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