What does the writer mean by the stifling tyranny of the passive voice?
Answers
Well, 'stifling' means kinda like suffocating per se, and 'tyranny' means 'cruel and/or oppressive'.
I'm assuming that the writer is trying to say that they think that the passive voice is slightly tyrannical; and if you think about it, it really is — in the passive voice, the subject undergoes the action of the verb. So the writer is basically saying that it's a bit suffocating and tyrannical to put a subject under such torture. However, the writer could also mean that when writing, it's like we're forcing the subject to go under the action of the verb; like when we're writing, we being suffocatingly tyrannical to the subject by forcing them to do what we want.
I'm so sorry about my roundabout answer!
What I was trying to say is this: The writer is saying that the passive voice is suffocatingly tyrannical as when we write, we are forcing the action of the verb onto the subject.
Again, I apologise for the roundabout first paragraph; that's just my thought process.
Hope I helped though!
Answer:
the speaker uses this phrase because he feels that the passive voice is very formal and rigid in structure. He refers to the passive voice as tyrant because of the ceremonies and difficult nature of its usage