and can be used correctly or incorrectly. The goal of descriptivism here is not to say "you can say anything you want, and others have to accept you", but rather to say "dialects spring up organically, and our job is to study them as they arise, rather than to define them from the top down".

torstenvl 4y ago

> more than 20 percent of their clauses with transitive verbs are cast in the passive I smiled. Brilliantly played.

gjvc 4y ago
as always, source required for this statistic
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

pm3003 4y ago

I read both these texts and made myself the same reflexion. I'm not as vehement and thought it was a matter of discourse (who they write as and for, where they write from etc). Anyway, I found Politics and the English language uninspiring.

pjc50 4y ago

The lesson in "Politics and the English language" is about the use of the passive voice to obscure responsibility. The canonical example from current discourse is "officer-involved shooting"; incidents involving police often engage in strange linguistic contortions to avoid assigning responsibility to the obvious person. https://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police-jargon-to-obscure-the-truth/ https://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police...

Veen 4y ago
But it does say "Never use the passive where you can use the active." That advice is harmful to clear and elegant writing. The passive really has nothing to do with politics and police and misleading people. It's a just a structuring device that can be abused in the same way as any aspect of language. It's just as easy to obscure responsibility in the active and attribute responsibility in the passive.