Writers of scientific articles are familiar with the advice to avoid using the passive voice. Prescriptivists argue that the passive leads to bloated, indirect, and even evasive writing, and they recommend that the active form be used instead. This article defends the passive voice against these charges and argues that this advice is misguided. The article begins with a summary of the passive construction and the diversity of its forms, many of which are not appreciated in discussions of the passive voice's purported flaws, and is then followed by a summary of why some prescriptivists criticize its use. Three motivations for the use of the passive voice based on findings from psycholinguistic research are then described: First, the passive form allows writers to maintain topic continuity and conform to the given-new principle of communication; 2nd, speakers use the passive voice to accommodate concepts that are accessible; and 3rd, passive sentences are not communicatively equivalent to actives, and therefore active sentence paraphrases will sometimes distort the writer's message. An additional problem with the advice to avoid passive sentences is that people have trouble correctly identifying them and tend to rely on superficial cues that often diagnose other irrelevant grammatical constructions. Just as rules against split infinitives, stranded prepositions, and the singular they have been abandoned, so too should the prohibition against the passive voice. Instead of shunning a perfectly grammatical and useful construction, writers should strive to generate prose that is clear and elegant, using all the linguistic tools at their disposal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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为被动语态辩护。

科学文章的作者熟悉避免使用被动语态的建议。规定主义者认为被动会导致臃肿、间接甚至回避的写作，他们建议改用主动形式。本文为反对这些指控的被动语态辩护，并认为这种建议是错误的。文章首先总结了被动式结构及其形式的多样性，其中许多在讨论被动语态的所谓缺陷时并未受到重视，然后总结了为什么一些规定主义者批评其使用。然后根据心理语言学的研究结果描述了使用被动语态的三个动机：首先，被动语态允许作者保持话题的连续性并符合既定的新交流原则；2、说话者使用被动语态来容纳容易理解的概念；第三，被动句在交际上并不等同于主动句，因此主动句释义有时会扭曲作者的信息。避免被动句的建议的另一个问题是人们难以正确识别它们，并且倾向于依赖通常诊断其他不相关语法结构的表面线索。正如反对分裂不定式、搁浅介词和单数的规则已被放弃，禁止被动语态也应如此。与其回避一个完美的语法和有用的结构，作家应该努力写出清晰优雅的散文，使用他们可以使用的所有语言工具。（PsycINFO 数据库记录 (c) 2020 APA，