Econ_May_26

76 Books and arts

The Economist

May 26th 2018

ing that credit for his play “should also go

to the current government”. It is certainly

true that until recently Mr Munganasa

would never have got awaywith a show in

which an actor bounces around hunch-

backed in imitation ofMrMugabe.

But not all Zimbabweans are convinced

Mr Mnangagwa will be much better than

the man he replaced, or that Zanu-

, the

ruling party, has changed. “This is defi-

nitely not a new Zimbabwe, it’s the same

old dudes,” says Mr Monro. One of his col-

leagues, Mukudzei Kandoro Majoni, or

“King Kandoro”, fears there is “too much

relaxation” among creative types, which

might enable backsliding by the authori-

ties. After all, jokes about the old president

don’t hurt his successor; if anything, they

are a distraction from the fact that the pre-

sent government seized power in a coup.

So far, tolerance for attacks on the new

rulers has not been tested. Though de-

clared unconstitutional in 2013, a law

against mocking the president remains on

the statute books and Mr Mnangagwa has

supported keeping it. Laws restricting re-

porting are still in force; all plays must still

be censored by geriatric party officials.

MrMajoni compares being a comic to a

“Sahwira”, a traditional Shona figure who

is a bit like a Shakespearean fool: “He’s

somebodywho comes out and sayswhat’s

really up.” The best hope for that indis-

pensable role is that it will be difficult for

Mr Mnangagwa to stop what has started.

The jokes have already spread far and

wide. Thoughmanyprices are goingup, in-

ternet connections are getting cheaper.

Even in the countryside everyone has to

have a mobile phone, not least to make

payments, because there is scarcely any

cash left. When the authorities tried to de-

molish part of the Magamba Network’s of-

fices, hundreds of protesters resisted. Once

themockery starts, can it end?

N MAY 14th, as Palestinians massed

at the Gaza Strip’s border, Israeli sol-

diers firedon them, killingaround 60peo-

ple. Shortly afterwards, the

New York

Times

tweeted: “Dozens of Palestinians

have died in protests as the

prepares to

open its Jerusalem embassy.” Social me-

dia went ballistic. “From old age?” was

one incredulous reply. #HaveDied quick-

ly became a hashtag campaign.

The fault was soon laid not only at the

door of the

Times

, but at a feature of Eng-

lish grammar. As GlennGreenwald, a left-

wing journalist, put it, “MostWesternme-

dia outlets have become quite skilled—

through years of practice—at writing

headlines and describing Israeli massa-

cres using the passive tense so as to hide

the culprit.” His viewwas retweeted over

5,000 times and echoed by other critics.

The problem is that the

Times

’s tweet

was not passive. “Have died” is the verb

“to die” in the active voice and the perfect

tense. Ironically, manypeople, in “correct-

ing” the

Times

’s supposed passive, re-

placed the active “have died” with a pas-

sive alternative, such as “Dozens were

shot by Israeli troops.”

English and most other European lan-

guages have both an active voice (

Steve

kicked John

) and a passive (

John was

kicked by Steve

). Style manuals, including

The Economist

’s, generally deprecate the

passive voice. It is longer, for one thing.

For another, it is often found in heavy aca-

demic and bureaucratic prose. Inexperi-

encedwriters tend to over-use it.

But critics of the passive often confuse

two different things: syntax and seman-

tics. Syntax has to do with the mechanics

of putting a sentence together. In

Steve

kicked John

, Steve is the subject and John

is the direct object. But in

John was kicked

by Steve,

John is now the subject, even

though he is still the kickee, and Steve is

still the kicker.

To diagnose what readers did not like

about the

Times

’s summary, you need se-

mantics, not syntax; the description of

meaning, not form. In both the active and

passive sentences above, Steve is the

“agent” and John is the “patient”, in the jar-

gon of semantics. Flipping their syntactic

form does nothing to their semantic role.

There is one big wrinkle. Only in the pas-

sive can the agent be omitted entirely (

John

was kicked

). That is another reason for the

passive’s bad rap.

In the case of “have died”, though, nei-

ther patients nor passives come into it.

die

is an intransitive verb. Intransitive

verbs have no direct object (you can’t say

Steve died John

). There is no patient. For the

same reason, there is no passive format all.

You can’t say

Johnwas died by Steve

So what the critics really meant is that

the

Times

erred in using an intransitive

verb. This is, in fact, an unfortunate choice.

When gunshots land, someone shoots

and someone is shot, two roles, a subject

and an object, an agent and a patient, in

any reasonable description. Journalists

are often told to report “who-what-when-

where-why” in headlines and first sen-

tences. In cases like this they really need

“who-

whom

-when-where-why.”

But merely reporting the full facts ac-

curatelydoes not save journalists fromes-

pousing a point ofview. “Soldiers kill doz-

ens of protesters” has a very different feel

from “Dozens of protesters killed by sol-

diers”, even though they describe the

same proposition. The first seems to point

the finger more squarely at the soldiers;

the second highlights the victims.

And this is to say nothing of word

choice. Both active and passive forms can

give the victims’ perspective, with active

verbs like “Soldiers massacre protesters”

or passive formulations such as “Protes-

ters gunned down by army”. The same

goes for the other side: “Soldiers shoot ri-

oters”, say, or “Rampaging mob turned

back fromborder”.

So the passive can be clear and the ac-

tive can be a dodge. Words are more im-

portant than grammar. And no matter

what their sympathies, reporters have a

duty to give all the relevant facts. Head-

lines and the openings of stories are espe-

cially important. Nobody gets them right

every time, but subeditorsmight consider

letting enormous font-sizes shrink to ac-

commodatemore information.

As for the armchair grammarians: it is

time to give attacks on the (mostly blame-

less) passive voice a rest. If critics want to

decry shoddy headlines, the internet has

offered alternative culprits: “evasive

voice” goes well with “active” and “pas-

sive”. But since this is not really a feature

of grammar at all, consider another popu-

lar suggestion—“weasel voice”.

Weasel words

Johnson

Grammar is not to blame formealy-mouthed journalism