Revealing stance through passive voice

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Journal of Pragmatics 41 (2009) 1406–1421 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Revealing stance through passive voice Alexander M. Baratta * School of Education, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK Received 8 April 2007; received in revised form 2 September 2008; accepted 10 September 2008

Abstract The passive voice, while traditionally thought of as contributing to an overall objective tone in academic writing, by means of either deleting or deemphasizing the subject within a sentence, can also be used to reveal writer stance. Stance refers to the ways in which writers reveal their opinions, evaluations and feelings on a given matter and passive voice has a role to play in this regard, despite its association with objectivity, which might suggest the opposite. This article begins by discussing the area of writer stance, to include the approach which is taken here, one which incorporates passives. This is followed by a discussion explaining how stance is revealed through use of passives, followed by examples taken from the essays of three undergraduate students – Janet, Colette and Gladys – in the School of Education at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. The overall aim of this paper is to demonstrate that passive stance is a rhetorical reality and, from the analysis of the students’ written work, it is seen that passive voice can in fact be a subtle way for writers to reveal themselves within their essays. # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Stance; Self-revelation; Context; Cohesion; Emphasis

1. Introduction Passive voice allows for the subject of a sentence to be deleted, and thereby deemphasized in terms of its semantic role. This article, however, approaches passive voice by asking if the subsequent emphasis of the object within a passive structure can reveal the personal emphasis of the writer, in terms of what he/she deems to be important, thus revealing personal feelings on a given matter. In order to investigate this area we must first consider the rhetorical situations in which the passive voice is more traditionally used. The focus on passive constructions used to reveal stance (referred to as ‘passive stance’ within this article) has been chosen for two reasons. First, as passive voice is traditionally regarded as a means by which the writer is deemphasized, it can make for an interesting analysis to see the ways in which passive voice can be used to reveal the writer’s feelings. Secondly, passive stance is less overt than, for example, the use of first person in conjunction with a cognitive verb (e.g. I think that. . .) or the use of emotional words, such as the atrocity of child abuse must be stopped. This in turn can help to demonstrate that stance need not always rely on such ‘obvious’ linguistic means with which to make its presence felt.

* Tel.: +44 161 275 5964; fax: +44 161 275 7215. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.010

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2. Stance in academic writing Stance can be regarded as the ways in which writers reveal personal thought and feeling within their texts. Hyland (2002:1091) captures a function of stance: ‘‘Academic prose is not completely impersonal. . .writers gain credibility by projecting an identity invested with individual authority, displaying confidence in their evaluations and commitment to their ideas’’. Hyland and Tse (2004) further describe stance as involving interpretive statements which necessarily involve subjective judgments. This might be seen in the offering of personal interpretations of, and opinions held toward, the work of previous researchers. Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999:966) state that stance refers to the writer’s expression of ‘‘personal feelings, attitudes, value judgments, or assessments’’. This could include a great many potential constructions, such as I was overwhelmed on my first day of university and I believe that his methods are not applicable. Hunston and Thompson (2000:5) refer to stance as a ‘‘broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about’’. Hunston and Thompson (2000:25) further point to four parameters of stance, which are outlined below with constructed examples:    

Good-bad: The film was tedious/The research was very beneficial. Level of certainty: Clearly, we have achieved our goals/I think that this is the least likely choice. Expectedness: It is likely to work if we follow the rules. Importance: More importantly, however, is the fact that. . .

The four parameters offered above point to the rhetorical effects of stance, such as evaluation, offering an opinion and revealing personal expectations. Regarding personal revelation, Berman (2005:107) focuses on a dimension within stance known as attitude. Attitude can be epistemic, deontic or affective, which respectively refers to the writer’s belief about the truth of a state of affairs; an evaluative viewpoint; and the writer’s emotions toward a state of affairs. Berman’s analysis also shares properties with the parameters outlined by Hunston and Thompson. For example, the hypothetical sentence it is probable that his research can be generalized to other cases could suggest both an example of epistemic dimension and the level of certainty parameter. An important point to make is that stance, as a reflection of the writer’s attitude, can also include the use of hedges, thus indicating uncertainty or at least a degree of ‘academic modesty’ toward the text, such as it is suggested that this research could be useful within a chemistry class, which connects with the level of certainty parameter. What the example also reveals, however, is that revealing one’s feelings within academic writing need not involve making confident assertions. In fact, Biber and Finegan (1989) include the attitude of doubt as a dimension of stance, seen in the example of she allegedly/possibly might have seen him (cited in Reilly, Zamora and McGivern, 2005:186). Stance, then, would appear to fall along a continuum, ranging from hedging, in order to reveal doubt about one’s personal claims and/or show modesty for them (this might be seen as a potential way to attract new customers) to offering a personal opinion regarding the claims of others (I believe that his views no longer have relevance). In keeping with Hunston and Thompson’s claim that stance is a ‘‘broad cover term’’, it seems clear that stance has several properties or dimensions, such as offering an opinion and revealing personal feelings on a given matter, and more importantly, that there is considerable agreement as to how stance is revealed within writing. 3. Stance as a personal stamp It is proposed here that stance ultimately involves placing one’s ‘‘personal stamp’’ (Hyland, 2000:23) on the page, as a way in which a student is revealing him/herself as part of a personal identity seen within an otherwise academic essay, and that this stamp can be seen in a variety of features. Berman (2005:109) states ‘‘a multiplicity of linguistic forms can be recruited to express. . .discourse stance’’, and Hunston and Thompson (2000:2) declare that stance ‘‘is not always a straightforward matter’’. A detailed analysis will show the many ways in which stance can be revealed within the text, including the use of passive voice. The following table (Table 1) illustrates how stance can be seen, specifically within orthographic features which have arguably not been focused on in this regard in previous research. The justification for this inclusion, in addition to the subsequent

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Table 1 Application of stance. Orthographic feature

Rhetorical function

Single quotation marks

1. To reveal a personal style of communication, thus revealing the writer. 2. To signal irony, thus showing disagreement with a particular viewpoint.

Italics

To emphasize the writer’s feelings on a given matter.

examples, is that it helps the reader to understand stance from this somewhat more inclusive perspective, one that includes the use of passive voice. The list of forms above is by no means complete. Sentence fragments, colons and figures of speech, for example, can all contribute to writer stance. A brief sample of forms has been selected, however, in order to help illustrate the approach taken within this article. Examples of the forms listed above now follow, in addition to the rhetorical functions which result. 3.1. Single quotation marks The use of single quotation marks can be used to indicate a coined phrase, revealing a personal manner in which to communicate. Ivanic (1998:141) says that ‘‘writers can use inverted commas to signal ownership’’. Commenting on her own student’s use of inverted commas around the expression ‘cohab-free’ (meaning ‘single’) written within a sociology essay, Ivanic states that such use of inverted commas is the writer’s way of saying, ‘‘this is mine, and it’s partly me’’ (page 151). Therefore, this is one way in which stance might be regarded—the revelation of self-through a personal manner of communication, in this case, a coined expression; a ‘personal stamp’. Quotation marks can also be used to signify more speech-like expressions, which can point to a more personalized use of language and thus, reveal the individual. One of the students at The University of Manchester wrote the following paragraph within an essay on the subject of computer mediated communication between herself and a university student in South Korea (a full discussion of the students whose writing was analyzed for this article is found in section 6): (1)

Something that struck me throughout the exchange was that written words carry a great deal more power than spoken words. Once said, spoken words are forgotten, even though the content is usually remembered it is rare that the exact words are. However, when words are written down they can be looked at time and time again, and almost become ‘cringe-worthy’, seeming more and more unnatural every time they are read.

In British English, ‘cringe-worthy’ is an informal expression, used in spoken language, and the quotation marks serve to acknowledge this. Stance is signaled precisely because the student is choosing her own personal style with which to communicate, using an expression that British youth are more than familiar with in their everyday speech. A more formal word choice might have been ‘unnatural’ or ‘uncomfortable’ instead. Thus far, the use of quotation marks has been seen in conjunction with what might simply be regarded as ‘style’, but it is a personal style nonetheless and therefore, it is suggested that this links with stance, the revelation of self-within the text. In the case of coining phrases and using informal expressions within academic writing (with the obvious assumption that they are not proscribed), it is not the quotation marks per se that reveal stance. Instead, the quotation marks in these instances can arguably function as a kind of ‘rhetorical courtesy’, provided to notify the reader that the writer is aware that the expressions contained within the quotations are coined phrases or informal in nature, when a more ‘academic’ term might be expected instead (but not necessarily ‘better’). Therefore, the coining of phrases and use of informal expressions are examples of personal expression; this is the relevant aspect with regard to stance. In the case of expressing irony within one’s writing, it is specifically the use of quotation marks which signal stance because without them, the irony might otherwise be missed. In this case, stance is revealed because through irony, the writer is showing disagreement with a given viewpoint. Another student, Colette, wrote the following (again, please refer to section 6 for a full discussion of the students): (2)

During my childhood, and even to this day, there has always been a strong emphasis placed on how I ‘should’ speak by my immediate family.

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The quotation marks around the word ‘should’ reveal a certain disagreement with the notion that Colette’s speech (her accent and dialect) need be modified. Offering a personal opinion is a common function of stance; what is hopefully being demonstrated here, however, is that personal opinions can be offered in more subtle ways, without relying predominantly on first person pronouns and cognitive verbs. During interview, Colette revealed how she has been made to feel that her accent (the Birmingham accent in England) is ‘wrong’ or ‘uneducated’, although she never believed that accent should be regarded as a mark of intelligence (or lack thereof). A plausible paraphrase of the sentence above might be I disagree with the belief that there is a correct way to speak regarding accent and dialect. 3.2. Use of italics Italics essentially need no explanation, as it is understood that they emphasize a word, or words, within a sentence. The key element regarding stance is that sometimes, a belief or opinion can be emphasized in the process. The example below is taken from a student’s personal essay in a previous Freshman Composition class: (3)

Unlike their Anglo-American counterparts, Mexican-American immigrant children are poor.

If we were to read the sentence without, and then with, the italics (or vice versa), it is plausible that there would be a difference in perception. With the italics, the implied meaning, and personal opinion, is that MexicanAmerican children (whose parents are migrant farm workers) really are poor indeed. This interpretation is not speculative because the student’s essay discussed her upbringing in California by parents who worked as migrant farm workers and the struggles she endured as a child as a result. Having asked her at the end of class if the italics were her way to emphasize her views, she confirmed that they were. It seems, then, that personal identity is often integral to stance, in that students may choose to reveal a little about themselves, to include childhood background and upbringing, and to offer a personal opinion derived from such background, as seen in example (3). The examples above have been offered to help illustrate three issues, the first of which is that stance revelation can involve the use of features, such as quotation marks and italics, other than the more ‘obvious’ means, such as use of first person in conjunction with a that-complement clause (I believe that this is the best way forward). Second, stance should not be regarded as exclusively involving the offering of personal opinions, claims, evaluations or the like; this is too limiting a perspective, and one which has necessitated the belief that stance should be regarded more broadly. For example, if students choose to coin phrases and/or use informal expressions within their essays (assuming they are not proscribed), then this should be seen as an equally valid way in which they are revealing themselves, but not dependent on offering an opinion or an evaluation necessarily. The final issue concerns the fact that in order to categorize stance accurately, a close contextual analysis is needed, as selfrevelation might otherwise be missed. Though this need not necessitate the use of interviews with one’s students, we need to be aware of our students’ personal background and beliefs to an extent; this can be revealed of course through personal essays and even meeting with students to discuss their work during office hours. By having additional information about the student who wrote the essay on the subject of the children of migrants, for example, we can better understand her feelings on the matter and thus, how she chooses to reveal her feelings within her essay through the use of italics. It is these three aspects which form the basis of the application of writer stance within this article. 4. Functions of passive voice Passive voice can involve the deletion of the original subject (e.g. I recorded the results being changed to the results were recorded) or deemphasizing the subject within a long passive, that which incorporates a by-phrase (i.e. The results were recorded by me). The effect is usually regarded as impersonal prose, precisely because the agent is deleted. As Reilly et al. (2005:191) state, ‘‘such agentless actions serve to distance the writer or speaker from the text’’. In some instances, the subject is deleted because the object is the topic of discussion, so that the example above might indicate that the ‘recorded results’ are the focus, not the ‘recorder’. Besides issues of pragmatic focus, however, we need to consider instances in which a passive might be used simply because the subject is implicitly understood in the

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first instance, or is not important. In a sentence such as more whales are seen in the winter months, it is unnecessary to ask who does the seeing, as it is understood that the subject is undoubtedly people, perhaps fishermen and whale watching tourists. Passive voice can also aid in textual cohesion. Cohesion is achieved within writing of any kind when it can be determined that the text is easy to follow: more than achieving correct syntax, the writer must ensure that the reader is guided from one idea to the next, with the end result being textual comprehension. O’Brien (1989:1) uses the analogy of a thread, saying that ‘‘as we read a text we need to feel that we are following a thread of meaning. The thread has been placed there by the writer and if it has been well placed it can be followed by the reader’’. The thread within textual cohesion is achieved through the use of theme and rheme. The theme is the first element within a sentence, normally providing given information (i.e. that which has been provided previously within the text, often within the preceding sentence). This initial material within the sentence – the theme – is ‘‘backgrounded as a point of departure’’ (Halliday, 1988:169), meaning that it acts as a ‘sentential springboard’ from which new information will be introduced within the same sentence, to be subsequently discussed in later sentences. The sentential material which consists of such new information is called the rheme, whose rhetorical effect is known as ‘foregrounding’. An example might be seen thus: (4)

The employees voiced their opinions at the meeting yesterday. The meeting was adjourned at 2:00 p.m.

In the first sentence of example (4), ‘meeting’ acts as new information, the rheme. In the second sentence, it provides given information, the theme, and in doing so, provides a textual connection to what has gone before. A final word about the use of passive voice is connected with what Siewierska (1984) refers to as the topicality hierarchy (Table 2). Siewierska states that generally, ‘‘the higher a constituent ranks on the two hierarchies the greater the likelihood of functioning as the topic (i.e. the initial sentential element) of the clause’’ (page 221). Therefore, in the sentence the supervisor delegated the responsibilities, ‘supervisor’, as a human agent, outranks ‘responsibilities’, which refer to an inanimate patient. It needs to be pointed out, however, that textual cohesion may in some cases supersede the hierarchy, so that the responsibilities were delegated might be more plausible if ‘responsibilities’ functioned as the rheme of the preceding sentence. Likewise, in example (4), though ‘meeting’ functions as an inanimate patient to a human agent (i.e. the person/people responsible for the adjournment), it features first in sentence two in order to provide textual cohesion, which may sometimes be a more prominent concern than placement within the hierarchy. Whether or not the ranking on the animacy hierarchy takes precedence over the ranking on the semantic hierarchy is unknown, as Siewierska does not expand on this possibility. Nonetheless, the topicality hierarchy and textual cohesion both comprise two additional important considerations with regard to the use of passive voice. Passive stance is complex; cohesion and ranking on the topicality hierarchy are two important considerations. This discussion, then, has sought to address, and hopefully counter, the argument that shifting focus via use of the passive voice is not an automatic revelation of stance. Context, as a means to correctly determine stance, includes the objectives of the essay, the student’s feelings on the essay subject and the personal background and beliefs of the student him/herself. As Jacob (1995:19) states, the use of the passive can be complex ‘‘because of its contextual, lexical and semantic constraints’’, once again implying the need for a closer textual analysis than might be required for other linguistic features. Table 2 Topicality hierarchy.

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5. Passive stance Authors such as Thompson and Ye (1991) and Hyland (1998, 2000) concur that voice choices can indeed contribute to revealing stance. The passive voice is useful in this regard as by allowing for the aforementioned shift of focus, there is the potential for the author’s personal emphasis to be seen. Therefore, it is this potential to emphasize one sentential argument over another that is the suggested means by which passive voice can contribute to writer stance. What is required, however, is to establish when a focus shift is simply based on the more objective functions of passive voice already discussed, so that the object within a passive structure is sometimes given sentential prominence as the subject is already understood, not relevant or not important to the discourse. A relevant contextual factor, applicable to any linguistic feature within a text, is the social context within which an essay is written. Kress (1989:448) discusses this social context from a broad perspective, declaring that texts are ‘‘structures of particular social positionings’’. This refers to the fact that writers create their texts, and position themselves within them, based on a variety of influential social factors, such as gender, class, race and so on, to include the social factors that prescribe how academic texts must be composed in the first instance (e.g. maintaining a unified focus, achieving a coherent structure and so on). For example, Ivanic (1998) describes how a black British female wanted to use the pronoun ‘we’ within her sociology essay which focused on black women in Western society; however, she chose to use the pronoun ‘they’ instead, believing it to be more objective and hence, academically appropriate. This is an example of how individual social factors (e.g. race and gender) can sometimes collide with those from the academic world, in this case the perceived conventions of academic writing. It is from such a personal perspective involving the individual’s background that passive use is analyzed, and seen within personal essays in particular (in this study, the essays focus on personal language use and personal literacy use), it is perhaps more true that the writer’s choice of linguistic material ‘‘comes from the varied experience of his or her linguistic/social experience’’ (Kress, 1989:448). In other words, the use of passive voice can reveal – and emphasize – aspects of such social experience, and this is a very relevant factor within passive stance. Further, Kress and Trew (1978:311) state that ‘‘many aspects of discourse are ideologically significant’’, including how one’s syntactic choices can help to reveal what is deemed to be important within a student’s essay. This could include, for example, the use of a nominalization in order to reveal personal feelings on a given matter, such as the prohibition of indoor smoking, which suggests government interference. Schramm (1996:142) concurs with Kress and Trew, stating that there exists a grammatical–rhetorical selection process made within one’s writing, elaborating that ‘‘the writer is embedded in a particular sociolinguistic setting, from which s/he makes the lexical, grammatical and rhetorical choices indicating the purpose and the point of view of a statement’’, further stating that ‘‘the rhetorical structure of a text is a medium for expressing writer opinion or viewpoint’’ (page 143). Ivanic (1994, 1995, 1998) argues that a writer’s lexical, syntactic and semantic choices within his/her writing help to construct identity. Ivanic and Camps (2001:15) further argue that ‘‘writing always conveys a representation of the self of the writer’’. This is seen in example (3), in which it was suggested that personal identity, the writer’s sense of who she is, is an obvious link to how the individual is revealed within the text; the individual chose to use italics as the medium through which to emphasize her personal opinion, one born from childhood experience of poverty. Therefore, to exclude passives from this function of self-revelation would be based on an assumption that passives function to largely disguise the author, and Ivanic and Camps (2001:14) state that ‘‘active or passive verb forms, with or without mention of agents’’ can position writers with regard to ideational positioning – which involves taking particular stances towards one’s field of study. They provide an example of passive use from a Mexican graduate student named Evodia, whose essay reveals how a particular passive form carries more self-revelation (seen with a personal opinion) than a potential active form. The essay is on the subject of Adult Education and Literacy for Rural Social and Community Development. (5)

To untangle the complexities of an unsustainable present, it was imperative to look at its roots in the dominant economic economy. A competitive, efficiency-based development model has not considered the rate at which natural resources are being exploited (page 14). Regarding the use of the underlined passive form above, Ivanic and Camps comment: ‘‘The verb phrase being exploited carries Evodia’s position not only through the connotations of the word ‘‘exploited’’ but also because of its passive form. If Evodia had used an active verb such as ‘‘are disappearing’’ in

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the same place in the sentence, it would have had a very different effect. By choosing a passive verb, Evodia is implying the responsibility of some (unnamed) agents for what it happening to natural resources’’ (page 14). This implication of responsibility is the way in which the passive form allows Evodia to quietly lay blame at the feet of the unnamed agent, thus revealing her feelings on the matter. The analysis above suggests that agentless passives might reveal the writer more than if the agent is mentioned; this will have implications for the analysis of students’ essays presented in this article. Although self-revelation can be tied to a multitude of features (such as lexical choices), the analysis here focuses solely on the passive per se as a means to reveal the author. This is not to say that the use of words which suggest emotional revelation on the writer’s part is not taken into account; indeed, within the analysis of the students’ use of the passive, lexical choices are also acknowledged. However, it makes for a more focused analysis to concentrate on the potential for one specific linguistic feature to reveal the writer, as opposed to analyzing a multitude of linguistic features, worthy though such an analysis is. Therefore, this article is entirely focused on the potential for passive voice to reveal stance, as it is suggested that such a rhetorical function is underrepresented in the current literature. Furthermore, Ivanic and Camps are analyzing the passive use by contrasting it with a hypothetical active counterpart, but one that involves a different lexical choice. Within the analysis here, however, passive sentences are compared with active forms, but the same lexical choice is retained in both cases. The example above might be re-worded thus: a competitive, efficiency-based development model has not considered the rate at which international businesses are exploiting natural resources. Seen from this perspective, it is somewhat more complex to analyze the passive form for stance, though the fact that the passive is agentless in example (5) is again a relevant factor. This point is treated in more detail in section 7. Ivanic and Camps’ analysis of passives used to reveal stance has been included in order to provide background to an area that has so far received little consideration, and to act as a point of departure for a more fully developed analysis. Schramm (1996:158) also provides an analysis regarding use of the passive, showing how a given passive construction differs rhetorically from its active counterpart: (6) (6)

a. b.

We have delineated the laws governing the variables below. The laws governing these variables are delineated below.

In example (6a), Schramm argues that the writer’s interest lies in making a link between the laws that are an accepted fact and the argument being developed; ‘‘the author is spelling out the laws to aid in the argument he or she is making’’. In (6b), however, ‘‘the role of the laws is different: their delineation has direct impact on the argument being built. . .spelling them out is part of the process of the argument’’ (page 158). This suggests that the passive example allows for more inclusion regarding the laws and the specific argument being made within the essay, taking for granted the fact that the laws are relevant to the essay’s focus. From the point of view of stance, it might suggest that the writer is acknowledging that he/she is a member of the academic community to which the essay belongs and is therefore aware of the community’s specific beliefs and theories. Tarone, Dwyer, Gillette and Icke (1981:135) mention that within the astrophysics journals that they analyze within their study, ‘‘the passive seems to be used when the authors are simply following established or standard procedure, as in using accepted equations’’. In this sense, the writer is arguably better engaging with the reader, by showing awareness of such standard procedures and accepted beliefs. Therefore, a more semantically and rhetorically direct means of communication with one’s reader can be an expression of stance, in that the writer is engaging more with his/her audience in the process. Hyland (2005:363) states that ‘‘the importance of including readers in written academic texts and engaging them in the unfolding discourse is now well established’’, further describing engagement as a ‘‘bundle of rhetorical strategies writers use to recognize the presence of their readers’’ (page 364). Hinkel (1997:19) declares that the agent within an active structure is placed in the ‘‘prominent sentence position’’, suggesting that to make the recipient or patient the subject within a passive structure means that this semantic role will also be given prominence, though there are a great many other contextual factors to consider, such as breaks in textual cohesion created by passive use; whether the passive form is agentless or not; and even the implications for word order within a passive rather than an active sentence. Indeed, a ‘one size fits all’ method of analysis within the area of passive stance is not being implied, as each example of passive stance may be based on one or more of the factors just mentioned. One factor that is suggested to be relevant to all passive stance, however, is information about the writer’s

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personal background, in concurrence with the research of Kress (1989), Schramm (1996) and Ivanic and Camps (2001) and how this background information is emphasized by placing the object in the subject position; it is this information which ultimately helps to make informed judgments about the ways in which students position themselves through their use of passives. 6. About the students The students referred to in this article are three undergraduates who studied within the School of Education at the University of Manchester from 2001 to 2004. Specifically, they were studying within a BA program initiated in the fall of 2001, entitled ‘Language, Literacy and Communication’. Three essays from both years one and two of their undergraduate program were analyzed, in addition to each student’s dissertation, which comprises a 12,000 word research report. The anonymous names of the students within this article are Janet, Colette and Gladys. The purpose was not exclusively to identify passive stance, but also stance as seen within nominalizations and subordination (e.g. that-complement clauses). However, as the literature regarding nominalized and subordinate stance is quite extensive (see Charles, 2003; Hunston and Thompson, 2000; Hyland and Tse, 2004, 2005), compared with that of the passive variety, it was felt that passive stance was worthy of further analysis and discussion. In order to understand more about the students’ attitudes to academic writing throughout the 3 years of their undergraduate work, they were interviewed as part of the research, in addition to completing questionnaires. The interviews helped to understand more about these three individuals, as within the interview process, the students revealed a great deal of personal information about their language use and its influences. It is this information that has particularly assisted in the analysis of the texts in terms of providing greater accuracy regarding the ways in which passive voice can reveal the writers’ feelings, based on the positionings made within the grammatical– rhetorical selection process. While interviews with one’s students are not necessary from an absolute viewpoint in order to identify and determine less obvious means of self-revelation within a text, as was mentioned earlier, it is suggested that at the very least, a close contextual analysis of students’ essays is needed to determine a more accurate analysis. The essays in which a great deal of personal revelation was witnessed were from two 1st-year course units entitled ‘Aspects of Language’ and ‘Aspects of Literacy’. The former essay asked students to reflect on their personal language use, such as dialect and accent, and this led to students discussing issues connected with notions of ‘proper’ speech, prescriptivism and stereotyping based on one’s accent. It is acknowledged that passive stance was found solely within these two essays in particular, no doubt because of the more personal subject matter. It is further acknowledged that there are only four examples of stance provided in the following section. Such a small database, however, is reflective of the fact that within such a detailed, yet necessary, contextual analysis, it was seen that passives were very often used for more ‘traditional’ means, such as maintaining textual cohesion. Ultimately, the main objective within this article is to illustrate that passive stance is a reality, which need not point to issues of quantity. The assignment instructions for both essays are provided below, followed by examples of passive stance. 6.1. Aspects of language Your assignment should have three parts and will comprise about 2000 words in total. Wherever possible, try to use concepts and terminology that have been discussed so far in the course unit. 1

Write about 500 words analyzing your own language use. This section should cover issues such as:

a/

where you were brought up as a child and how this has affected your accent, dialect and other aspects of your ‘‘idiolect’’. how your language use has changed since childhood, e.g. as a result of education, of traveling, of the social groups of which you consider yourself to have been a member, and so on how your current use of language varies according to context, e.g. spoken versus written, communicating in family, social, professional, academic settings

b/ c/

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6.2. Aspects of literacy The components of the portfolio should include: Samples of literacy materials that you encounter, use and create in your own life, with their relevance clearly explained. The materials will be accompanied by an analytical piece of writing which should not exceed 3000 words. In this piece of writing, you will be expected to: Reflect critically on the variety and scope of your own literacy practices, and provide evidence of that variety and scope.  Describe and reflect on any particular changes to your own literacy practices that you are experiencing in your new university life.  Demonstrate your understanding of the social theory of literacy provided by David Barton, and of the concepts of ‘literacy events’ and ‘literacy practices’, by applying these ideas to your analysis of your own literacy practices. 7. Examples of passive stance in students’ writing The first example is taken from Janet’s Aspects of Language essay. Janet was born in Canada, and then moved to Germany after birth, where she stayed until the age of 16, at which point she moved to England. This alone provides a great deal of contextual information on which her essay is based, as Janet is bilingual in German and English and has experienced the challenges involved with moving and having to learn two languages. In fact, the German that she grew up speaking is a variety known as pfaelzisch. The extract below provides more clues to Janet’s linguistic challenges: (7)

This is a dialect with some different words and a different grammar structure than ‘standard German’. I quickly picked up this dialect, which influenced my language greatly. At first I would only speak it around my friends and at school, to my parents, however I carried on speaking ‘standard German’ as that is what they spoke, but soon I started using this dialect all the time. About four years later we moved back to a region of Germany where ‘standard German’ was spoken. My new friends now commented on my dialect and sometimes had difficulties understanding me, which again changed my language as I fell back into ‘standard German’ very fast.

In the interview Janet said that she perceived her moving and the challenges involved with having to learn German and then English as being formidable. It is this additional information which can help to inform her passive use in example (8a) even more. (8)

a.

When I was 16 my family moved to England. This had a great impact on my language as I was forced to communicate in a language that I was not very confident in, especially not with the terminology used in the different lessons at school and among the people my age.

Within such personal revelation we see passive stance in the construction I was forced. The determiner ‘this’ at the start of sentence two refers to the move, which is now in thematic position. In this way, the use of the passive in sentence two acts as the rheme, thus introducing a new subject (i.e. the forcing of Janet to learn a new language) and therefore aiding in textual cohesion. In other words, it could be said that Janet’s choice to use the passive is based on maintaining cohesion, rather than revealing stance. However, this is not felt to be the case, as the active counterpart would create additional cohesion, yet in the process, less personal revelation. (8)

b.

When I was 16 my family moved to England. This had a great impact on my language as it forced me to communicate in a language that I was not very confident in, especially not with the terminology used in the different lessons at school and among the people my age.

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Using the pronoun ‘it’ as part of an active construction (i.e. it forced me to communicate in a language. . .) arguably creates more cohesion in that the rheme of the previous sentence (i.e. the family’s move) is referenced sooner with the pronoun ‘it’, in conjunction with the determiner ‘this’ at the start of sentence two, thus representing a chain of thought. However, by introducing the patient – ‘I’ – immediately after the agent – ‘the move to England’ – there is a break in cohesion. According to the research of Olson and Filby (1972:361), ‘‘the ease of processing active and passive sentences is a function of the prior coding of a perceptual event. When the event is coded in terms of the actor, active sentences are more easily verified; when the event is coded in terms of the receiver of the action, passive sentences are more easily verified’’. In this case, because the agent is coded first in the second sentence above, it would make sense in terms of cohesion and cognitive processing to follow with the agent immediately thereafter (i.e. this had a great impact on my language as it forced me. . .), as opposed to following with the patient (I was forced). If there are so many pragmatic reasons for using the active, the question must be asked: why use a passive form instead? It is suggested that Janet’s personal experiences involving moving within her life and having to learn new languages and cultures helps to explain the reason for using a passive construction, thereby placing herself in the subject position (‘I was forced’), and implying that she was on the ‘receiving end’ of the disadvantages involved with moving frequently, such as denial and defense, which were referenced in an earlier essay sample. Therefore, the passive allows for Janet (‘I’) to be emphasized over her move. Gordon and Chan (1995:220) state that ‘‘passives are considered more communicatively appropriate when their surface subjects have more importance than their ‘‘underlying subjects’’’’. In this regard, the surface subject of ‘I’ (i.e. referring to Janet’s personal experiences and challenges), is suggested as having more personal importance to Janet than the underlying subject of ‘the move to England’. When all this is taken into consideration, we can see personal revelation. It could be argued that the lexical choice of ‘forced’ further assists in revealing Janet’s feelings on the matter. However, it is also true that an active counterpart as seen in example (8b) would arguably reveal less of her feelings, lexical choices notwithstanding, as Janet’s personal experience would be emphasized less. We need, then, to focus not just on the information presented, but the manner in which it is presented; ‘‘to concentrate only on the information given – to take it at its face value – would in many cases be to miss or misinterpret the purpose’’ (Thompson and Ye, 1991:367). Seen in this light, the choice of the passive in (8a) and active in (8b) can lead to different perceptions regarding the consequences of Janet’s move to England: It forced me to communicate in a language that I was not very confident in. As the move to England is referenced first in this part of the sentence (seen with the pronoun ‘it’), it is possible that ‘forced’, as part of the active construction, could be interpreted in less emotional, more neutral, terms, akin to its use in expressions such as as I was appointed captain of the football team, it forced me to work harder. In this sense, an abstract concept (appointment to team captain/moving to a foreign country) is encoded as the ‘forcer’ and has arguably less of an emotional impact in that people cannot be ‘forced’ to do anything in any literal sense except by other people: abstract concepts cannot force us to do anything at all. The active counterpart, therefore, would involve a use of grammatical metaphor (Halliday, 1988), which leads, in this instance at least, to ‘‘unconventional mapping of participant functions’’ (Goatly, 1996:540), leading to a ‘‘distance from reality’’ (page 542). This distance can in turn be seen as a kind of indirectness, referring to the fact that Janet would be communicating by attributing forcing to an abstract concept. While a more direct manner in which to communicate her situation might be ‘because I moved to England I had to learn English’, the passive structure seen in example (8a) is comparatively more direct than the active counterpart, hence allowing for personal feelings to be emphasized: I was forced to communicate in a language that I was not very confident in. Even though the sentence above follows on from information regarding the fact that the move had a great impact on Janet’s language use (i.e. the move acted as the ‘forcer’), a reading of ‘I was forced’ might logically suggest to the reader that only a human agent could have literally forced Janet to communicate in English, and not a move to a foreign country per se. In other words, regardless of the information preceding the passive structure (i.e. This [i.e. the move] had a great impact on my language as. . .), ‘I was forced’ can help to set up an expectation of a human agent forcing Janet to communicate in a new language. Thus its rhetorical effect is to suggest that Janet was under ‘linguistic pressure’ based on more than just an abstract concept of a move to a new country. She does hint that this might be the case, as she mentions in her essay that ‘‘my mother carried on speaking to me in English and would often insist that I

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answered back in English instead of German’’. This does not necessarily involve forcing, though it does suggest that her parent’s involvement may have been one of the many by-products involved with her linguistic challenges. The passive, then, involves a more direct means to express her views, and creates an alternate perception, whereas the active, which involves a use of grammatical metaphor, is comparatively less direct. As the agent is mentioned in the first sentence of example (8a), it might seem redundant to mention it again via a long passive (i.e. I was forced by the move to England to communicate in a language that I was not very confident in). However, the passive use is nonetheless agentless and this in turn means that the patient – Janet – is emphasized and the agent (the move to England) is deemphasized. The lack of agency within the passive also contributes to self-revelation, as it suggests a kind of discursive positioning, in that Janet emphasizes herself as ‘the affected’ regarding the move, without further mention of the ‘affecter’. Relevant to this aspect of positioning is the work of Berman (2005:107), which discusses orientation as an aspect of texts. A sender orientation is one which is subjective; ‘‘it takes the speaker-writer as its deictic center. . .reflecting the personal involvement of speaker-writers in the events and ideas that they have experienced’’. Seen from this perspective, Janet is positioning herself as being personally affected by her moving, and in this sense, is emphasizing her personal experience in the process; in turn this illustrates ‘social positioning’, as referred to by Kress (1989). The background knowledge of the students gleaned from the interviews also helped to avoid undue subjectivity. Janet made it clear that her moving ‘to and fro’ was not welcomed; she suggested strongly that she viewed herself as ‘on the receiving end’ of such frequent moves. This background knowledge, then, ensures a degree more accuracy. As mentioned in section 5, it is knowledge of the student’s personal experiences that greatly assists in the analysis of passive stance (or any other feature) in the first instance. In the essay on personal language use, we also see how Colette reveals a great deal of herself as she discusses her discomfort about her West Midlands accent (i.e. the accent used in and around the city of Birmingham, England). First, it must be said that her attitude toward her accent is quite revealing. She mentioned in the interview that her accent has caused her embarrassment and her father has also objected to her use of dialect (e.g. I aren’t going). Colette was led to believe by her father that her accent was ‘uneducated’ and when speaking with her lecturers, Colette mentioned in the interview that she ‘softens’ her accent. The opening from Colette’s Aspects of Language essay is provided below, to include a segment previously referenced within example (2): (9)

a.

During my childhood, and even to this day, there has always been a strong emphasis placed on how I ‘should’ speak by my immediate family. My idiolect has been greatly moulded by their influence, mostly in a linguistically speaking, ‘positive’ way.

By referencing ‘their influence’, Colette is making it clear that it is familial pressure, not personal desire, which led her to change how she speaks. However, by incorporating this information within a passive sentence, emphasis is given to such pressure and in the process, her disagreement with this. Though she references a ‘positive’ change, it is implied within the context of the essay that she does not necessarily appreciate the changes she has had to make. The use of quotations around the word ‘should’ and ‘positive’ also serve to indicate a degree of irony and subsequent disagreement with her family’s (particularly her father’s) objections. If we consider the active equivalent to the passive use above, however, Colette’s perception of her family’s influence is not felt as strongly. (9)

b.

During my childhood, and even to this day, there has always been a strong emphasis placed on how I ‘should’ speak by my immediate family. Their influence has greatly moulded my idiolect, mostly in a linguistically speaking, ‘positive’ way.

The active voice might seem a more logical choice to maintain textual cohesion, as the pronoun ‘their’ would now be in thematic position, with this pronoun referring to the rheme of the previous sentence (i.e. ‘the family’). By shifting emphasis, however, and not providing the expected theme, Colette is revealing more about her personal attitude, in that she is identifying herself with regard to her manner of speaking (i.e. ‘my idiolect’), emphasizing it to the reader by placing it first within the passive sentence. Furthermore, according to a BBC survey, ‘‘Birmingham is Britain’s worst accent’’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/voices2005/have_your_say.shtml); such information also helps to

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contribute to the picture of a young woman who feels uncomfortable with her manner of speaking. She further revealed in the interview that she felt she would be perceived as less intelligent when she arrived at university, due to how she spoke. Based on all her personal information, Colette chooses which is the more relevant and important factor and uses passive voice to emphasize this factor (i.e. her personal experiences based on prescriptivist belief, as opposed to the prescriptivist(s) – her father/family in general). Granted, in both examples above, the mention of ‘my idiolect’ is given. However, it is not enough to simply focus on this as the means by which Colette reveals herself; its position as part of a passive construction within the sentence also needs to be taken into consideration. Example (9a) is Colette’s way of positioning herself within the discourse by placing her idiolect, arguably an extension of herself and how she is viewed by others, in subject position, so this is given prominence and read first. If we were to delete ‘my idiolect’ from the sentence and replace it with first person, however, then passive stance is still suggested to be a reality, because Colette would still be emphasizing herself within the discourse, as part of what Berman (2005:107) refers to as sender orientation. (9)

c.

During my childhood, and even to this day, there has always been a strong emphasis placed on how I ‘should’ speak by my immediate family. I have been greatly moulded by their influence, mostly in a linguistically speaking, ‘positive’ way.

The active form is comparatively less personal as it would place emphasis on Colette’s family, as opposed to the personal repercussions of their influence regarding Colette’s language use. Further in the essay, more is revealed about Colette’s personal beliefs: (10)

a.

My father has expressed strong objections to some grammatical uses to the extent where I have been forced to change to the ‘standard use’ when I speak. The most prominent examples of this are ‘book’ ‘I aren’t’ and ‘bus’.

Colette reveals her attitude toward her father’s beliefs about how his daughter should speak through the use of passive, explaining how she has been the ‘recipient’ (i.e. in a general sense of the word, not grammatical) of her father’s beliefs, perhaps demands. Her use of quotation marks around the words ‘standard use’ once again serves to indicate disagreement, and contributes to the overall picture of a woman who has changed her language use based on prescriptivist attitudes, not on personal beliefs. In addition, it is also relevant that, as with example (8a), the use of an agentless passive serves to focus solely on the patient, Colette, indicating discursive positioning. Granted, the agent is mentioned at the start of the sentence – her father – but the passive itself is agentless, whereas Colette could have written,. . ..I have been forced by him. While the lexical choice of ‘forced’ also helps to reveal more about her feelings (more so, say, than the lexical choice of persuaded), it is suggested that had ‘forced’ been used in an active construction, stance would again have been felt less overtly and the reader’s perception would have been different: (10)

b.

My father has expressed strong objections to some grammatical uses to the extent where he has forced me to change to the ‘standard use’ when I speak. The most prominent examples of this are ‘book’ ‘I aren’t’ and ‘bus’.

It could be argued of course that Colette uses a passive construction as she wishes to avoid placing explicit responsibility for such ‘forcing’ on her father (which would be the case with the active counterpart, as the agent would be placed more prominently). This is a valid criticism, as passives can also be used when the writer does not wish to mention the subject. However, it is believed that this is unlikely in example (10a), and for two reasons. First, Colette has not hesitated to place her father as responsible for these linguistic changes in the first sentence in example (10a), as well as implying such in example (9a), with the mention of ‘immediate family’. Second, Colette made it clear in the interviews that her negative views toward her accent and dialect were the result of her father insisting she ‘talk proper’. As she chose to pursue a higher education, which her father already had, he felt it even more important for his daughter to adjust her speech in time for her 1st year of university. With this in mind, it is suggested that it is Colette’s feelings on the matter that led her to emphasize herself as being personally affected by her father’s demands. It is also mentioned again that according to Berman (2005), the construction ‘I was forced’ can be regarded as an example of sender

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orientation, in which the writer is writing from a personal perspective, as Colette is the deictic center of discourse in examples (9a) and (10a). It is true that the active counterpart in (10b) would not create a use of grammatical metaphor (unlike example (8b) with Janet), as in both active and passive constructions, a human agent is still responsible for the ‘forcing’ in question, thus a direct way of communicating. In this instance, ‘direct’ means that grammatical metaphor is not present in either example, and therefore involves what Halliday (1988) refers to as congruent (as opposed to incongruent, or metaphorical) communication. However, for reasons already given, the passive sentence is nonetheless argued to reveal Colette’s feelings on the matter more than the active. On another level, we can consider the role of an individual voice (i.e. in the sense of an individual’s attitude and beliefs) from the socio-cultural perspective previously referenced, based on the work of Kress (1989) and Schramm (1996). This perspective is also elaborated on by Harris (1997:34), who states that one’s culture speaks to people ‘‘through many competing voices’’, such as friends, family, church, gender, race, community, and ‘‘the various fields and methods that make up our ways of knowing’’. The field of education should also be added to this mixture of fields, as it is lecturers who give feedback to students regarding their essays, as a means to instruct them in what is and is not appropriate for academic writing. Further, in 1988, the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom declared that bilingual and bidialectal students should not be discriminated against in the classroom, and their use of dialect should not be labeled as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, but simply as ‘different’ from the standard. With this in mind, Colette has been criticized at home by her father regarding her ‘wrong’ dialect use (e.g. expressions such as I aren’t for I’m not), whereas the official line taken in British schools is that students should be free to use dialect outside the school, even inside, though not necessarily for academic writing. In this sense, Colette’s voice – her personal opinion regarding her language use – has been born of a competing struggle between familial voices and educational ones, as even her university lecturers, to her surprise, did not comment on her accent at all (though it is very doubtful that they would have made negative comments in this regard), nor did she find students treated her unfavorably based on this. Therefore, seen in the light of the UK National Curriculum, to discriminate against an individual based on his/her accent or dialect is proscribed and by placing herself as the subject within example (10a), Colette is emphasizing the fact that she has changed her language use based on familial influence, not personal choice. This use of the passive to position herself is an example of the grammatical–rhetorical selection process discussed by Schramm (1996), in which one’s grammatical choices can produce specific rhetorical effects, to include personal points of view—here, Colette’s view that no one should be forced to change their speech in favor of a prescriptive standard. Besides making such views clear within the context of her complete essay, they are also suggested in example (10a). Siewierska (1984:228) states that ‘‘the subject. . .indirectly reveals the speaker/writer attitude to the described event’’. In the case of passive stance, therefore, the sentential subject within the passive construction is given emphasis and in the previous examples, such sentential emphasis was given to expressions such as I was forced, my idiolect and I have been forced. The emphasis on such personal aspects, in conjunction with Siewierska’s reference to ‘writer attitude’, offers a contextual clue as to how personal feelings can indeed be responsible for choosing a passive construction over an active counterpart. If we consider all the previous examples of students’ passive stance, used within an essay on an inherently personal subject, then the students have revealed their attitude in the following ways. One student places emphasis on the fact that her moving as a child instigated a significant linguistic and cultural change in her life, one that was not particularly welcome. Another student reveals her personal feelings toward pressure from her father regarding how she is supposed to speak, regardless of her feelings on the subject. A final example is taken from the essay on the subject of personal literacy, written by Gladys. Once again there is room given for a great deal of personal expression amidst an otherwise academic analysis. Gladys’ introductory paragraph reads: (11) a. Every area of life is filled with literacy, so much so that often people participate in literacy events and practices unwittingly or unintentionally. The variety of these literacy events and practices is immense, but for this assignment I will focus upon only six samples of literacy materials (a pedestrian crossing, a magazine quiz, clothes with slogans, a text message, a take-away restaurant’s flyer, and a university lecture) and use them to demonstrate the social basis of literacy, as provided by Barton (1994: 33).

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It is the underlined passive construction in sentence one that is suggested to be a case in which emphasizing ‘life’ over ‘literacy’ leads to stance revelation. To have emphasized the latter, an active construction would have been used instead thus: (11) b. Literacy fills every area of life, so much so that often people participate in literacy events and practices unwittingly or unintentionally. As the first sentence in example (11a) is the very first sentence in the essay, textual cohesion is not a relevant issue, in that there is no previous discourse which sentence one needs to connect with. Regarding the topicality hierarchy, both ‘literacy’ and ‘life’ share equal footing regarding their ‘animacy status’ as they are both inanimate. Regarding the semantic hierarchy, however, literacy ‘outranks’ life in that the former is the agent and the latter is the patient. Seen from this perspective, sentence one within (11b) might seem a wiser choice. Moreover, the essay instructions, which clearly focus on literacy as the topic under discussion, might further suggest the active construction in (11b) over the passive counterpart in (11a). Despite this, however, Gladys makes a choice to focus on literacy by emphasizing its effects within society (i.e. filling every area of life); in this sense, she is choosing to emphasize the affected – life/ society – over the ‘affecter’, which relates to the analysis of Kress (2005), in that adjusting the sequence of events within a sentence can affect reader perception. Kress (2005:13) states that ‘‘sequence has effects for authorship and for reading. Hearers (and readers to a somewhat lesser extent) depend on the ‘unfolding’, the revealing of elements one after the other to be able to make sense of the whole. This gives authors a specific power’’. Though Kress is referring to clauses within a sentence, in principle, adjusting word order in a general sense can affect reader perception. This means that within example (11a), the passive emphasizes literacy by strongly suggesting that it permeates all of life; the active counterpart does not suggest this to the same degree. The opening sentence of Gladys’ essay also functions in stylistic terms as the ‘hook’, referring to an ‘‘interestprovoking rhetorical opening’’ designed to ‘‘engage the reader with the material’’ (Neman, 1995:120). From this perspective, the opening can help to engage the reader more by emphasizing the effects of literacy: the filling of every area of life. The aforementioned emphasis given to the patient, as opposed to the agent, creates rhetorical emphasis in that the reader is forced to ponder the social effects of literacy first, implying how powerful a concept literacy might be. Furthermore, it is perhaps easier for a reader to formulate a mental picture of ‘every area of life’ than ‘literacy’, as ‘every area of life’ is arguably less abstract a concept than literacy, perhaps because we are so actively engaged in ‘life’ on a daily basis, such as meeting friends, working, shopping, taking care of children and so on. Granted, we are also involved with literacy on a regular basis, but it is argued that most people would find it easier to relate to their daily routine and aspects of everyday life events, than the concept of literacy. This is certainly true for laypeople outside of the field of linguistics, who might define literacy solely as ‘the ability to read and write’, when in fact it involves much more than this—see Barton and Hamilton (1998). This possible interpretation by the reader based on the passive form in (11a) would suggest a more direct manner of communication, in that Gladys has chosen a way to communicate which helps the reader to better visualize the subject of her essay, perhaps by being able to imagine his/her own ‘areas of life’ (e.g. school, work, friendships), which are referenced first. This suggests a degree of reader engagement, which, as mentioned previously, refers to a ‘‘bundle of rhetorical strategies writers use to recognize the presence of their readers’’ (Hyland, 2005:364). An obvious means to include the reader in one’s essay would be to use the second person (e.g. in order for you to understand my position, I will discuss it in detail). However, reader engagement can be accomplished through more subtle means, and in example (11a) the emphasis on the patient is the way in which Gladys is engaging the reader, for reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. Furthermore, Hyland does include ‘‘focusing their (the readers’) attention’’ (page 364) as a means of textual engagement. This has been accomplished by Gladys with her choice of a passive sentence, which in turn allows the readers to be presented with a more tangible concept first in their processing of the text. In this way, the reader is enabled to better understand the subject of literacy, by focusing on its societal influences first. Going further, based on the topics that Gladys discusses regarding her personal literacy practices, she perhaps feels that every area of life really is filled with literacy, as she discusses examples as diverse as a pedestrian crossing (i.e. the literacy involved with how to understand its system of lights and sounds); a take-away restaurant flyer (i.e. how the use of color, font style and pictures lead the reader to understand that Italian food is served); and even the literacy involved with text messages (i.e. using and understanding text language) and a university lecture (i.e. the need to take notes

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accurately, work in groups, understand the jargon used by the lecturer and the overall cognitive processes involved). Clearly, literacy does fill a great many areas in Gladys’ life; therefore, it is also felt that the passive construction is more useful to emphasize literacy than the active, despite the aforementioned reasons as to why the active might make sense from a pragmatic point of view. 8. Conclusion This paper has demonstrated that passive voice has a role to play with regard to writer stance. Admittedly, a heavier contextual focus is required in order to distinguish between passive stance and a passive use whose function, for example, is to simply help maintain textual cohesion or delete a subject which is semantically and/or pragmatically redundant within a sentence. The contextual factors which need to be considered when determining passive stance involve knowledge of the individual student’s socio-cultural background, very often revealed within personal essays in the first instance. In addition, a great deal of personal information is often discussed within personal essays written in the Freshman Composition class for example, to include subjects such as divorce, abortion and students’ sexuality. Within such personal revelation in terms of essay subject, it is perhaps unsurprising that students reveal themselves in many ways, such as using italics, coining phrases and shifting emphasis via a passive construction. As has been discussed, stance can involve more than just ‘obvious’ ways of self-revelation. The additional information that was also received by conducting interviews helped to understand the students even better, to include personal feelings about their language use. This in particular helped to make more informed judgments about the text. For example, while the essay on language use revealed much about the students’ attitude toward their language, the interviews brought up a great deal more information, perhaps more personal than was seen in the essay, especially in Colette’s case. This in turn helps in the understanding of how students can position themselves via use of passive voice. Placing the object of the sentence in the subject position is the basic function of passive voice; from a rhetorical point of view this gives one sentential element prominence over another. This is the inherent quality to passive structures, which can reveal stance, but it is not always a straightforward matter. Textual cohesion, not personal emphasis, is very often an important factor to take into consideration, as well as placement within the topicality hierarchy. When a passive construction is used in a sentence and does not provide the same amount of textual cohesion as an active construction would, however, this is a factor to consider with regard to passive stance. The previous example from Colette, My idiolect has been greatly moulded by their influence, mostly in a linguistically speaking, ‘positive’ way, is a good example of how Colette’s choice of a passive construction means that the expected theme within a sentence is subsequently delayed. This creates less cohesion but more personal revelation in the process. Even comparatively narrow areas of focus, such as the use of grammatical metaphor, have to be taken into consideration when analyzing passives for self-revelation; such is the complexity of this topic. Ultimately, it is not claimed that any one of the several contextual factors discussed reveals stance in and of itself. Instead, such factors can combine to result in a passive structure which is used by the writer, one which in turn can reveal what the writer deems to be of greater personal importance and therefore, passive voice does have a role to play in academic writing, which goes beyond the disguising of the author and can help to reveal the author instead. References Barton, David, 1994. Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Blackwell, Oxford. Barton, David, Hamilton, Mary, 1998. Local Literacies. Routledge, London. Berman, Ruth, 2005. Introduction: developing discourse stance in different text types and languages. Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2), 105–124. Biber, Douglas, Finegan, Edward, 1989. Styles of stance in English: lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and effect. Text 9 (1), 93–124. Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, Finegan, Edward, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson Education, Harlow. Charles, Maggie, 2003. A corpus-based study of the use of nouns to construct stance in theses from two contrasting disciplines. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2 (4), 313–326. Goatly, Andrew, 1996. Green grammar and grammatical metaphor, or language and the myth of power, or metaphors we die by. Journal of Pragmatics 25 (4), 537–560. Gordon, Peter, Chan, Davina, 1995. Pronouns, passives, and discourse coherence. Journal of Memory and Language 34 (2), 216–231. Halliday, Michael, 1988. On the language of physical science. In: Ghadessy, M. (Ed.), Registers of Written English: Situational Factors and Linguistic Features. Pinter, London, pp. 162–178.

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Harris, Joseph, 1997. A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey. Hinkel, Eli, 1997. Indirectness in L1 and L2 academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics 27 (3), 361–386. Hunston, Susan, Thompson, Geoff, 2000. Evaluation: an introduction. In: Hunston, S., Thompson, G. (Eds.), Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 1–27. http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/voices2005/have_your_say.shtml. Accessed on April 6th 2007. Hyland, Ken, 1998. Persuasion and context: the pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics 30 (4), 437–455. Hyland, Ken, 2000. Disciplinary Discourses—Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Pearson Education, Essex. Hyland, Ken, 2002. Authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics 34 (8), 1091–1112. Hyland, Ken, 2005. Representing readers in writing: student and expert practices. Linguistics and Education 16 (4), 363–377. Hyland, Ken, Tse, Polly, 2004. Metadiscourse in academic writing: a reappraisal. Applied Linguistics 25 (2), 156–177. Hyland, Ken, Tse, Polly, 2005. Hooking the reader: a corpus study of evaluative that in abstracts. English for Specific Purposes 24 (2), 123–139. Ivanic, Roz, 1994. I is for Interpersonal. Discoursal construction of writer identities and the teaching of writing. Linguistics and Education 6 (1), 3–15. Ivanic, Roz, 1995. Writer identity. Prospect: The Australian Journal of TESOL 10 (1), 8–31. Ivanic, Roz, 1998. Writing and Identity. John Benjamins, Philadelphia. Ivanic, Roz, Camps, David, 2001. I am how I sound: voice as self-representation in L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 10 (1–2), 3–33. Jacob, Robin, 1995. English Syntax. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kress, Gunther, Trew, Tony, 1978. Ideological transformation of discourse; or how the Sunday Times got its message across. Journal of Pragmatics 2 (4), 311–329. Kress, Gunther, 1989. History and language: towards a social account of linguistic change. Journal of Pragmatics 13 (3), 445–466. Kress, Gunther, 2005. Gains and losses: new forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition 22 (1), 5–22. Neman, Beth, 1995. Teaching Students to Write. Oxford University Press, Oxford. O’Brien, Teresa, 1989. Teaching Writing in a Second Language, Discourse Types and Coherence, Unit 2 of a Distance Learning module on Writing Skills in a Second Language. University of Manchester, School of Education. Olson, David, Filby, Nikola, 1972. On the comprehension of active and passive sentences. Cognitive Psychology 3 (3), 361–381. Reilly, Judy, Zamora, Anita, McGivern, Robert, 2005. Acquiring perspective in English: the development of stance. Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2), 185–208. Schramm, Andreas, 1996. Using aspect to express viewpoint in EST texts. English for Specific Purposes 15 (2), 141–164. Siewierska, Anna, 1984. The Passive—A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. Croom Helm, London. Tarone, Elaine, Dwyer, Sharon, Gillette, Susan, Icke, Vincent, 1981. On the use of the passive and active voice in astrophysics journal papers. With extensions to other languages and other fields. English for Specific Purposes 17 (1), 113–132. Thompson, Geoff, Ye, Yiyun, 1991. Evaluation in the reporting verbs used in academic papers. Applied Linguistics 12 (4), 365–382. Alex Baratta’s teaching background involves academic composition and ESL, having taught in South Korea, the United States and currently in the United Kingdom, within the School of Education at The University of Manchester. Here he has been responsible for the creation of an academic writing course unit, modeled on the US Freshman Composition class, as well as devising an academic writing handbook for use in the School. He also received research funding in 2006 for £7589 for a project that focused on the use of a visual pedagogic approach within an academic writing class, and how this can facilitate learning.