2。2。1 Ideational Function 4

2。2。2 Interpersonal Function 4

2。2。3 Textual Function 4

2。3 The Function of The Passive Voice 5

2。3。1 Ideational Function 5

2。3。2 Interpersonal Function 5

2。3。3 Textual Function 9

3。The Function of Passive Voice in English News 11

3。1 The Metafunction of Language 11

3。1。1 Ideational Function 11

3。1。2 Interpersonal function 11

3。1。3 Textual Function 12

3。2 The use of passive voice in English News 13

3。3 The Function of Passive Voice in English News 14

3。3。1 Ideational Function 14

3。3。2Interpersonal Function 15

3。3。3Textual Function 16

4。 Conclusion 24

5。Reference 26

1。 Introduction

    Jan Svartvik（1983）, one of the famous grammarians all over the world, once did a research on the use of the passive voice in eight common types of English writing。 He compared the frequency of the passive voice in these eight different types of English writing, and lined them according to the frequency of using the passive voice from high to low, and the sequence is: science, news, arts, sports, speech, novels, advertising and play。 From this study we can see that the passive voice is widely used in English news, which is, actually, already widely recognized by the public。 It must be its special function that contributes to its important role。 So the study about the function of the passive voice in the English news will be significant and meaningful。 However, although there already have been many studies in the function of the passive voice in English news, only a few of them analyzed the function from the perspective of metafunction。 Most of them just remain in the word level and inpidual sentence level, which is not enough。 As we all know, every good text has a focus and the whole passage develops surrounding the topic, so actually there is inner connection between the information。 The metafunction of language, proposed by Halliday（1985）, the founder of Functional Grammar, provides a new angle to study the function of passive voice in English news。 From this perspective, the function of the passive voice in English news will be analyzed both in sentence level and context level, which makes the analysis three dimensional。 论文网

    The first part introduces the three functions of metafunction of language。 They are ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function。 The ideational function means language can reflect what happened in the objective world, containing many components such as people, time, place and so on。 It can also reflect the subjective world such as belief and motivation。 And there are three important concepts in ideational function: transitivity, voice and polarity。 They explain how passive voice was made and the types of the passive voice。 Interpersonal function shows the communication between speaker and listener。 And the textual function is that in English language，theme-rheme relationship is always used to connect each sentence into a whole text。   

    In the second part, 36 pieces of news have been collected from three big major English news websites: VOA, CNN, NPR (12 from each), and these 12 news include 2 political news, 2 economic news, 2 military news, 2 science and technology news, 2 literary and sports news, 2 disaster news。 And the percentages of the use of the passive voice are counted, and the result further demonstrated the importance of passive voice in news writing texts。