Throughout the article, aid organizations draw attention to the underlying causes of a worsening global humanitarian crisis. The shift from the active voice in “people are not starving” to the passive voice in “they’re being starved” is meaningful and kicks off the understanding that those starving around the world are victims of external problems, difficulties provoked by conflicts, social inequality, climate crisis and the covid-19 pandemic.

In other words, the passive voice in “they’re being starved” underlines the fact these famished populations are not to blame for their condition. Instead, they are left to endure the effects of a deteriorating scenario, which they alone do not have the power to change.

Similarly, the passive voice plays a paramount role in another online article, published by the American Shakespeare Center. In this example, the author distinguishes her own experience with the media as a white girl being raised in the United States from the underrepresentation suffered by black people in the country.

You should analyze the paragraph observing the structures in bold:

Notice that the author starts her text using the active voice (“I saw myself everywhere”), functioning as the subject of the clause, or the person who does the action expressed by the verb. Within such extract, her own experience serves as an example of how racial representation in the media might lead to a person’s sense of belonging and agency.

However, shortly thereafter she highlights the absence of diversity as an outcome of racism. Such discrimination, in turn, is suffered or received by minority groups (“when a group is underrepresented”/“minority actors are often relegated”). One way of paraphrasing these quotes without changing their meaning would be to claim that, according to the author, certain social groups are affected by the lack of representation in the media.

Likewise, the passive voice is also favored in the extract “the ‘interactions’ provided by [the] media are neither real nor realistic”. In this last one, she sheds light on the interactions rather than on the media, which she holds accountable for the reduced visibility of minorities.

The structure of the passive voice

Before we analyze the structure of the passive voice and look into its elements, read some examples taken from a guide published by BBC (2021) on racism:

Based on the analysis of these examples, we conclude that two main rules are at work in the passive voice:

You can get a visual outlook on how this underlying structure operates below:

Structure of the passive voice.

When choosing the passive rather than the active voice, the focus shifts towards the patient, towards who or what undergoes the action carried out by the agent. After all, the subject in such construction does not perform the action; to the contrary, he or she “is acted upon and is thus passive”, as Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999, p.347) affirm. As for the agent, he or she is usually elicited in a prepositional phrase starting with the preposition “by”.

That is precisely the case of two examples examined earlier in this section:

In both cases, prepositional phrases introduce the agents, those responsible for acting upon the subjects. But if such prepositional phrases are optional as far as syntax is concerned, how do we know whether or not to include them?

According to Angela Downing and Philip Locke (2006), the answer to this question depends on contextual and communicative variables, as well as the choice between active or passive voice. When naming the doer provides a new piece of information for the listener or reader, it is important to insert the prepositional phrase naming the agent after the preposition “by”. This choice is made, for instance, in a BBC article (2021) describing reactions to a report on race published in the UK:

In a nutshell, they condemn the publication for ignoring how racism is still entrenched in the British society. But the fact human rights experts reject the document is not necessarily known by the BBC reader; that explains why this information is added in the prepositional phrase initiated with “by”. According to Downing and Locke (2006), the end-position is a suitable place for the introduction of new data.

The end-position is also appropriate for information that could be long and heavy if placed at the beginning. That principle is condensed by Downing and Locke in the recommendation:

To understand how this rule is worked out in real communication, read the excerpt retrieved from the Los Angeles Times (2020), from an article focused on how significant places for the history of Latin Americans in the US are systematically abandoned:

The same principle is behind the ordering of words in the next example, a quote from James Baldwin, an African American poet and novelist:

Both “by neglect and environment destruction” and “by the teaching of American history” are excessively long to be introduced in the onset and, thus, are adequately placed at the end. The final position is also recommended when the agent is natural phenomena, such as rain, hurricanes, or earthquakes, as you can see in the following example:

But there are plenty of situations in which the agent is completely omitted. That can happen in some cases to highlight another piece of information that the speaker or writer prefers to emphasize in its place. To understand how that functions in actual communication, focus on the following part of James Baldwin’s quote:

When he chooses to omit rather obvious information, he spotlights in its place an argument that emphasizes the racially-biased exclusion of Black people from History classes.

In an article published in the Economist, a similar choice is made by Harj Taggar, a cofounder and CEO at Triplebyte, while discussing racial diversity in the workplace:

Instead of picking a specific agent for the action “represented”, Taggar prefers to focus on the setting (“at companies”), so as to point the finger at a place that lacks racial diversity.

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999), as well as Downing and Locke (2006) provide advice regarding the situations in which agents can be omitted altogether. These recommendations are summarized below with some examples.

As you can see, choosing between the active and the passive voices is not exclusively a matter of syntax, a question of grammar. Instead, structuring ideas within a sentence, selecting what comes first and last or concealing information are decisions that have to do with which meanings we want to privilege and how we intend to impact our readers or listeners.

Another reminder is still important before proceeding: the concepts of tense and aspect.

The aspects are, altogether, simple (also known as “zero”), perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive (CELCE-MURCIA; LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1999). Analyze Chart 4 to understand the differences between tense and aspect.

Different verb tenses – such as the Present Simple, the Present Perfect, Present Progressive, and Present Perfect Progressive, to name a few – result from the interplay between tense and aspect:

The examples shown in Chart 1 above depict the way tense and aspect produce different verb tenses, but all of them are restricted to the active voice, for the subject “I” stands for the doer of the action (“study”). However, this section is especially devoted to the passive voice in the present tense - which necessarily includes the four aspects (simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive). That is why the Chart 2 has been dedicated to detailing how this interplay between tense and aspect comes to life in the passive voice.

Some structures we dealt with in the first section are examples of passive voice in the present tense. Reread the following example and think about the author’s intention concerning time and aspect.

In such example, the author refers to a recurrent situation in the present, as well as to a sort of inevitable consequence of that. These are two major meanings of the present simple: habitual events and factual statements, respectively. We can also perceive that the first one is introduced by a verb in the singular (“is”) in the affirmative form referring to one sole subject (“a group”). The other phrase is in the plural, with the verb “are” agreeing with the subject “members of a group” (two or more individuals).

In order to express a negative connotation in this same tense, one should include the particle “not” after the verb be, also followed by the past participle form of the main verb. It is the case in the following extract, which tackles gender disparities in the fashion industry:

The contracted form “aren’t” previously used tends to designate a more informal tone. The same is true to its singular counterpart: “isn’t”. The image below illustrates the structure of the passive voice in the present simple.

Passive voice and the present simple in the affirmative form.

In order to convert the preceding structure into an interrogative form, we should shift the verb “be” to the beginning of the sentence.

The very first headline tackled in the opening section also includes another example of present tense, but with a continuous aspect:

In structural terms, the core characteristic of the present continuous is the addition of the suffix -ing to the verb be. In relation to meaning, it calls potential readers’ attention to an ongoing action, currently in progress. The same logic applies to structures in the singular, but with the verbs “am” or “is”. Pay close attention to the image below, which describes the elements of the passive voice in the present continuous and compares it to the previous one.

Passive voice and the present continuous in the affirmative form.

Now, observe the way an interviewee expressed himself during a protest against racism in Canada, as reported by CBC News:

Finally, there is the present perfect tense. Despite its name, it is commonly employed to refer to actions that occurred in the past. Nonetheless, there is an important caveat: these actions have consequences in the present. See examples below, taken from a news report by National Geographic on recent manifestations against racist monuments. In which ways can they affect the present?

In the first sentence, the reader is informed of recent events up to then. By the time the article was published, some of the monuments were still toppled. Furthermore, the second describes a historical figure that started being credited for the “discovery” of the American continent years ago and is still granted the same status in education.

In all the previous extracts we can also perceive the same pattern. The affirmatives start with the subject, followed by the auxiliary verbs “has” or “have” along with the form “been” and the main verb in the past participle. Just remember that, in prescriptive grammar, the auxiliary “has” should be used when the subject is in the third person singular (“he”, “she” or “it”). Refer the image below to recall the structure of passive voice in the present perfect.

Passive voice and the present perfect in the affirmative form.

Negative and interrogative forms

How about the negative form of this verb tense? In the following paragraph, a professor of political science makes an analogy between statuses portraying pro-slavery figures of the American Civil War with Nazi German symbologies.

Did you notice that the only structural change in comparison to previous quotes is the addition of “not” after the auxiliary verb? The contracted structure “haven’t” joins “have” with “not”. Moreover, the ending with “yet” indicates that the possibility is still not true.

The last form we will analyze is the interrogative. As in the Present Simple, Present Perfect structures in the interrogative start with the auxiliary verb. This structure was employed by Professor Dr. Gail C. Christopher in a podcast interview about structural racism in the United States:

One can also observe that the question is rhetorical. In other words, it has a tangible answer proposed by the professor herself: racism is not a lie and it is noticeable within American institutions.

The resulting present verb tenses are organized in the chart below:

Let’s practice!

Before we go to the next topic, let’s practice, so that you become more confident!

The passive voice in the past

The objective of this section is to understand how the passive voice operates in the past tense, especially in its three most recurrent aspects (simple, progressive, and perfect). Before we look into its overall structure, read the following example:

The same underlying pattern is found in the next example, taken from an article published by the National Geographic on the protests for the removal of racist symbols and monuments after the murder of George Floyd in the United States. Again, the sparking of the protests took place in the past simple.

The affirmative forms contain the auxiliaries “was” or “were”, depending on the subject (the first for singular, the second for plural). Afterwards, the main verb is once again put in the past participle. In case of negative phrases as “weren’t misconstrued”, we add the negative particle “not” to the auxiliary, resulting in the singular forms “wasn’t” or “was not”, as well as “weren’t” or “were not” in the plural.

Now, examine this image to look into the underlying pattern of the passive voice in the simple past.

Passive voice and the simple past.

Another customary structure is the past progressive, described in Chart 9. Analyze an example found on BBC News about a rally against racism in the US and try to identify the sequence of events that occurred.

Passive voice and the past progressive.

Months later, the same source described the controversies revolving around a report on race in Great Britain, motivated by the previous protests. Read some chunks of the text and try to identify what they have in common.

In relation to structure, every phrase in bold contains the auxiliary “had” right before “been” and the main verb in the past participle. In addition, these phrases refer to finished actions in the past that took place before other past initiatives. In the first sentence, the authors say that first a short version of the report was briefed to the media, then the entire document was made available.

In the second, the journalists state that Britons believed that progress “had been made” before the report was conducted. Finally, they remind possible readers that the Black Lives Matter movement also arose before the report conduction. These sentences provide examples of the past perfect in the passive voice and they follow the rules depicted in the image below:

Passive voice and the past perfect.

A structure alike is the past perfect progressive. In this grammatical possibility, the notion of progress would be achieved with the addition of the suffix -ing to the main verb. For instance, through logic, theoretically we could affirm that “The plan of a commission had been being announced by the prime minister”. Yet, this repetition of the verb “be” may sound redundant and is extremely rare.

You can use the chart below as a reference to recollect and review all these tenses and aspects in the past.

You can see below three examples of passive voice use:

The first two examples were published by National Geographic, in an article discussing racist monuments and recent decisions to demolish them. The first sentence, specifically, refers to a statue of the Italian seafarer Christopher Columbus, known in Western tradition as “the father of the New World”. The second mentions the effort of today’s generation to criticize, challenge and subvert systems of racial oppression erected throughout the course of History. The third, published in the UK’s Daily Mail, alludes to the “green listing” of countries British residents will be allowed to visit during the 2021 summer holidays due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Such predictions on future actions and events in the passive voice are made with the help of “will” followed by “be” and the past participle of the main verb (“placed”, “remembered” and “made”, in the examples provided). You can find this structure illustrated in the image below.

Passive voice and the future simple with will.

This section will now shed light into two aspects, the perfect and the progressive, of the future time.

The future perfect is used every time we refer to a prospective event anterior to another event in the future (DOWNING; LOCKE, 2006). In the following example, retrieved from The Chicago Tribune, two future scenarios for vaccination in the United States are placed side by side. Read the excerpt attentively to identify which action is expected to be completed first.

The next example provides projections made in October 2020 on how these numbers could change in the oncoming months.

Such projection shifts readers’ standpoint to the future and bids them to analyze prospective events that are likely to have already happened by then. In terms of structure, that is done by adding “have” and the past participle of the main verb to “will”, as described in the image below.

Passive voice and the future perfect.

Now that the future perfect has been dealt with, our aim is to spotlight both the meaning and the structure of the future progressive. A particular trait of the progressive aspect is the focus on the ongoing and incomplete state of the action or event described. The example chosen for this specific aspect is a fragment of an interview in which the North American president, Joe Biden, is asked questions on the pace and distribution of vaccines against covid-19 across the country.

When president Biden employs the future progressive in his passive construction, his aim is to underscore the fact that vaccination will be in progress in the future, an emphasis provided by the use of the progressive aspect (be + ing ). To understand the underlying pattern of passive voice utterances with the future progressive aspect, let’s analyze the image below.

Passive voice and the future progressive.

Before you come to terms with the structure presented in the next image, try to identify its components in the following pair of examples:

In the first statement, the United Kingdom’s culture secretary Oliver Dowden predicts that the restrictive measures adopted to halt the spread of the coronavirus are unlikely to be eased very soon. The second provides advice for those longing to run their own companies, drawing their attention to the difficulties they will probably face when they launch a new business. Look into the image below to understand how “be” and “going to” are usually combined with the passive voice.

Passive voice and the future with “be” + “going to”.

To see this structure at work, consider the following examples:

The same pattern can be clearly identified in these passive utterances with “must” and “should”:

In other cases, modals can also be useful to add their meanings to events or actions that happened in the past. To that purpose, do not forget to include “have been” between the modal and the past participle of the main verb, as in the following examples:

The first example exposes doubts on how the soil can be used to soak up our carbon emissions, revealing that such potential may have been overestimated. In other words, it is possible that, in the past, scientists were misled by their optimism and, maybe, plants and forests will not be capable of absorbing previously estimated amounts of carbon.

At last, this section also aims at introducing two alternatives to “be” in the passive voice.

The first option is the verb “get”. Its most distinctive traits have to do with the level of agency it gives the undergoer of the action; that is, when “get” is employed as a substitute for “be”, it implies the idea that the subject is, to a certain degree, involved in the action. According to Downing and Locke (2006, p.256), this agency explains the reason why “she got promoted” differs from “she was promoted” in terms of meaning.

The second alternative to “be” is the verb “have”, whose meaning effects tend to be especially more ambivalent (CELCE-MURCIA, 1999). Put this idea to test and come up with alternative interpretations:

Indirect Speech

Last, but not least, passive structures may appear in indirect utterances, in order to attribute discourses to an individual or groups of people. Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) remind us that this can be done through “direct quotation, indirect speech and paraphrase” (p. 686). The aforementioned grammarians also affirm that such structures are commonly used not only in journalistic productions, but also play a crucial role in the avoidance of plagiarism or misinterpretations in academic papers.

Analyze the headline below and try to reflect upon the journalist’s stance on the event, as well as the syntax chosen:

In the same online article, the reader can infer that Charles had narrated her experience during the recording of the soap opera in her forthcoming autobiography. Notice that such genre is written in the first person singular. However, when the journalist reports the actress’ memoir, he shifts to the third person.

Apart from tense shifting, you may also have noticed in the table before that reported statements might include other slight changes. Such alternations may occur in both demonstrative and personal pronouns (e.g. from “this” to “that”) or in time and place adverbs (e.g. “yesterday” becomes “the day before”). In either case the points of reference in time are changed along with the tenses.