International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2013, Vol. 5, No. 4 www.macrothink.org/ijl 22 A Functional Analysis of the Passive Structure in Persian Bahram Hadian (Corresponding author) PhD student in Linguistics, The University of Isfahan, Iran PO Box 8156166646, Isfahan, Iran Tel: 98-913-105-2606 E-mail: bah_hadian@yahoo.com Manoochehr Tavangar-rizi Department of Linguistics, The University of Isfahan, Iran Tel: 98-311-793-4217 E-mail: tavangar@fgn.ui.ac.ir Mohammad Amouzade Department of Linguistics, The University of Isfahan, Iran Tel: 98-311-793-4217 E-mail: amouzadeh@fgn.ui.ac.ir Received: May 11, 2013 Accepted: July 3, 2013 Published: August 25, 2013 doi:10.5296/ijl.v5i4.3681 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v5i4.3681 Abstract This paper investigates the frequency of occurrence of the passive structure in two registers of Persian, i.e. short story and scientific articles, regarding their information structure. The quantitative and qualitative study of the data shows that the occurrence of the passive is much more frequent in scientific articles than in short stories. By undertaking a contrastive analysis of the samples, and considering criteria such as agent-orientation and information load of sentences in the two registers, it can be concluded that, in order to observe the principle of objectivity (which is integral to scientific researches and writings) writers tend to use passive sentences frequently, since traditionally, the passive is considered as one of the principal means of achieving impersonality and objectivity in a text, as it enables the removal of any explicit agency. On the other hand, in comparison with the short stories, in the scientific