Comparative Analysis of Voices in Professional and Popularized Legal Texts

Abstract

Abstract

Verbs generally take two forms (active or passive) depending on whether the logical or grammatical subject occupies the subject position. The message that the author intends to put across is equally affected by whether the logical subject occupies the subject position or the grammatical subject. The choice of which one occupies the subject position depends on the authors’ emphasis or informational prominence. It is on this premise that this paper attempts a comparative analysis of voices in professional and popularized legal texts. Being a corpus based analysis; a descriptive approach was adopted as a method of investigation. The outcome of the analysis of the texts in the corpus revealed that active voice is used more frequently in the professional legal texts than the popularized counterpart. The active voice was found suitable drawing statutes, contracts and regulations. Active voice identifies the actor or performer of the action of the verb. The passive voice on the other hand was used frequently in both categories of text. Active obscures the actors in legal documents and puts emphasis on the information. The study has shown that the application of either the active or passive voice in legal writing depends on point of emphasis technically referred to as informational prominence.