Voice and Information Structure

Voice and Information Structure

Voice and information structure are grammatical systems that allow writers and speakers to control how information is presented and organised within a sentence. They determine which elements are foregrounded, which are backgrounded, and where the emphasis falls. For AQA 7702, understanding these systems is essential because they reveal the choices writers and speakers make about how to frame their messages — and these choices are never neutral.

Active and Passive Voice

Voice describes the relationship between the subject of a clause and the action expressed by the verb. English has two voices:

• Active voice: The subject performs the action — The dog bit the postman.
• Passive voice: The subject receives the action — The postman was bitten by the dog.

The passive is formed using the auxiliary be + past participle. The agent (the doer of the action) can optionally be included in a by-phrase or can be omitted entirely:

• Full (long) passive: The report was written by the committee. — the agent is retained
• Agentless (short) passive: The report was written. — the agent is omitted
• Agentless passive: Mistakes were made. — the agent is deliberately obscured

Key Definition: The agentless passive is one of the most analytically significant grammatical structures because it allows the writer to describe an action without identifying who performed it. This is a powerful tool for evading responsibility, creating impersonality, and de-emphasising agency. It is characteristic of bureaucratic, political, scientific, and legal language.

Effects of Voice Choice

The choice between active and passive voice has important effects on meaning and emphasis:

• Active voice foregrounds the agent — it emphasises who did something. It tends to be more direct, dynamic, and personal.
• Passive voice foregrounds the patient/recipient — it emphasises what was done or who was affected. It tends to be more impersonal and formal.
• Agentless passive removes the agent entirely — it can obscure responsibility, create objectivity, or simply reflect a focus on the process or result rather than the doer.

Consider these different framings of the same event:

• The police shot an unarmed man. (active — emphasises police as agents, attributes responsibility clearly)
• An unarmed man was shot by the police. (passive with agent — emphasises the victim, but retains the agent)
• An unarmed man was shot. (agentless passive — foregrounds the victim, obscures who did the shooting)
• Shots were fired. (agentless passive — removes both agent and specific victim, maximally impersonal)

This analysis of voice choices is closely related to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a framework developed by linguists including Norman Fairclough and Roger Fowler, which examines how linguistic choices reflect and reinforce power relations and ideological positions.

The Passive in Different Registers

• Scientific writing: The passive is conventional because it creates objectivity and focuses on processes rather than individual researchers: The solution was heated to 100°C and was then filtered.
• Legal language: The passive is used to create precision and impersonality: The defendant is hereby sentenced to five years\' imprisonment.
• News reporting: Passive constructions can foreground victims or events while backgrounding agents, especially when the agent is unknown or being protected: Three people were injured in the explosion.
• Political language: Agentless passives are notoriously used to evade accountability: Mistakes were made; Regrettable decisions were taken.

Cleft Sentences

Cleft sentences are structures that divide (cleave) a single clause into two parts in order to give special focus or emphasis to one element. There are two main types:

• It-cleft: It was John who broke the window. (focuses on the agent — contrasts with other possible agents)
• Wh-cleft (pseudo-cleft): What I need is a holiday. (focuses on the complement — emphasises what is needed)