A Study Of Textual Functions Of Passive Sentences In Abstracts Of English Academic Papers

Passive sentence, in a sense, a grammatical phenomenon, is often seen in English.Research（Halliday,1994）has shown that English passive sentence is not only the resultof reorganizing the composition of sentence, but also provides a pre-composition andpost-composition. It was, at the same time, held that the textual function of passivesentences are expressed in the following aspects:（1）Topic-connecting function;（2）Topic-shifting function;（3）Topic-setting function（;4）Topic-highlighting function;（5）Focus-contrasting function;（6）Textual cohesion and coherence. The former fivefunctions of textual function are carried out through thematic structure and informationstructure; however, textual cohesion and coherence are achieved through the theory ofthematic progression pattern. The systematic functional grammar points out that choosingpassive sentence or active sentence will lead to different textual function in the discourse.Abstract, to some extent, a brief and concise description for the thesis, is a specialkind of discourse. A good abstract may be used as basis for understanding the maincontent better and quicker. Both Chinese academic and English academic thesis, especially the degree thesis have an English abstract, which plays an important part inbuilding up the thesis. However, the nature and distribution of passive sentence have notyet been discussed in specific context in any detail. This current study explores the roleof the passive sentence how to build abstract in the case of abstract of Journal ofPragmatics from the perspective of textual function and thematic progression patternbased on the theory of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar.Altogether twenty samples of English abstracts, which date from the year of2000-2012in Journal of Pragmatic, are collected randomly. Through working out thisthesis, it is found that the simple linear and parallel progression of thematic progressionpattern is closely concerned with passive sentence. It is, at the same time, argued that thesimple linear is in relation to focus-contrasting function in abstracts of English academicpaper. Simultaneously, the parallel progression is connected to topic-shifting function,however, focus-contrasting and topic-shifting function of passive sentences in abstractsof English academic paper give an expression of the textual cohesion and coherence. It isfurther shown that these six functions of passive sentences are not isolated; however, itunits tighter to make the subject clearer and more coherent. One passive sentence usuallyhas several textual functions in the same abstract.Passive sentence of abstract in English academic papers is studied, which play agreat significance in the foreign language teaching. Understanding passive sentencecorrectly depends on the combination of form and function, therefore, the specificcontext should be taken into account to teach and learn passive sentence.