Passive Voice as a Cohesive Device in English Discourse

This study aims to demonstrate that the grammatical structure of passive voice can be used as a useful text-structuring device to organize the flow of information in discourse. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to define the passive voice as a multi-functional grammatical category that performs pragmatically-motivated discourse functions and examine how the passive construction, as a cohesive device, contributes to the information-structuring function in discourse. On the basis of data-analysis, this study proposes that discourse cohesion or coherence tends to be accomplished by the use of the passive construction, as the grammatical structure of a passive voice is optimized for pragmatically-oriented information processing, such as ‘end-focus’, ‘end-weight’, ‘given-new interplay’, ‘topic-chain’ and ‘topic-shift’. Finally, this study claims that the use of passive voices in discourse is intricately bound up with the speaker’s/writer’s strategic choice for a cohesion-coherence purpose, and the passive voice’s contribution to efficient information processing in discourse is compatible with the attribute of the structural advantage inherent to the passive voice.