Passive Voice as a Means of Impersonal Presentation of Facts in English Quality Press

Abstract

The current paper presents the analysis of passive constructions as means of impersonal presentation of facts in English quality press. The article gives the definition of the passive voice as a grammatical category and describes the use and purpose of impersonalization strategies. The data for the research were taken from The Financial Times (UK), the leading international English daily broadsheet newspaper, which has millions of both print and online subscribers worldwide. The articles on political, business, economic, and social issues were chosen on a random basis and scrutinized for passive constructions as a means of impersonal presentation of facts. 173 cases of impersonalization were chosen for the analysis. The most and least often used types of passive constructions were identified and compared. The results of the current study may be useful for editors, journalists, writers, as well as for further study of impersonalization strategies in the English language.