Make\u00a0critical arguments that account for why a well known \u00a0key\u00a0text or theory is not pertinent to your research. Do not just omit a key area and hope your overall argument makes it obvious why you are not discussing X or Y seminal idea or text. By making a critical argument and referring to the text\u00a0you let the reader know, by\u00a0\u2018showing\u2019 not \u2018telling\u2019, that you understand that text, that you know it exists.\u00a0If done well, this means the reader does not need to question further any\u00a0apparent \u2018omission\u2019 of key thinkers later in the thesis.<\/p>\n
This is part of good research writing practice for your PhD, what I often refer to as “relaxing the reader, the examiner”. In this case, by concisely explaining why an apparently key text is not central to your Literature Review, you stop the examiner making a note and wondering whether you have worrying gap in your knowledge.\u00a0Do this in one or two sentences. These should acknowledge and summarise the role of that text or theory, very briefly. Other knowledge domains may be omitted because you “can’t cover everything” and they are not central enough to the domains you are covering. In such cases, again, reassure the reader that you know your stuff, that you DO know about that domain. Explain why it is not coming into your thesis, which again adds to your credibility as a scholar. End that couple of sentences with a statement such as, “it is therefore beyond the scope of this research to discuss X further.” This applies to all disciplines and the example below, while conversational in tone. illustrates why eliminating areas is good for you as a researcher.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt CERN, there was a video where a particle physicist was asked \u201cWhat if you\u00a0don\u2019t find the Higgs Boson? What if you\u2019re wrong about this?\u201d and he thought\u00a0that would be brilliant, because then they\u2019d know a whole area they could\u00a0block out and go OK, not this, but how about this?\u201d<\/p>\n
James Bridle, http:\/\/booktwo.org\/notebook\/sxaesthetic\/<\/a><\/p>\n As an examiner, if I have to read through the thesis and ‘guess’ why X or Y key thinker has been omitted I question the depth and breadth of the work being presented. If I am told clearly early on, with a convincing argument, I have one less question for you at the Oral Examination and this contributes to me believing\u00a0that you know your stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Make\u00a0critical arguments that account for why a well known \u00a0key\u00a0text or theory is not pertinent to your research. Do not just omit a key area and hope your overall argument makes it obvious why you are not discussing X or Y seminal idea or text. By making a critical argument and referring to the text\u00a0you … Continue reading The Literature Review – critical argument to rule out key texts from further discussion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neuro-memento-mori.com\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}