Identify the tone of the passage.

Concept

Tone is the attitude a writer takes towards the subject, and it is read from diction and connotation across the whole text rather than from any single word. The decisive test is which kind of language dominates: steady reporting of verifiable record signals a detached, informational attitude, whereas dismissive, doubting or blame-assigning language signals an engaged, evaluative attitude aimed at the subject or at some agent.

Application

The passage works through the record of lobotomy in order: its purpose (reducing symptoms of schizophrenia, severe depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder), its origin (created in the 1930s by the Portuguese doctor António Egas Moniz), its mechanism (severing connections in the prefrontal cortex), its early popularity in Europe and the United States, its documented harms (major personality changes, trouble thinking clearly, lost emotional depth, permanent disability, death), its decline as understanding of the brain grew, and its replacement by medications developed in the 1950s. Each of these is stated as historical record. The evaluative words that do appear — “controversial”, “crude”, and “outdated and unethical” — are reported as how the procedure is viewed, that is, as settled medical consensus rather than as the writer’s personal grievance, and no person or institution is charged with wrongdoing. The closing sentence draws a general lesson about ethical practice and continuing progress instead of voicing an emotional reaction. Language that reports verifiable record and attributes judgement to accepted consensus is the mark of an objective attitude.

Contrast

• “Indifferent” would require a writer unconcerned with what the procedure cost patients, yet the passage spends a full sequence of sentences on personality change, impaired thinking, lost emotional depth, permanent disability and death, and ends on the need for ethical practice.

• “Sceptical” would require the writer to doubt what is reported, yet the origin, the mechanism, the harms and the shift to 1950s medication are all stated as established history, with no hedging about whether they happened.

• “Accusatory” would require blame directed at a named agent, yet António Egas Moniz is named only as the person who created the procedure, and no doctor, country or institution is held at fault.

Result

Read across the whole text, the passage reports the history of lobotomy as verifiable record and keeps personal judgement out of it, so the author’s tone is objective.