Recently, there have been some useful attempts to explore the nature and configuration of the Ph.D. thesis. One particularly instructive study is that of Ridley (2000), who examines a corpus of fifty theses written in different faculties, and analyses them in terms of their internal structure (Ridley, 2000, 60-75). The internal variations in structure observed by the author mark a shift from the more generalisable paradigms prompted by Swales’s (1990) approach to text analysis, and embodied in studies such as those by Dudley Evans (1988) and Hewings (1993). Whilst it is clear that there are readily observable cycles, paradigms and structures in shorter dissertations of the MA type, the Ph.D. generally seems to be characterised by greater freedom and flexibility. Supervisors seem to be less prescriptive in the precise structure and language which needs to be followed by the student, and writing becomes much more of an experiential, rather than predictable process. In short, there seems to be no right or wrong answer (to the students, at least) as to how to construct a Ph.D. thesis, even if an overtly avant-garde approach would alienate the writer from his or her intended discourse community.
A given Ph.D. thesis can easily be analysed in terms of its rhetorical structure, and instruction can be founded on the discoveries made. However, it seems increasingly clear that there are a number of problems in this kind of approach.. These problems might be summarised as follows:
A somewhat different starting point in investigating Ph.D. theses might be Swales and Chang’s 1999 study into informal discourse in academic writing. This study moves away from the more mechanistic text analysis which characterised early studies of genre. Although not overtly concerned with doctoral theses, there are some useful findings here which might inform our understanding of the mode of expression selected by experienced academic writers. For instance, published academic writers may be seen to violate the lexico-syntactic and stylistic rules of formal discourse (for example, they readily use the imperative sentence, the first-person pronoun and the sentence-initial conjunction, as well as short verbless sentences). Swales and Chang argue in favour of raising rhetorical consciousness with regard to these informal elements, though they note that such awareness may complicate, rather than simplify what, to the students, remains a somewhat daunting process.
The purpose of this brief study is to investigate the presence and nature of informal language in Ph.D. theses written at the Warwick Business School. Because of the large number of students studying for Ph.D in the Warwick Business School, it is seen as important to attempt some kind of survey which will lead to improvements in the basic, somewhat general advice that is given to students by writing tutors. Academic business writing does not quite fit the convenient rules that are available, and well known to students. Moreover, academic writing in business studies at doctoral level may be seen to be a particularly individual mode of discourse, standing between the need to be academic and stylish, yet practical and user-friendly. The ‘dual function’ of the business Ph.D. thesis results, perhaps, from the fact that writers have hybrid membership across discourse communities (academic and professional), and tend to move freely between the two. Moreover, companies who sponsor students to do a Ph.D. may well expect practical, and not simply theoretical results. This can sometimes lead to discrepancies in expectation between funding bodies and academic institutions. From mall points of view, it is clearly not enough that a thesis should conform to a perfect academic model. It must have practical applications too.
A random range of 10 theses, written at the University of Warwick between 1997 and 2000 and housed in the Modern Records section of the University of Warwick Central Library were analysed so as to gain an overall impression of the prevalence of informal stylistic devices. The investigation dealt equally with native-speaker and non-native-speaker writing. It was impressionistic, and did not involve computational or electronic analysis of any kind. However, even a cursory investigation of this nature enabled a number of stylistic parallels to be established between the theses considered. A more technical, electronic-based investigation is necessary to ascertain whether such findings are truly generalisable, but in order to do so, a corpus of student writing needs to be established to enable such a search to take place. Plans are currently in place to construct such a corpus. This will remove need to depend on published material for insights into academic writing.
A further, crucial part of the investigation was to ask the students themselves how they felt about their own writing. This enabled a more accurate picture to be established regarding the students’ feelings about the simplified and generalised ‘rules’ which were often provided in in-sessional academic writing classes. Some of these comments, revealing in themselves, can be seen below:
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I have noticed that academic writing also tends to differ from one subject stream to another. I have noted that Business schools or management studies require a different approach to writing than, say, philosophy, mathematics, sciences or even other social sciences. In many ways the style seems to be more informal and user-friendly. I have been to some of your writing for academic purposes classes, but despite knowing the theory I don’t notice any major improvements in my writing. My main problem is convoluted sentence structuring. I need above all to simplify and clarify my ideas. In the business medium there’s a broad variety of jargon and sometimes it is not easy to ‘translate’ that jargon into academic writing. |
As can be inferred from the telling comments above, students are aware that particular stylistic features prevail in a business Ph.D. thesis which cannot conform neatly to the generalisable rules available. Thus, any investigation of academic business genre at Ph.D. level needs to take account of lexical aspects of style, and not only the rhetorical progression of the text. As known rules (see Swales and Feak, 1994, 18-19) become less useful when writing at Ph.D. level, students seem to become all the more conscious of their ability to shape and extend the boundaries of the genre in which they are writing. This may not be an altogether happy experience for the writer. In any event, however, genre might come to be seen as a process, rather than a product. Indeed, if genre is a mode of discourse based on typified forms of communication invoked in recurring situations, new situations always need new rhetorical responses. For some of the weaker writers, this will be seen as a threat rather than an opportunity, but it seems that most Ph.D. writers are in a position to rise to the challenges this creates.
The first stage of this brief investigation was to select a four or five page sample from the introduction of one of the theses, at random, in order to see if it corresponded broadly to Swales’s CARS model (1990): establishing a research territory - establishing a niche - occupying a niche. The moves associated with this piece, concerning the role of corporate responsibility, can be observed in the box below:
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Section of Extract |
Rhetorical function |
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Phase 1 |
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1. Quotation. |
Legitimising. |
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2. Statement of intent (chapter summary) for introduction. |
Signposting for ease of readership. |
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3. Indication of main focus of introduction: to highlight what corporate responsibility is and which areas it encompasses. |
Preliminary definition of CSR |
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4. The role of risk management and its ‘human made’ nature in social responsibility |
Indication of prevalence of the topic. |
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5. Statement of the ‘new stage’ entered into jointly by business, society and government. |
Looking forwards. |
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Phase 2 |
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1. Reference to Table 1, which provides a summary of critical incidents, new standards and initiatives and institutions with regard to social responsibility. |
Provision of information |
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2. Statement of problems of companies becoming involved in social issues. |
Expressions of reservations with regard to the topic. |
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3. Statement of the findings of the Millennium Pool with regard to social responsibility. |
Counter-claim based on documentary evidence. |
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4. Definition of corporate social responsibility. |
Re-aligned definition of CSR. |
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5. Five beliefs by Waters (1995) which show that corporate responsibility is crucial. |
Supporting of definition through literature |
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6. These beliefs clash with traditional values and attitudes. |
Areas of reservation within business culture |
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7. The need for greater social responsibility is attributed to deregulation and globalisation, advances in technology and the increasing power of the consumer. |
Counter-claims to these reservations |
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8. Corporate responsibility is a crucial issue whatever one’s viewpoint about it. |
Statement of importance regardless of claim or counter-claim |
It is not my intention to discuss the moves and cycles in the above analysis in detail. However, even a cursory glance at the structure of this sample reveals that it is by no means unilinear. Rather, the piece is characterised by multiple cycles, and plural, realigned definitions. For example, the preliminary, somewhat hesitant definition of corporate social responsibility in phase one is re-written in phase 2, while in the latter phase, there is a continual and repeated interplay between claim and counter-claim. This structure is far from the neat, predictable research paper structure outlined by Swales and Feak (1994). Rather, this introduction is fluid, and constitutes an attempt to pin down the movements of a topic through the writing process: as it were, to ‘tame’ the material and to mould it to the desire of the writer. Further analyses carried out on other samples would no doubt reveal similar hesitations and uncertainties, but perhaps most of all, the very structures of the theses would be different. Some have longer and more detailed literature reviews; others focus primarily on empirical and ethnographic research. There is clearly no ‘typecast’ or predictable thesis within the business school, so that what seems acceptable is what works for the student.
We can see quite clearly that the textual analysis detailed above, focussing as it does on rhetorical structures, is unlikely to lead to any very meaningful conclusions about the construction of the Ph.D. thesis which could genuinely help students struggling with their own writing. Thus, it might be preferable to focus more overtly on what seems to distinguish the business Ph.D. from other theses in terms of its language use. Here, the same sample of writing analysed above was submitted to a close lexical analysis so as to identify the informal lexical elements within the text. The list of items below is by no means exhaustive, but serves to create an impression of the user-friendliness of the writing and its overtly practical nature. These features might well be items which a writing tutor would ordinarily dissuade a student from using on account of their less formal register, but which appear to be quite acceptable, or even welcomed, in doctoral writing. Many of these elements are identified by Swales and Chang (1999) as being common features of written academic discourse at a higher level:
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Use of -ing Here, risk management is seen as putting social responsibility into practice. Firms changed their strategies to bridging with their environment. Pragmatic structures In answering the question.... Avoidance of tentativity and ‘hedging’ Risk is a systematic way of dealing with hazards. The rise of power of the customer has been unrestrained. Companies that treat the environment with respect in all aspects of their operations have reduced waste output. Dialogue is at the core of ...... Lexical informality The selected highlights of critical incidents...show that something important is going on. Getting involved in ....... can take a company’s eye off the ball. This was all part of ........... Everything that a company does has some knock-on effect. Corporations are very much consumer and employee oriented. Scientific and industrial developments are risks and hazards, the likes of which have never previously been faced. Social risk management improves the benefit side. These ideas seem a little new age. One of the most important things a company can do is to be profitable. Direct questions So what is ........ and what are the implications for business operations? Why bother with ...... if profitability provides jobs and prosperity anyway? |
Many of these features seem to deviate from the kind of generalised advice offered in well known and widely used EAP course materials. It would perhaps be incorrect, though, to describe such a process as calculatingly anti-establishment. Rather, I would like to argue that it is a feature of more sophisticated writing at higher levels within the academic hierarchy. One might not wish to encourage it so widely among first-year undergraduate students who are gradually becoming initiated into the discourse community, but there seems no reason to discourage Ph.D. students from using informal elements, where judiciously chosen. I have heard more than one writing tutor recommend that students be cautious and avoid being too assertive. In one piece of writing skills material I have seen, academic writing is described by the tutor, no doubt in a well-intentioned manner, as ‘dispassionate’. Yet in the model examined, ‘is/are’ are not tempered by modal verbs such as ‘may’ and ‘might’, and there is a voice of confidence which is prepared to ‘call a spade a spade’. Circumlocution is avoided and the writer comes straight to the point. This is reflected in the writer’s use of common business expressions and idioms which might be proscribed in more formalistic studies in the Arts and Social Sciences.
Inevitably, in order to draw any meaningful conclusions from this preliminary research, it would be insufficient to focus merely on individual theses. There are, on the other hand, good reasons for seeing Ph.D. theses as intertextual in nature. Some of these reasons are more intuitive than grounded in detailed research. For example, it is well known that students read not only academic works, but the theses written by their friends and colleagues within departments. Ph.D. theses which have succeeded are stored in accessible form and may be drawn on, consciously or unconsciously, by other readers. One thesis might set the tone for another, and much unconscious influence and borrowing may take place. This notion of intertextuality is also an endemic feature of critical theory in relationship with written texts, and it seems that EAP has much to learn from such insights. Critical theory invokes a potent sense of ‘déjà-vu’ when reading writing, and gives airplay to the idea that there is nothing new under the sun. Eco talks of ‘intertextual frames’ which govern reading (1979). Bakhtin, meanwhile, has suggested that any utterance presupposes the existence of other utterances (1986). In this way, the dynamics of reading becomes related to the dynamics of writing, a procedure aptly summarised by Rimmon-Kenan in her (then_ innovative work on narratology(1983, 159). As Rommon-Kenan notes, making sense of a text requires an integration of its elements with each other, an integration which involves an appeal to various familiar models of coherence.
In the Ph.D. thesis in the business school, intertextuality operates in many different ways, and one could not do justice to the many subtleties of intertextuality in a short paper such as this. The intertextual elements may be subject-based: for example, persistent reference to academic gurus such as Andrew Pettigrew, author of The Awakening Giant (1985) abound. There is clearly a defined corpus of reading, and a business canon, of which students take note. References to jargon in methodology sections such as ‘longitudinal and processual change’ are ever-present to indicate this point. However, here I would like to emphasise more strongly a stylistic kind of intertextuality which might broadly be termed ‘metaphors business students live by’. ‘Metaphors we live by’, a term coined by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have been described by Judith Anderson as ‘a form of psychological and epistemological programming, a mind-set or fixing of perception that is inscribed in language. The programming appears to be culturally specific’ (1996, 22). Even a cursory analysis of Ph.D. theses such as the one undertaken reveals useful insights into how a mind-set is constructed through the repeated use of metaphorical expressions. A few brief examples of these recurring metaphors may be detailed below:
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Business = building and upkeep Total Quality Management resembles a house that requires continual care and upkeep to remain viable. Organizational culture can be thought of as the glue that holds an organization together through shared meanings. Building bridges helps us to visualise what this study understands by ...... Organizational culture can be thought of as the glue that holds an organization together through shared meanings. Pertinent examples are given of this type of structural process in developing the concept of architectural innovation. This is an innovation that follows on from architectural knowledge of the firm. Business = a game of sport New business issues such as globalisation and information technology are identified as drivers for the growing importance of corporate social responsibility. Becoming involved with social issues can inevitably take a company’s eye off the ball and risk a drop in productivity. Business = travel and flight investigation The proposed model opens up the communication process black box by defining choice mechanisms of cognitive and affective goal-based strategies, of message form, and of multi-purpose communication. Opening up the communication black-box brings closer the possibility of developing more specific design guidelines for such systems. The black boxing of the top management team’s activities... These various activities have been black boxed. For the forseeable future, the ......... is unlikely to become just a matter of commerce and business, whether it goes down the route of liberalisation or that of regulation and protection. Business = journalism ...... (CSR) is not chequebook philanthropy. In today’s business parallel, in an increasingly global and contested marketplace, it is the use of means of gaining dominance without mutually destructive price wars that is to be preferred. Business = the environment In three of the six initiatives the idea was initiated and developed in the department outside its natural habitat. |
The metaphors detailed above have in common a self-referential function: in other words they translate the view of the writer about his or her own methodology and allow that procedure to be visualised in human terms. They are personal and colloquial, rather than dispassionate and detached (as one might expect academic writing to be). Some writers consider their research as a journey fraught with difficulties. Others see it as the unravelling of a mystery, such as a flight accident. Still others consider writing as a natural quest, like investigating wildlife, while the overriding nature of research as building pervades several of the theses. Here, Holme and King’s investigation into teaching writing through metaphor (2000) is also of relevance, in particular the parallel drawn between writing and a journey. The authors provide a fascinating insight into students’ evaluation of their own writing. For example, they cite one student as follows:
On a journey we want to reach, for example, a high mountain to view the surrounding landscape whereas we will write an essay to present an argument that enables the reader to get an overview of the chosen subject and to understand its main points (Holme and King, 2000, 127).
In similar vein, in the business Ph.D. it is common in the framework of the study to provide a ‘route map of the data’, while ethnographic research is also likened commonly to ‘story telling’. The informal use of metaphor which underpins the research writer is also present at the level of the paratext itself: the framework of the text (chapter headings, titles, indexes and appendices): neatly formulated expressions here include even the self-consciously poetic phrase ‘the black box of paradox’.
In the article by Diana Ridley already mentioned, there is very useful mention of the need to avoid prescribing patterns to research students without recognising the specificity of their research disciplines and the kind of research that students are doing (2000, 74). The same might be said of the Ph.D. thesis in business studies. Rather than seeing the construction of their theses as a fixed, prescriptive task, it is more useful to see research students (given that they are sophisticated writers within their discourse community) as being able to push outwards and to expand on the limits and boundaries of their own selected genre, demonstrating an element of individualism and creativity. As Swales and Chang indicate, this might cause confusion for the international research student, but it does ultimately allow greater flexibility and new opportunities for the writer.
Perhaps most significantly, however, the findings of this research, albeit preliminary and cursory in nature, point to the limitations of teaching EAP and ESP in large-class settings of the type often prescribed within academic institutions in the UK, and the need, perhaps, to offer students something more, or something different. It is not that EAP classes are not useful in their place, and for the right clientele. However, given the generalisations often propagated benevolently in the form of academic writing instruction, it may seem questionable whether writers at this level of sophistication can really benefit from generalised such language support, and whether an enhanced and more individualised focus on genre and text analysis might lead to better results when students are grappling with the construction of their theses. This is, of course, another argument, another journey.
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