The Use of Passive Voice in Political Newspaper Articles: A Descriptive Analysis of Its Frequency and Functions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56832/edu.v5i1.919Keywords:
News Article, Passive Voice, Written LanguageAbstract
In written English production, using passive voice is one of the most challenging aspects to master. This study aims to analyze the frequency, structure, and functions of passive voice in written English, especially in political newspaper articles. A descriptive qualitative approach was used for this study, with data collection techniques in the form of document studies on four samples of newspaper articles regarding political issues that happened in Indonesia in early 2025; two articles were taken from The Jakarta Post, and two others were from ANTARA, published around January to February 2025. The result obtained from 4 political news articles shows that of the total 82 sentences analyzed, 26 sentences (31%) are passive voices. Two main types found were: "to-be" passive form (formal passive), 75%, and "to get" passive 25%. This indicates that passive sentence usage in political news articles is quite common. The passive form, with or without phrases, is used by the writers to emphasize some truths to be involved in an event or incident and express their opinion to influence the reader's mind.References
Garner, B.A. (2000). The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hart, C. (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Springer, Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299009
Hewings, M. (2001). Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. et al. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316423530
Keenan, E.L. & Dryer, M. (2006) (prepublication version). Passive in the World’s Languages. In: Shopen, T. (ed.) Language typology and syntactic description http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/keenan/papers/KeenanDryerPassiveProofs.pdf, accessed 13/09/2011) ________ 2007. Passive in the world’s languages. In: Shopen, T. (ed.) Language typology and syntactic description (Vol. I: Clause Structure). 325-361.
Pullum, G.K. (2014). Fear and Loathing of English Passive. Language and communication, 37, 60-74. Retrieved from http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langc om.2013.08.009
Qassim, S. (2016). The Use of Active and Passive Voice in the News Language. AL-USTATH. 1(18), 157-172. https://doi.org/10.36473/ujhss.v218i1.533
Sugiyono. 2010. Metode Penelitian Pendidikan Pendekatan Kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan R&D. Bandung: Alfabeta
