The Past Exonerative Tense

Back in college (shortly after the earth cooled, according to my funny coworkers), I majored in Linguistics - the science of language. I've always found language and communication to be fascinating; the fact that I can speak and write and you can understand is one of the most amazing marvels of the evolution of the human mind and body. And because I find language so fascinating, its use (and abuse) are at the root of many of my observations about current events.

Yesterday I was listening to a reporter on the radio explain the furor over the firing of eight US Attorneys for what appear to be purely political reasons. The reporter, noting the Attorney General's statement that "mistakes were made," commented on Mr Gonzalez's use of the passive voice and laughingly referred to his statement as being in the past exonerative tense.

Those of you less fascinated with language than I probably suffer from glazed eyes during discussions of verb forms. Past, present, future, perfect, imperfect, active, passive, transitive, intransitive, reflexive - who cares? Actually, you do, but you don't think about it in normal conversation because your brain processes it all without any effort on your part. But let's talk for a minute about the passive voice, the exonerative tense, because it's very important to your understanding of the political drivel that gushes from Washington every day.

When you speak in the active voice, your listeners know that the subject of the sentence performed some action. If I say "I made a mistake," there's no doubt in your mind who made the mistake - I did. If, however, I resort to the passive voice and say "Mistakes were made," who was responsible? Was it me? My next-door neighbor? Some unpatriotic and obstructionist Democrat/Republican? The Attorney General? The President? You don't know...and in Washington, not knowing can be every bit as important as knowing for sure...just for different reasons.

The passive voice can be used to obscure discourse, confuse issues, and deflect responsibility. It's the exonerative tense because it protects actors from owning up to the consequences of their actions - a mistake was made, but since we don't say who made it, nobody has to be held responsible. The Attorney General could have said:

"I fired these people because their performance was not up to standards;" or,

"I fired these people because they were not sensitive to the political implications of some of their cases;" or,

"I don't know exactly why these persons were fired, but I'll find out and let you know."

But he ducked the issue by resorting to the passive voice and simply saying that "mistakes were made." He didn't say, "I made a mistake by firing these people for inappropriate reasons;" or "I was wrong because I didn't ensure that proper procedures were followed." He said only that "mistakes were made." We don't know who made them, why, or what the consequences will be.

The passive voice has a perfectly proper role to play in communication, but it shouldn't be to protect the guilty. The passive as the exonerative tense doesn't belong in anyone's grammar...especially if they're holding positions of great public trust. We're not linguistic fools, and we deserve better.

You are wished a good day. More thoughts will be published later.

Bilbo