End-Focus
End focus can be defined by a speaker's placement of the most valued information in a sentence at the end. Sarah Stanley (2012) explains, "Since end focus is the “place” in sentences where writers can most effectively “place” their purpose, end focus is a productive concept to encourage writers to consider placement in their sentence-level writing, particularly as this placement has ideological implications" (p. 51). In other words, a speaker can use end focus to highlight or reframe their speech in a way that adheres to their purposes or values.
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In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 2020 Democratic candidate, discussed his key issues (2019). Buttigieg responded to Wallace's doubt about the Green New Deal by saying, "Scientifically, the right year to [decrease carbon emissions] was yesterday... This timeline is not being set in Congress. It's being set by reality. It's being set by science" (2019). The passive voice in this context helps Buttigieg to frame the climate change debate around truth and science. As a millennial candidate, Buttigieg's focus on liberal environmental policy and scientific data is highly important to his young, educated voting base.
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The concept of framing is most observable in issues of end focus because the speaker wants the audience to focus and remember the final part of the sentence. In the case of Pete Buttigieg, his end focus matched his values— science and fact. Whereas Trump's passive voice put the end focus on the agents of rigging elections.
Unknown Agent
The issue of agent deletion comes when the agent is unknown or hidden by a politician. A common example of this construction comes from political voices and presidential candidates who refer to the United States political system as “rigged.” Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren frequently use the phrase and idea “the system is rigged” when discussing how minorities and disadvantaged groups are systematically oppressed and how wealthier individuals are predestined to “win” in games of politics. However, to name an agent of this rigging can prove rather challenging because of the complicated nature of the discussion. The democratic system is "rigged" by those in political and economic power, not one individual that is easy to identify or recognize. For this reason, Sanders and Warren perform transformations of passivization and agent deletion because the agent is unknown.
One of the most recent examples of passive voice with an unknown agent is concerned with the Russia investigation into election meddling. When news first broke that the 2016 presidential election could have been skewed by ballot tampering and hacking, reports often used passive voice because the agent was not certainly Russia. In her CNN political analysis, Tal Kopan asserts, "US officials have only pointed at Russia anonymously, not wanting to ruffle the delicate Moscow-Washington relationship at this point" (2016). There was also uncertainty if this meddling occurred under the instruction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, unconnected Russian groups, or a separate organization altogether. Headlines included phrases like "election data was hacked" but refused to name Russians explicitly as the agents because of diplomatic ties.
Then, as the Mueller Report broke in April 2019, the issue of passive voice reemerged. This time, Robert Mueller used passive voice to describe campaign officials orders in the Roger Stone Indictment, but the lack of an agent seems oddly suspicious. Mueller (2019) wrote, "a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact [Roger] Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign" (p. 4). Darren Samuelsohn examines the line, arguing that "the revelation, if true, also suggests that Mueller is potentially sitting on more evidence that could firm up a case of collusion against at least some individuals in Trump’s orbit, or even the president himself" (2019). The use of the passive construction with "was directed to contact" without subsequent information about who did the directing leads many politicians and political voices to question the information in the report. Because the agent is hidden in this agent deletion, Mueller seems to have more information that is expressed.
One of the most recent examples of passive voice with an unknown agent is concerned with the Russia investigation into election meddling. When news first broke that the 2016 presidential election could have been skewed by ballot tampering and hacking, reports often used passive voice because the agent was not certainly Russia. In her CNN political analysis, Tal Kopan asserts, "US officials have only pointed at Russia anonymously, not wanting to ruffle the delicate Moscow-Washington relationship at this point" (2016). There was also uncertainty if this meddling occurred under the instruction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, unconnected Russian groups, or a separate organization altogether. Headlines included phrases like "election data was hacked" but refused to name Russians explicitly as the agents because of diplomatic ties.
Then, as the Mueller Report broke in April 2019, the issue of passive voice reemerged. This time, Robert Mueller used passive voice to describe campaign officials orders in the Roger Stone Indictment, but the lack of an agent seems oddly suspicious. Mueller (2019) wrote, "a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact [Roger] Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign" (p. 4). Darren Samuelsohn examines the line, arguing that "the revelation, if true, also suggests that Mueller is potentially sitting on more evidence that could firm up a case of collusion against at least some individuals in Trump’s orbit, or even the president himself" (2019). The use of the passive construction with "was directed to contact" without subsequent information about who did the directing leads many politicians and political voices to question the information in the report. Because the agent is hidden in this agent deletion, Mueller seems to have more information that is expressed.
Avert Blame
The infamous phrase "mistakes were made" employs passive voice to avoid blame by the speaker. The video compilation (right) exemplifies the frequency of its use by politicians and presidents following executive error, including speakers like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W Bush, and George H Bush (2016). Rather than an active construction that puts the speaker or their administration in the subject position and admits blame, each speaker uses passive syntax. William Safire defines the phrase as "a passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it" in his Political Dictionary (1993). The agent deletion allows the speaker (and presumable agent of said mistakes) to remove themselves from the mistake almost entirely. According to Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson (2007), this cognitive dissonance allows a speaker to justify their "bad decisions" and "hurtful acts" (p. 11). Politically, "mistakes were made" gives politicians the power to point out error while not putting their administration under fire. One can observe this use of passive voice to avoid blaming themselves and to avoid blaming another party.
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Analyzing passive voice when the speaker is not the agent can be more complicated because it does not always have a blame-based motivation. In two tweets by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, each responded to a recent police shooting of a person of color using passive voice. Although the incident did not involve either politician, their wording caused frustration among many Americans because they refused to place agency on the police officers.
This tweet (left) by Sanders uses passivization to describe the racially charged event of Terrence Crutcher's death (2016). Sanders's passive sentence construction allows him to put the emphasis on the victims of police brutality, rather than the police themselves. While Sanders names "police" as the agent, he does not give primary attention to this part of the sentence.
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Similarly, Hillary Clinton's tweet (left) describes the same shooting using both passivization and agent deletion (2016). And while Clinton attempts to draw attention to the perpetrators of the shooting with "in a police incident," she leaves it intentionally ambiguous as to who or what killed Terence Crutcher.
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Sexual Misconduct Allegations and Political Discourse With the increase in women's activism and outcry against sexual misconduct and gender-based violence, allegations against politicians and those in power have also been on the rise. When analyzing the comments surrounding gender-based violence, apologies and reports consistently use the passive voice. As cited in Khan (2019), President Trump responded to leaked audio of sexually inappropriate comments in the following statement:
The final line of Trump's apology once again calls on passive voice to avert the blame of "offending." Trump uses passivization and agent deletion to apologize that people were offended, but not that he did the offending. This type of passive voice when concerned with gender-based violence is not unheard of. In the TedTalk below, Jackson Katz (2012) argues that violence against women continually takes on the passive form.
Katz shows how the sentence "John beat Mary" can evolve into "Mary was beaten by John," and then "Mary was beaten." Eventually, the sentence devolves into "Mary is a battered woman." The passivization transformation quickly removes "John," the agent and perpetrator of violence, from the sentence altogether. Interestingly, this occurrence is more common than not in journalism and discourse surrounding violence. According to Alexandra Frazer and Michelle Miller (2009), journalists and writers tend to use passive voice over active at a three to one ratio when discussing violence, particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence (p. 63). When brought into the political sphere, people in power tend to use the passive voice to avert blame for illegal and immoral acts against others.
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Passivization for the sake of blame aversion is a common trend in politics, whether the speaker wishes to avoid placing blame on a particular group or themselves. Sik Ng (2007) examines this sentence construction as a subtle form of "language-based discrimination," explaining that objects in the initial position invite "unwelcome attention" in sentences discussing violence (p. 114). However, passivization allows speakers to shift the frame to the patient of the violence, furthered when agent deletion is also used. Blame aversion is perhaps one of the most prominent and purposeful causes for the use of passive voice in political discourse.
Effects of Passive Voice in Other Domains
Science, History, and Research
Passive constructions frequently emerge in scientific reports and professional research. While there are continued debates on the value of this practice, scientists have agreed that a passive standard allows authors to present their data more objectively. Another key reason for using the passive over the active is to defocus scientific writings from the researchers themselves. In an American Chemical Society publication about scientific writing, Celia Elliott summarizes that passive voice "emphasizes what was found, not who did the finding" (2015). Data, lab reports, and scientific journals should emphasize factual results and evidence, rather than the scientists themselves.
History textbooks are another academic material that frequently employ passive syntax. However, this becomes problematic when it verges into the territory of erasure. As discussed with issues of by phrase deletion, passive voice allows the agent of history to be dropped from a sentence entirely. In Teaching Hard History, Kate Shuster (2018) explains how subjects like slavery are often taught with linguistic delicacy that uses passive voice to ignore some of the injustices and horrors of American history. She cites the use of passive voice when describing enslaved people who "were brought" to the United States with no agent. This image of history is dubious, Shuster asserts that passive voice presents "actions without agents, slavery without enslavers, history without choice" (p. 16). This use of passive voice to shade less proud truths is not uncommon in student textbooks; Ellen Bresler Rockmore references this issue within Texas history textbooks. Rockmore writes, "Through grammatical manipulation, the textbook authors obscure the role of slave owners in the institution of slavery" (2015). Continuing with the analysis of racially-charged crimes, history also tends to report lynchings with a similar consistent passive voice to "hide agency" (Franzosi, et. al., 2015, pp. 24). The passivization and agent deletion observed in history textbooks intentionally avoids naming white Southern agents to avert blame and shame of slavery in the United States.
Journalism
While journalism is supposed to be an unbiased source of information, media outlets can embed their articles with political views in overt and covert ways. One of these more covert ways can be through passive voice. The passive voice allows journalists to place the patients of an action in the focus of a sentence; often, this passivization can help to reframe the articles content. A common example of this type of framing is with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where violence and terrorism have led to journalists occasionally using the passive voice to focus on the "victim." Nathan Robinson analyzes this occurrence in the New York Times, writing, "news reports from Israel often have something strange about them: People seem to die violently, but nobody ever seems to kill them" (2018). In the article Robinson references, author Fares Akram writes, "At least eight people were killed by a missile" (2014). Although it was clear the event was enacted by Israeli forces, whether officially or unofficially, Akram does not include the agent of the bombing and killing. Journalists use the passive voice in order to avoid blaming the Israeli forces for these deaths. Robinson mentions an important reason why there might be a lack of blame for the Israeli actions; he describes, "Israel is a nuclear-armed power with one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world" (2018). The fear of retaliation and need for diplomacy may be a leading cause of this type of passivization in reporting because it does not force the journalist to name an agent.
The news source can also opt to remove the agent altogether, seemingly to not increase tension or for diplomatic reasons. This agent deletion transformation is common when an author does not want to accuse or declare the blameworthiness of an individual. To continue with the example of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other journalistic publishers use agent deletion when discussing the origins of this conflict. In their Global Conflict Tracker article on this war zone, the nonpartisan Council of Foreign Relations notes, "After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the Holy Land was divided into three parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip" (2019). The land was not simply divided on its own; the United Nations stepped in and divided the land in its Partition Plan for Palestine, assuming it would diminish conflict (Quandt, et. al., 1973, p. 7). This report is carefully worded to avoid putting blame on the United Nations as it is generally seen as a positive, beneficial force. Agent deletion can be used in journalism when an author does not wish to blame a group or individual, but can also be employed when the agent is unknown.
As observed in many of the politician's speech patterns, an unknown agent can often illicit passive voice and agent deletion in journalism. After terrorist attacks and disastrous events, journalists in the United States often use the passive voice because the agent or perpetrator is unknown at the time. The transformation of agent deletion allows the writer to not include the suspected agent or to report only on the victims of an incident.
The news source can also opt to remove the agent altogether, seemingly to not increase tension or for diplomatic reasons. This agent deletion transformation is common when an author does not want to accuse or declare the blameworthiness of an individual. To continue with the example of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other journalistic publishers use agent deletion when discussing the origins of this conflict. In their Global Conflict Tracker article on this war zone, the nonpartisan Council of Foreign Relations notes, "After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the Holy Land was divided into three parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip" (2019). The land was not simply divided on its own; the United Nations stepped in and divided the land in its Partition Plan for Palestine, assuming it would diminish conflict (Quandt, et. al., 1973, p. 7). This report is carefully worded to avoid putting blame on the United Nations as it is generally seen as a positive, beneficial force. Agent deletion can be used in journalism when an author does not wish to blame a group or individual, but can also be employed when the agent is unknown.
As observed in many of the politician's speech patterns, an unknown agent can often illicit passive voice and agent deletion in journalism. After terrorist attacks and disastrous events, journalists in the United States often use the passive voice because the agent or perpetrator is unknown at the time. The transformation of agent deletion allows the writer to not include the suspected agent or to report only on the victims of an incident.