Курсовая с практикой на тему The usage of the passive voice in «Jane Eyre» by Charlotte Bronte

Содержание:

Content
Introduction 3
Chapter I. Theoretical aspects of evolution of the passive voice in English 5
1.1. The category of Voice 5
1.2 The usage of the passive voice in different texts 10
Chapter II. The tendency of using passive constructions in literary text 16
2.1 The biography of the prominent writer Charlotte Bronte 16
2.2 The Frequency of the Passive Voice in Jane Eyre 18
Conclusion 23
Bibliography 25
Application 28

Введение:

The use of passive voice in different styles is also controversial. To ensure that scientific articles (RA) are clear and accurate for the reader, some experts in the field of scientific writing recommend either not to abuse passive sentences [16], or by using active sentences. Other experts advise not to go beyond 10% of passive voice use [10, P. 98- 110], and some others recommend to abandon the practice of their use.
It is the writer’s deliberate variation between these sentences that allows them to mold their reader to interpret their words in their desired way. If the writer uses the passive form («The girl was helped»), he clearly aims for his audience to immediately sympathize with the girl and the way she’s been treated or a example of the girl being helped. This is why the distinction between passive and active sentences is so necessary in different texts, as they help to convey the meaning.
To determine whether or not something is an agent, it is important to note where the blame is placed. If the word(s) in question put the blame on someone/thing, or can begin with «by…», then it is an agent, and the sentence is passive. Sentence pattern of active and passive sentences are as follow:
Active sentence = S.V.O., S.V.Adv., or S.V.Complex
Passive sentence = S.V., or S.V.Agent
Although this paper has focused on the reason of application of passive voice and the place where it is specially used, it’s a fact that over the past several years, there has been a movement within many science disciplines away from passive voice. Scientists often now prefer active voice in most parts of their published texts.
The theme of this research is “The usage of the passive voice in «Jane Eyre» by Charlotte Bronte». Jane Eyre is a classical story about life; relations, first love and that people can do everything for it. A girl with a gentle soul, simple appearance and strong character goes through life stages.
The actuality of the theme is the use of passive construction in literary texts is considered in many works on the one hand, the need for there is a good reason for using passive voice mentioned in many writings, for example, when an agent obvious, unknown, or unnecessary, when the writer wants to emphasize the result and also when the agent is very common.
The purpose of the research is to examine and analyze the passive constructions that were used by Charlotte Bronte in «Jane Eyre», find out their role in the modern language and examine methods of passive constructions formation in the work.
To achieve the purpose we coped with the following tasks:
-to analyze specific data on the research object and discover the essence of passive voise;
-to find out the modells of passive construction formation;
— to ascertain the role of passive construction in the work «Jane Eyre».
The object of research is the characteristic of passive voice in English.
The subject of this work is to consider the passive constructions used by Charlotte Bronte in «Jane Eyre».
The methods of investigation included contrastive, distributive, componential analyses.
The work consists of introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, and the reference list of the works used.
The first chapter of the work, the theoretical part is devoted to the definition of passive voice in English.
The second part includes questions on the usage of the passive voice in «Jane Eyre».
In the conclusion of my paper I tried to draw some results from the investigations made within the main part of my work.

Заключение:

The form of the voice indicates whether the subject in the offer (person or object) is the producer or the object of the action expressed by the predicate.
Passive voice shows that the person or object expressed by the subject is affected by the action: The big cake was baked by Sam.
Passive voice is used when the performer of the action is obvious or insignificant, or when the action or its result is more interesting than the performer.
In order to get the form of a verb in the passive voice, you need an auxiliary verb to be in the appropriate time, person and number and the past participle (Participle II) of the meaningful verb: This building will be demolished next month. My dog has been stolen.
We use the active voice in sentences like this one, and it shows who is doing the acting (we are) and what is being acted on (the active voice). But the passive voice is often used in more formal sentences, like this one, where the actor-here, the invisible writer of this sentence, who is the one using the passive voice-is hidden from view.
Comparing the active and passive voice, we can see that the action in the active voice comes from the participant or the carrier of the verbal sign, as having a centrifugal orientation towards it, with the passive voice directed at it, as centripetal towards it.
The passive voice shows that the subject is acted upon, that it is the recipient of the action. This voice has a lot of peculiarities of usage.
The passive voice is formed using the appropriate tense of the verb to be + the past participle of the verb. In many cases, when the active construction is changed into the passive, it is better to omit the agent. For example, when the following sentence is in the active voice:
People in Kosovo speak Albanian.
The passive voice sentence should be: Albanian is spoken in Kosovo. And NOT: Albanian is spoken in Kosovo by people.
Only the transitive verbs can be used in passive voice. The verbs of Incomplete Predication such as seem, be, become, etc., can never be used in passive; e.g. He became King could never have a passive form such as A king was become by him.
Certain intransitive verbs can be made into transitive ones by the addition of a preposition. These verbs can be used in the passive voice, e.g.
His plan was laughed at by everyone who heard it.
That is a famous bed; it was slept in by Queen Elizabeth I.
The passive voice seems to distance an action from its perpetrator, or it makes the thing being acted on («we,» «the suspect,» and «mistakes» above) more important than the doer. For this reason, the passive voice is very common in more formal writing, where the authors want to keep the perpetrator of the action or the speaker distant.
The passive refocuses our attention on the recipient of an action, particularly when the writer wants to emphasize the recipient or the doer of an action isn’t known:
The child was hit by a drunk driver.
For this reason, the passive voice is used in scientific writing, since the emphasis is on the results of research and not on who is doing that research.
Passive voice is also handy when stating something that should be obvious:
Valuables should not be left in unlocked cars.
The passive, the construction formed from be + Past Participle, is an Auxiliary + Participle aspect, meaning the expression of a new state as the result of a preceding action (whereby, since the passive is intransitive, the subject undergoes a change of state, thus acquiring a semantic role of patient), and whose syntactic behaviour is dependent upon lexical and compositional aspect
It is known that the function of the passive also performs the verb get losing in combined with participle II its lexical meaning and character of the connecting member of the compound predicate and giving the combination of procedural and effective coloring, in contrast to be, giving the combination of the value of the state.
The meaning and use of the verb tenses in the passive voice is the same as the tenses of the verb in the active voice.
In English, transitive verbs as well as some intransitive verbs are used in passive voice. The use of an active or passive form of collateral depends on which the primary component of the proposal we proceed, the same value, but not in all respects completely synonymous, therefore, the presence of both designs is not superfluous.
The choice of passive voice is determined by one of the following reasons: the active subject is unknown or cannot be identified. The active subject can be found out from the context.
When the verb is in the passive voice, most often, you can not specify the person or object that performs the action. For example, «Amy is loved». The problem is, in this case, we don’t know who loves Amy.
Politicians often use a liability intentionally, so as not to specify who commits the action. Ronald Reagan’s famous words about the Iran-contra scandal:»Mistakes were made».
Other examples of using passive voice for political reasons are «Bombs were dropped»or» Shots were fired».
On the other hand, passive voice has its advantages. For example, if you really don’t know who did the action, then you can’t name that person. This is particularly true of reports of crimes. For example, a security guard might write «the museum was robbed» because no one knows who the robber was.
The proportion of passive verbs varies with the type of prose: scientific prose, for instance, may show far more passives than narrative prose. But to point this out is not to denigrate scientific writing. The difference merely reflects the different natures of content, purpose and audience. Sometimes passive voice is used in fiction. For example, if the author writes a detective story and wants to focus the reader’s attention on the stolen cookies, it is best to use passive voice. It is much better to write «The cookies were stolen» than «Somebody stole the cookies». The difference is not so great, but in the sentence «The cookies were stolen» the emphasis is on cookies. In the sentence » Somebody table the cookies «the emphasis will be on the faceless»someone».
Passive voice can be useful when the author wants to create an atmosphere of mystery. Not only is the passive voice a significantly frequent option in modern prose, but it is also often the clearest and briefest way to convey information.
In Jane Eyre are used the be-passives, therefore, the results of the study indicated a need to explicitly teach the basic be-passive voice to English language learners to all English learners.
The given examples from the novel are classical cases of the use of passive constructions for the purpose of presenting a situation as obvious and well-known, without naming responsible for what is happening

Фрагмент текста работы:

Chapter I. Theoretical aspects of evolution of the passive voice in English
1.1. The category of Voice

The verb in English is unique for its grammatical categories. They can describe an action, state or occurrence and form the main part of the predicate of a sentence. Action verbs are the verbs that describe an action or an occurrence whereas linking verbs are those that indicate a state. Sometimes a verb can contain more than one word. So the verb can be described as word denoting action (the term “action” embracing the meaning of activity (to walk, to speak, to play, to study),process (to sleep, to wait, to live), state (to be, to like, to know), relation (to consist, to resemble, to lack) and the like.
Given the meaning of the verb and its role in the sentence, we divide the entire verbal system of the English language into the following components: semantic verbs (notional verbs), service (semi-auxiliary verbs) and auxiliary (auxiliary verbs).
English verbs have four basic forms: indefinite (indefinite), the form of simple past tense (Past Simple), the first participle I present tense (present participle), the second participle II past tense (past participle).
The historical development of the past tense in the English language contributed to the fact that English verbs are divided into two large groups: regular verbs and irregular verbs.
Verbs that perform the role of a predicate in a sentence are verbs in personal form (finish form). They have categories of person, number, aspect, tense, mood and voice. But non-personal forms of verbs in the English language (non-final form) is only part of the compound predicate, as the above categories do not have.
According to form, the verb can be described as a word that has certain grammatical features that are not shared by other parts of speech; they have the category of tense, aspect, voice.
According to the function, it can be defined as a word making up the predicate of the sentence.
According to their functions in sentence verbs can be characterized as a finite forms and the non-finite forms.
Examples of finite verbs in sentences:
• Amanda hates reading.
• Amanda and John hate reading.
• Amanda hated reading when she was in school.
As can be clearly seen from the sentences above, the verb ‘hate’ is our finite verb because it changes its form depending on the number of its subject and tense of the sentence. This is basically what finite verbs are. So, finite verbs are bound by the tense of a sentence.
Examples: They play football.
He plays football.