# 15. Linguistic manipulation ## 15.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 15.5.4. Syntactic manipulation #### 15.5.4.2. Active or passive voice Switching between the active and passive voice can alter the apparent role of a participant by moving the actor between the background and foreground of a sentence. For instance the following two sentences convey different senses: (1) Police shot blacks dead as meeting turned to riot. (2) Blacks shot dead by police as meeting turned to riot. Obviously the first of the two phrases is more direct, blaming the police for the deaths, whereas the second mentions the police as a matter of secondary importance.