Authoring a PhD

particular work undertaken in a wider context of scholarly
endeavour. In a ‘big book’ thesis the most important signalling
elements are a review of the previous literature, and one or
more theoretical chapters. In any research dissertation or paper
readers look very carefully at the author’s own statements of
what their study will accomplish. Readers become disappointed
when authors do not give any indications of what is to come in
later chapters, sections or paragraphs; or signal that something
will arrive and then it never does; or deliver something differ-
ent from what was signalled; or draw them into spending time
on a project which turns out differently from what they
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thought. Each of these outcomes makes readers worry: perhaps
the author does not know what she thinks, does not under-
stand the topic she has set out to tackle? The implication soon
follows: perhaps this book or article is not worth my time or
attention? For thesis examiners or a dissertation committee this
feeling may very easily spill over into: maybe this thesis does
not meet the standard that a doctorate should? Hence for
PhD students, more than for most authors, these are dangerous
thoughts to engender.
Authors can often create readers’ expectations inadvertently,
without intending to do so. Doctoral theses and academic
research papers commonly start with some level of literature
review. It is quite common for beginning students to wax lyri-
cal in these sections about the limits or inadequacies of previ-
ous research in their field. Most people write literature reviews
early on, often before fully appreciating the difficulties of grap-
pling with research materials and extracting useful or interest-
ing information from them. Hence it is easy to get carried away
by a conviction that using different methods or a new theoret-
ical approach will generate much more illuminating results. But
if you make some strong criticisms of earlier work, what impact
does this have on readers? It tends to generate an expectation
that your own research will be much better than what has gone
before. After you have searchingly exposed what was wrong in
previous studies, readers must believe that you are confident of
being able to transcend those limitations. Hence every criticism
you make can build a difficult threshold for your own research
to surmount. Cumulatively the effects of overenthusiastic cri-
tique can be disabling.
Similarly, academic readers will pick up dozens of small
pointers from the way that you write text, which will engender
expectations about what you are trying to do. For instance, how
you label schools of thought in your discipline, and how you
then describe your own work, will cue readers to where you
stand in the subject’s intellectual currents, who you are aligned
with and who you are opposed to. Many commentators have
detected tribalist tendencies amongst academics, such that they
must cluster into schools of thought and create possibly fake
factional conflicts amongst themselves. Others lament a pro-
prietorial instinct that leads to a constant differentiation of
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positions. Charles Caleb Colton observed wryly: ‘Professors in
every branch of knowledge prefer their own theories to the
truth; the reason is that their theories are private property, but
the truth is common stock.’
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Yet some aspects of academic differentiation and cue-giving
are not just extraneous elements. Labels and jargon are great
time-saving devices in academic life, just as they are in ordinary
existence. If I can say to you, ‘Dolly Parton is a