‫ نورا عبد النبي خليف‬: ‫األسم‬

‫ الجامعة المستنصرية‬/‫كلية التربية‬/ ‫قسم الفيزياء‬: ‫مكان العمل‬

‫عنوان الورشة‬
The Use of Passivization in Political Texts
Objectives:
1. Identifying Passivization as a syntactic device which serves a range of functions
within the syntax.

2. Investigating the use of Passivization in political editorials.

3. Inspecting Passivization mechanisms in construing various sentences in the texts

which are selected from three American newspapers.

Abstract:

The present workshop deals with Passivization phenomenon syntactically and

semantically in political texts. Passivization is a mechanism that change the
canonical order of simple sentences into non-canonical complex one. Thus, it is
used to manipulate the sentence structure. By the end of the workshop, it is
expected to answer the following questions: What are the reasons behind
employing Passivization types in political discourse? What are the syntactic and
the semantic significant of Passivization? The present workshop aims to inspect
Passivization in construing various types of constructions in texts of political
discourse and displays how this phenomenon can construct non-canonical and

1
complex sentences structures. A selected editorials, that are chosen randomly from
three well-known American newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington
Post, and The Wall Street, are analyzed to achieve our goals.

Introduction:

Sentences in English language are built up from diverse types of phrases

which avail different structural functions within syntax, such as verb,

subject, adjective etc. Also, the constituents, which have these structural
functions, have other different types of functions that are described in
terms like "recipient", "agentive", "attribute" etc. These constructions of
sentences can be manipulated to seek various prominence kinds (Quirk
and Greenbaum,1973,p.406). Studying some aspects of linguistic
construction,such as topic-comment, given-new, and focus, makes
individuals aware of language as a system of communication that is
organized sequentially. The judging of placing or ordering of the
emphasis could be significant for the correct understanding of the
conveyed messages and their implications. English is considered as a
fixed order language, that is, the altering of word order in most cases
will cause altering of the basic meaning of the sentence, for example,
Mary hurts John has a quite different meaning from John hurts Mary.
However, Passivization phenomenon is considered as a mechanism that

2
changes the rigid order of the sentence and, at the same time, the
sentence is still grammatical and has the same meaning, for example,
Zuha cleans the room, the room is cleaned. It can affect the origin
position of the sentence constituents to achieve prominence.
Passivization as a linguistic device, is utilized in syntactic, semantic, and
stylistic theories to serve different purposes. Political journalistic
writings are distinguished by a number of characteristics; the complexity
of its syntax is probably the most prominent (Van Dijk,1985a,p.111).
Passivization constructions provide editorialists by various constructions
with maintaining the same meaning of the sentences, however, it
convers their simple structures into complex ones. That is, it still uses
widely by them to fulfil certain purposes of manipulation or persuasive
receivers of the massages. As a result, it appears reasonable to pose the
following questions What are the reasons behind employing
Passivization in political discourse?

Literature review:

1. Topic:

According to Lyon, topic is "the person or thing about which something

is said" (1968,p.334), while comment is a "statement made about this
person or thing." (ibid). He tries to distinguish traditionally disruption
holds between topic-comment and subject-predicate, establishing his

3
description on a difference among expressions and their referents
(Lyon,1977). The term Subject points to the topic, whereas, Predicate
points to the comment. Thus, the referent of the subject is the topic.
Thematic subject, in some languages, is not differentiated from
grammatical one, which has been defined as "nominal which determines
verbal concord, or inflects for a particular cases or has a relative position
to other nominal" (Kamal,1982,p.32). Lyons, as cited in Kamal
(1982,p.32), takes on the dichotomy theme-rheme as terms of "what the
speaker announces as the topic of his utterance and what he wishes to
communicate". The connection between thematic subject and starting
position is demonstrated with the elements of discourse just like Given;
Lyons comes to an agreement with Halliday that it isoptional, however,
he, unlike Halliday, is not separated information structure.

2. Given and New

Baker (1992,p.145) argues that given information represents the

common ground between the speaker and the listener, it gives the hearer
reference point to which s/he can relate new information. These
concepts, i.e. given and new, interrelate closely with a number of other
distinctions from which they must bedifferentiated in particular:
presupposition vs. assertion, and theme vs. rheme, in Halliday’s sense,
corresponding roughly to Bloomfield’s topic vs. comment.

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The Prague school traditionally treated Givenness together with theme,
in recent years linking them with the idea of communicative dynamism.
Mathesius (1939, as cited in Firbas,1964:268) partly defined his notion
of theme in the sense of given as “that part which is known or at least
obvious in the given situation, and from which the speaker proceeds”.
Chafe (1970,pp.210-211) adopts a similar position as that of the Prague
school; for him, the old information is shared information, as a kind of
starting point. Halliday (1967) and Chafe (1976) distinguished three
variables, as follows:

a. Given/new: item (s) referred to in previous discourse situation,

experience

or not, and assumed by the speaker to be present or available in the

addressee’s mind.

b. Presupposition/ assertion: proposition taken for granted/ or asserted as

true.

c. Theme/rheme, (or topic/comment): idea(s) at the forefront of the

speaker's mind, his/her starting point of the sentence, or not. This is best
regarded as a psycholinguistic matter, a feature of language processing
and performance.

Halliday’s view seems convincing concerning the distinction of given

from theme, and in distinguishing given from presupposed on the basis
that: Givenness refers to precise details or individual parts of sentences,
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e.g. noun phrases, while presuppositions apply to complete or
incomplete propositions that the speaker asks the listener to assume to be
true (1967).

3. Fronting

There is a general consensus among Transformational Grammarians that

transforming any element from its position at the end or middle of a
string to the initial-position, is pointed to as fronting. For instance, the
wh-fronting rule moves a wh-phrase from its underlying non-initial
position to the initial position.

John walked there ⇒ John walked where ⇒where did John walk

(Crystal,2008,p.200).

Many grammarians consider fronting as "the term we apply to the

achievement of marked sentences thereby moving into initial position an
item which is otherwise unusual there” (Quirk et al,1985,p.1377).
According to them, the purpose behind fronting might be to copy
thematically what has been given in context (ibid). Aarts et al. suppose
that fronting an element is structure‐dependent. The verb, in the example
below 17a, is fronted with its complement, while merely fronting it in
the absence of its complement, as in 17b, is not acceptable (2021,p.166).

4. Passivization

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Passivization is explained as "a construction in which the undergoer
occurs instead in the normally topical subject position, as a reflection of
its topical status in the discourse context, while the actor, the topical
subject in the default case, appears in the normally focal portion of the
utterance, if it appears at all" (Brown and Miller,1999,p.155).
Passivization has the feature of moving an NP constituent leftward. It is
known in the literature for a long time that passive sentences could be
demonstrated as constructions extracted from the conformable active
one through the rules of movement. From a pragmatic perspective,
passivization is debated to be yet another instance of getting into topic
position, i.e. into the attention centre, the NP, which occupies the
grammatical task object in the underlying level of representation (ibid).
According to Huddleston, this process, i.e. passivization, could have the
additional feature of either granting end-focus or omitting the actor, also
the fronting of the object is utilized for contrasting aims. Though, end-
focus is the property of phonology, it obviously has significant
inclusions in syntax, where the arranging of the message elements is
broadly determined. It could affect the selection between passive and
active structures (1984,p.17). By considering the following instances:

70.a. Zuha cleaned the room

b. The room was cleaned by Zuha

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One can recognize that, with end focus, the two sentences imply distinct
contexts, for example the first sentence answers the question What did
Zuha clean? while the second one answers the question Who cleaned the
room? At the level of clauses, altering from the active to the passive
includes rearrangement of two clause constituents, and one more thing:

(a) The active subject is transformed into a passive agent;

(b) the active object is transformed into a passive subject; and

(c) before the agent, the preposition by is added. (Quirk et al.,1985)

5. Political Discourse

Political discourse is the method by which politicians interchange ideas,

convince, persuade, talk about social issues or events, and express
opinions (Connolly,1959,p.334). Van Dijk (2002,p.19) remarks that
"political discourse is not a genre, but a class of genres defined by social
domain, namely that of politics". Hence, political editorials or debates
and speeches of politicians are only instances of the diverse genres
which go under politics. The essence of political discourse, as Neumark
(1986,p.45) states, "resides in the manipulation of abstract conceptual

terms expressed in powerful forms". Topics, coherence, lexical style,

arguments ofa political discourse might bring to the public attention

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much about the individual character of such discourse (Van
Dijk,2001,p.30).

6. Editorials

Editorials are mass communicated, public kinds of opinion discourse

which appear normally in a newspaper and they are a media outlet's
official voice on issues of public concern. Van Dijk (1995) considers
editorials as a mass communicated and public kinds of viewpoint
discourse par excellence. Moreover, editorials' influence might not be

based on huge popular impact, rather than on their impact on the elites.
Further, he believes that the viewpoint of members of congress or
parliament, corporate managers, cabinet ministers as well as other
leaders follow the viewpoint of the greatest respected newspapers.
Hence, the general views of newspapers cannot be completely
incompatible with other elite institutions, implying a shared influence

mechanism. The truth that editorial opinion is generically institutional

and not personal, ought to be emphasized here. Editorials are often
regarded as the standpoint of the newspaper even if it's written by one
editor. To put it another way, it is very popular for editorials to be
circulated by a number of editors, or among editors and management, or
among editors and another social classes they belong to, which is
considered as the reason behind two significant facts. The first one is

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editorials are rarely signed, and the second reason is whatever
formulated views about particular events, they're more likely to come
from social representations than from the editor's own perspectives or
experiences.

7. The Analysis of Passivization

Te Sentence Realization Explanation

xN
o.
1 Reformers and hard-liners 1.The agent is shifted to Top. process is applied
the end position of the here in order to
are driven by a shared goal sentence because it reorganize the
of survival conveys New unit of constituents of the
information. present sentence
2.The main verb of the according to the
sentence is presented in principle of Given-New.
its past participle form Thus, the direct object
"driven" and is Reformers and hard-
preceded by verb to be liners is topicalized to
as an auxiliary verb. be the topic, and
3.The direct object is simultaneously the
topicalized to be the given information of the
topic of the present present sentence. At the
sentence and because it same time, the delaying
conveys Given unit of of the subject a shared
information. goal makes the end-
focus falls on it, and to
be the new information
unit.

2 North Korea’s nuclear 1.The doer of The purpose of

ambitions have barely been the action is not utilizing
mentioned in this year’s U.S. identified, but it passivization
presidential race is obvious from here is to give
the context, i.e. prominence to
presidential the sentence's

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 candidates. topic North
2.The main verb Korea's nuclear
of the sentence ambitions. At
is transitive verb the same time
in its past emphasizing the
participle form VP by making
mentioned, the end-focus
preceding by the falls on it. This
auxiliary verb employment of
have been. The Top. is intended
sentence's to grab the
predicate, or the reader's
whole VP, attention and
conveys new persuade him in
information. particular view.
3.The topicaized
constituent, i.e.
the direct object
is considered as
the topic of the
sentence,
consequently it
conveys Given
information
unit.
3 North Korea was caught cheating on its 1.The doer of By employing
commitments to us
the action is Passivization
omitted in the process, the
present editor
sentence. emphasizes the
However, it is sentence's action
obvious from was caught and
the context. gives

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 2.The main verb prominence to
of the present the topicalised
sentence is element the
transitive verb North. Top. is
in its past used here to
participle form manipulate and
caught, criticize the
preceding by the opponent, which
auxiliary verb serves the main
was. The purpose of the
sentence's editor,
predicate, or the condemning the
VP, conveys North for
new developing and
information. keeping its
3.The topicaized nuclear
constituent, i.e. weapons.
the direct object
is considered as
the topic of the
sentence,
consequently it
conveys Given
information
unit.
4 Such limitations make no sense in the 1.The agent is not To reorganize the
face of North Korea’s growing missile mentioned since it is sentence according to
threat and should be lifted immediately clear from the setting. Given-New principle,
2.The main verb of the give prominence to the
sentence is a transitive topic of the sentence,
verb in its past and emphasize the
participle form, and action of the sentence,
preceded by the Passivization is utilized.
auxiliary verbs should This type of Top. helps
be. the editor to convey a
3.The direct object of particular message to
the sentence is the reader. That is, there
topicalized to be the are some actions the

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 topic of the sentence U.S government needs
because it conveys to do in order to stop
Given unit of the North Korean
information. nuclear expansion.

5 the report will be released 1.The agent is The object "the

not mentioned report" is placed
because it is in the initial
unimportant. position to be
2.The main verb more prominent.
of the sentence The editor
is transitive verb focuses on the
in its past report and, in
participle form most cases, he
preceded by the employs Top.,
auxiliary verbs specifically
"will be". The Passivization,
VP conveys when he
New mentions it
information because it's the
unit. center of
3.The direct attention.
object is
topicalized to
occupy the
position of the
subject. It
conveys Given
unit of
information.

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Conclusion

In newspapers' editorials, the various syntactical patterns are employed to create

new interesting patterns in form and meaning. One way to do this is through
utilizing Passivization. The result of the analysis shows that passivization is
employed more than other types of fronting. It represents 38% of the sentences
that are used in seventeen American newspapers' editorials. There are many
reasons that motivate the political editorialists to employ this syntactic structure
The first reason is to avoid repetition through the omission of the subject, or the
theme, of the sentences. As can be notice in the following examples:

a. North Korea is not believed to be capable of delivering warhead to the U.S

mainland.

b. It is considered a threat on U.S troops in South Korea and Japan.

c. North Korea's nuclear ambitions have barely been mentioned in this year's U.S
presidential race.

The second reason is to reorganize the constituents according to the principle

ofGiven-New. Therefore, the direct object, which is the topic of the sentence that
conveys Given information, is topicalized to get back to its original position.
Thus,it gives a sort of flexibility that allows editorialists, to some extent, to put
particular items in the initial position, when there are other items could occupy this
position. Likewise, they can easily keep the sentence in connecting with the
previous discourse. This can be noticed in the following texts:

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d. The supplies from North Korea include acid-resistant tiles, valves and
thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean
missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons
and missile facilities inside Syria, according to the report, which was written by a
panel of experts who looked at North Korea’s compliance with United Nations
sanctions. (NYT, Feb. 27, 2018)

e. The North Korean regime celebrates the test date as a “revolution,” among the
third Kim’s greatest accomplishments. The launch was even commemorated with a
monument, featuring a poem devoted to “the eternal and immortal achievement
that has borne great power.” Today Mr. Kim faces a range of problems, including
severe economic sanctions, a spate of natural disasters and the pandemic, but his
hold on power was made far more secure on that night in 2017 when he was able
to declare that his impoverished country’s nuclear deterrent was now complete.
(WSJ, Nov. 25, 2020)

Another, reason for employing passivization frequently, as the analyzed editorials

reveal, is to place the subject at the end of the sentence because it carries New
piece of information. As the following sentences illustrate:

f. Reformers and hard-liners are driven by a shared goal of survival, experts said

(NYT, June 28,2008)

g. The range of South Korea’s ballistic missiles has been limited by mutual

agreement since 1979. (WP.,May 18, 2017).

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Recommendations

It is recommended that:

1. It is important for political discourse researchers since such analyses clarify

some of the syntactic constructions that editorialists of political discourse
employed and how they express their opinions and ideologies.

2. For university lecturers and students, topicalization can help to display how
sentences structure can be manipulated syntactically, in which the survey of
syntactic theory joins both semantics and syntax, which is significant to clarify the
fusion of these branches of linguistic to provide precise interpretation of sentences
structures under the tent of syntax.

3. Linguistic researchers can examine Passivization constructions syntactically and

semantically to inspect the syntactic and semantic function of each construction.

16
 ‫األهداف‪:‬‬

‫‪ .١‬تحديد المبني للمجهول كاأداة نحوية تسهم في مجموعة من الوظائف داخل بناء الجملة‪.‬‬

‫‪ .٢‬التحقيق في استخدام المبني للمجهول في االفتتاحيات السياسية‪.‬‬

‫‪ .٣‬فحص آليات المبني للمجهول في تخصيص الجمل المختلفة في النصوص التي يتم اختيارها من ثالث‬
‫صحف أمريكية‪.‬‬

‫التوصيات‪:‬‬

‫يوصى بما يلي‪:‬‬

‫‪ .١‬من المهم أن يوض““ح ب““احثون الخط““اب السياس““ي حيث ان مث““ل ه““ذه التحليالت توض““ح بعض اإلنش““اءات‬
‫النحوية التي يستخدمها محرري الخطاب السياسي وكيف يعبرون عن آرائهم وأيديولوجياتهم‪.‬‬

‫‪ .٢‬للمحاضرين الجامعيين والطالب‪ ،‬يمكن أن يساعد في عرض كيفي“ة معالج“ة هيك“ل الجم“ل نحوي“ا‪ ،‬حيث‬
‫ينضم مسح نظرية النحوية إلى كل من الدالالت والبناء‪ ،‬وهو أمر مهم لتوض“يح الرؤي“ة له“ذه الف“روع اللغوي“ة‬
‫لتوفير تفسير دقيق للهياكل الجمل تحت خيمة بناء الجملة‪.‬‬

‫‪ .٣‬يمكن للباحثين اللغويين فحص أشكال المبني للمجهول بشكل نحوي و داللي لتفقد وظيفة النحوية والاللالل““ة‬
‫لكل بناء‪.‬‬

‫المستخلص‪:‬‬

‫تتطرق الورشة الحالية م“ع ظ“اهرة المب“ني للمجه“ول بش“كل نح“وي و داللي في النص““وص السياس“ية‪ .‬المب“نى‬
‫للمجهول هي آلية تغير النظام النمطي للجمل البسيطة الى جمل““ة اخ““رى اك““ثر تعقي““دا‪ .‬وبالت““الي‪ ،‬يتم اس““تخدامه‬
‫لمعالجة بنية الجمل““ة‪ .‬في نهاي““ة ه““ذا الورش““ة ‪ ،‬من المتوق““ع أن تجيب على األس““ئلة التالي““ة‪ :‬م““ا هي األس““باب‬
‫الكامنة وراء توظيف ب“نى المب“ني للمجه“ول في الخط“اب السياس“ي؟ م“ا هي األهمي“ة النحوي“ة والداللي“ة له“ذا‬
‫البناء؟ تهدف ورشة العمل الحالية إلى تفسير المبني للمجهول في أنواع مختلفة من البنى النحوية في نص““وص‬
‫الخطاب السياسي ويعرض كيف يمكن لهذه الظاهرة بناء هياكل غ““ير نمطي““ة ومعق““دة‪ .‬يتم تحلي““ل االفتتاحي““ات‬

‫‪17‬‬
‫المختارة‪ ،‬التي يتم اختيارها بشكل عش““وائي من ثالث ص““حف أمريكي““ة معروف““ة‪ :‬نيوي““ورك ت““ايمز‪ ،‬واش““نطن‬
‫بوست‪ ،‬وول ستريت‪ ،‬لتحقيق أهدافنا‪.‬‬

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