Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it amazing what people can do with words? Try speaking the following string of words: the teacher said the student is a fool. Most people, taking these words in order, and without compunction or punctuation, would assume the teacher holds the student in low esteem. But dolly up the sentence with commas and quotation marks and you have the opposite meaning: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The teacher,” said the student, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is a fool.” Guess which pupil qualifies for semester-long blackboard-cleaning duty.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0Aside from having the student placed on in-school suspension for offending a teacher, the word order makes a point. English allows people to construct sentences that allow users to distort meaning and weasel out of things.<\/p>\n
And since the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153surge” speech last Wednesday night, in which President Bush acknowledged mistakes, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be coming across wholesale uses of semantics in which people appear to accept the blame without really doing so.<\/p>\n
Back during the tenure of Richard Nixon, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hear \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mistakes were made.” And usually, in a phrase that makes the American populace feel all warm and runny inside, we hear something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and for that I take full responsibility.”<\/p>\n
What is usually happening is that the culprit couches the terms in such generalities that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tantamount to saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Things are tough all over,” or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all in this together,” or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a whole bunch of people messed up.”<\/p>\n
Then, the person in charge mounts a symbolic tower, rises above the hubbub and pontificates: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I accept full responsibility.” Yeah, right. Translation: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Those below me messed up; I hired them and assumed they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d do the job right, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t control what they do, and since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the boss, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my job to take the blame.”<\/p>\n
English has a wimp-out function that allows wrong-doers to appear sanitized.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called the passive voice. As an English and grammar teacher in a previous life, I found it probably the toughest unit to get across to the young-uns. Invariably, when we mention \u00e2\u20ac\u0153passive voice,” students think we mean past tense.<\/p>\n
Past tense simply refers to writing in which verbs like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153went,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153did,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ate,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153saw,” etc. occur more frequently than their present-tense counterparts, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153do,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153eat,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153see.” Without the use of the past tense, this backward-looking Work of Art would indeed be skimpy.<\/p>\n
Now passive voice can be in any tense. Passive voice, as opposed to active, simply shifts the subject of the sentence and usually serves to conceal things. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also used in cases in which we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who did what to whom.<\/p>\n
Though active and passive sentences theoretically convey the same information, active voice is more direct; it puts the emphasis in the right place, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bonds hit a homerun.” The passive version would be, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A homerun was hit (by Bonds).”<\/p>\n
Passive voice is used a lot by lazy sportscasters who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother to learn the names of players and utter a stream of locutions like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The ball is caught,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a basket is scored,” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a touchdown is made.”<\/p>\n
If we write an article about a break-in, but police don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who or how many perps committed the deed, we may write, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A tire store was broken into.”<\/p>\n
That kind of arrangement leaves out the doer or doers of the deed. The passive voice always contains some form of the to-be verb and a verb in the past participle. So instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153broke into,” we get \u00e2\u20ac\u0153was broken into.”<\/p>\n
In politics, for the past six years, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discovered how difficult it is for people to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I made a mistake.” It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easier to fall back on the flaccid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mistakes were made.” The latter statement implies the politician was merely an observer, and all of a sudden, a bunch of mistakes appeared.<\/p>\n
Bothersome, however, is the rush among many of the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newspapers to announce that Bush admitted culpability for the Iraq fiasco. Not so fast.<\/p>\n
Bush never admitted culpability but couched the matter with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”<\/p>\n
Oh, we get it now: mistakes might not have been made, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the job of the responsibility to rest where it may.<\/p>\n
By his flabby concession, Bush merely reiterated the chain of command, from his position as commander-in-chief to members of the Pentagon, to the generals in the field, etc. Notice we did not hear the president say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I made a mistake. I failed to listen to the public. I ignored the will of the people.”<\/p>\n
It was refreshing later that night to hear John Edwards, an announced candidate for president, admit that he blew it big time in voting to send troops to Iraq. So Edwards messed up but \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfessed up. The public is likely to respect such a person more than one who implies, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, if it were a mistake, others are just as guilty, and besides, if the mistake were to be admitted, people might think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m weak.”<\/p>\n
Right! Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cover our respective fundaments with worn-out mantras like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stay the course,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we will prevail,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s be steadfast,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being resolute,” and other tired expressions that surface only in war time.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Back in around 1949, several of us students in Sister Mary Nicht Vergessen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fourth-grade class at Immaculate Conception School quickly learned the power of the passive voice when we also discovered that bottled glue won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t repair a porcelain statue, which \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just fell down, all by itself. Honest, Sister.”<\/p>\n
One of us said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The statue was dropped from the pedestal.”<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Before I notify your parents, Arthur, I want you to explain how it happened \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in the active voice,” the homeroom teacher said.<\/p>\n
I explained that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, Sister, we were all playing very active, and the statue was broken.”<\/p>\n
We learned that no amount of verbal chess exonerated us. Meanwhile, we wonder how Bush would react at a party if asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why did the chicken cross the road?” His answer might be, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The chicken didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cross the road; rather, the road was crossed by the chicken.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it amazing what people can do with words? Try speaking the following string of words: the teacher said the student is a fool. Most people, taking these words in order, and without compunction or punctuation, would assume the teacher holds the student in low esteem. But dolly up the sentence with commas and quotation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}