The contents page typically shows two, three or even four lit-
erature review chapters (sometimes even more); followed by a
pretty boring or predictable methods chapter; then only three
to four chapters of detailed substantive, applied or empirical
work; and last a very brief concluding chapter. A rather cruel
précis of the ‘subtext’ message this pattern conveys to readers
would go like this:
Hi – this is the story of what I did during my doctorate.
When I began I was a bit confused about what topic to pick.
So I undertook a really big, broad literature review in order
to bring myself and my supervisor up to speed on a field of
possible topics. I wrote this up as a long chapter to get me
through assessment by my department at the end of the
first year. After that I narrowed the topic down a lot more
and did an exhaustive literature review on a bit of the field
where I thought I could do better than previous authors.
Next I worked a great deal on my research methodology [or
whatever ‘techy’ bits the research involved – for instance,
I did a lot of searching for and accessing archives / I col-
lected a lot of numbers / I translated a big text / I devised
a framework for doing a content analysis / etc.].
At last, mid-way through my second or in my third year
I went out into the field and got my hands dirty doing
empirical research [or it may be, I went and sat in foreign
libraries or an archive for a year / I analysed my numerical
data over and over / I interviewed a lot of people / I did
experiments in the labs]. At this point I discovered that
things in the outside world [or, the archive documents /
the library materials / the interview tapes / the computer
databases / the test tubes] are pretty confusing and hard to
make sense of. The results I got did not really support what
I had expected to find, [or sometimes, did not seem to have
any recognizable pattern at all]. Because I was puzzled, and
a bit at a loss, I wrote several long chapters setting out in
raw detail much of what I’d actually discovered, and trying
to make preliminary sense of these findings.
By now I’d almost used up my word limit, my PhD
finances were running low, and I was becoming jumpy that
I’d never make it into the academic job market. So I pushed54 ◆AUTHORING A PHD