AKA:

Examples

Dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is news. (active voice)

Man is bitten by dog; dog is bitten by man. (passive voice)

🧾Definition

Many English verbs, especially action verbs, can be written in the active voice or the passive voice. In the active voice, the subject of the verb is also its Agent: the participant that does the verb. In the passive voice, the Agent is moved out of the subject position, and the subject is the Goal (the patient in traditional grammar, the participant that the verb acts upon) or less often the Recipient (the participant that receives the action of the verb). This is all much easier to demonstrate than to explain:

Notice that:

• the functions of the words don’t change because the literal meaning of the sentences does that change (SFL calls this the experiential meaning)
• the Agent is optional in the passive voice; it moves to the by phrase and is usually omitted
• the form of the verb changes from gives (action) to is given (passive) -- be (in any tense) plus the past participle
• each sentence has a different subject, which has a different effect; this especially affects the cohesion, or flow, of the text (SFL calls this the textual meaning)

Here’s an easy way to identify the passive voice: if you can add by zombies* to the verb, then it’s passive; otherwise, it’s active:

• A battle was fought (by zombies —>passive!).

• OK, you can add by anything, but zombies are much more memorable.

🔬Discovery

✅Form

The passive is formed using be in any tense as the auxiliary verb + the past participle. In practice, the passive is only commonly found in a small number of tenses and forms: