This study examined givenness in discourse via passive constructions in research articles. While it is commonly held in grammar books and grammar classes that the passive voice is the counterpart of the active voice, the present study argues that Argument movement in passive constructions can act as a syntactic device contributing to sound semantic relations between sentences and to a smooth flow of discourse. The data collected to support this view consisted of 12 applied linguistics articles. The first dataset was from the international journal "System." It included 6 research papers whose authors were affiliated with USA or UK higher education institutions. The second dataset was from "Pasaa Paritat Journal," a Thai academic journal. It included 6 research papers whose authors were Southeast Asian scholars, affiliated with Southeast Asian higher education institutions. A total number of 144 tokens of passive constructions was collected. The data analysis went through three stages: a syntactic identification and quantification of passive sentences, an inferential statistical analysis, and a close reading of illustrative excerpts, mainly from the Thai Journal. The syntactic identification of passive constructions was based on transformational generative grammar. The inferential statistical analysis used "Pearson Correlation." The results of the statistical analysis showed a significant relation between passive constructions and givenness in international applied linguistics research articles where the p-value was 0.010. No statistically significant relation was found between passive constructions and givenness in the Southeast Asian applied linguistics research articles, where the p-value was 0.064. The study also revealed that international academic writers used raised DP in passive constructions as a syntactic cohesive device more often and with more variation than academic Southeast Asian writers. The close reading of excerpts from the Southeast Asian data revealed substantive aspects of indirectness, misconnection, and circularity in the development of ideas. The paper contends that the study of passive constructions realising intersentential giveness can contribute to the improvement of learners' and novice academics' writing skills. It can also open up fresh paths for applied linguistics research.