"Received" is the active voice and "were shot" would have been the passive voice. The passive voice is an issue when it's used to conceal the actor, and it can be present when other distancing language is used (like in the most egregious example ever which went something like "bullets found in body of slain bystander believed to have come from gun belonging to sheriff's department armory"), but the active voice can be just as distancing when used in things like "one person dies after officer involved altercation," and the passive voice can be used to center victims so long as the rest of the sentence is accurate like "ten bystanders were injured and one killed by police after officers opened fire wildly on an unarmed, fleeing suspect."
hmmm okay. Deliberately vague language, but not inherently passive voice.
I see where I went wrong - 'I received a bullet wound' is so much more complicated than 'He shot me' and obscures the perpetrator's active role in the violence.
Yeah, and one could probably fill an entire book with all the ways language can be used to obfuscate responsibility or even what actions occurred at all. Intransitive active voice verbs can sometimes mean the same thing as different passive voice verbs that are eliding the actor (example: "he suffered injuries" is the same as "he was injured" and both can leave out who actually did the action or even what the action was beyond someone getting hurt), and even including an actor can be distancing if it's something intermediary between the one actually doing something and the victim (example: grammatically using "bullets" as the actor in explaining what injured someone, as if they simply manifested themselves without human involvement).
Hell if one really wants to get silly with it one can even start eliding the victims as well with things like "injuries happened" or "there were bullet related injuries after the officer related altercation" which become completely empty statements.
I love the passive voice.
Or rather,
The passive voice is loved by me.
Whoa, dude, you don't want to assign any sort of agency to anyone! That's risky. Just leave off the last two words.
the passive voice, loved
Shaka, when the passive love came.
"Received" is the active voice and "were shot" would have been the passive voice. The passive voice is an issue when it's used to conceal the actor, and it can be present when other distancing language is used (like in the most egregious example ever which went something like "bullets found in body of slain bystander believed to have come from gun belonging to sheriff's department armory"), but the active voice can be just as distancing when used in things like "one person dies after officer involved altercation," and the passive voice can be used to center victims so long as the rest of the sentence is accurate like "ten bystanders were injured and one killed by police after officers opened fire wildly on an unarmed, fleeing suspect."
hmmm okay. Deliberately vague language, but not inherently passive voice.
I see where I went wrong - 'I received a bullet wound' is so much more complicated than 'He shot me' and obscures the perpetrator's active role in the violence.
Yeah, and one could probably fill an entire book with all the ways language can be used to obfuscate responsibility or even what actions occurred at all. Intransitive active voice verbs can sometimes mean the same thing as different passive voice verbs that are eliding the actor (example: "he suffered injuries" is the same as "he was injured" and both can leave out who actually did the action or even what the action was beyond someone getting hurt), and even including an actor can be distancing if it's something intermediary between the one actually doing something and the victim (example: grammatically using "bullets" as the actor in explaining what injured someone, as if they simply manifested themselves without human involvement).
Hell if one really wants to get silly with it one can even start eliding the victims as well with things like "injuries happened" or "there were bullet related injuries after the officer related altercation" which become completely empty statements.