Pragmatic Motivations For Passive Voice In English

This paper is intended to study English passive voice from the perspective of the interface of syntax and pragmatics, aiming to explore the pragmatic motivations related to the use of passive voice in English. Syntax is always the core issue in the field of linguistics. Traditionally, the research on syntax is mainly within its own domain, which is found insufficient and unsatisfactory as to linguists'present knowledge and understanding of language. Thus many aspects and topics are re-studied from new points of view, and so is passive voice. Among these new perspectives, the pragmatic view has received much attention, and is also a promising one that may supply a more comprehensive and appropriate interpretation of passive constructions, which would be a powerful refutation of some negative views on passives. This paper is just built on such an idea, and the analysis is based on the data collected.The whole paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which provides the research questions: what are the pragmatic factors related to the use of passive voice in English and how these factors constrain the use of passives, and also why and how this research is to be done. In the second chapter, previous studies related to this study are reviewed with the author's critiques. The third chapter is the theoretical foundation including the definition of passives, an assumption serving as the classification criterion for the later discussion, and methodological description. In the fourth chapter which is the main body, the author, according to the assumption in Chapter Three, divides the various pragmatic factors that affect the use of passives in English into three categories, and illustrates these factors and the mechanism of the constraints with plenty of examples. This classification based on the assumption can be taken as my own contribution. The last chapter is the conclusion.