Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: a handbook for Supervisors

The audience for theses and disser tations
A further issue that students should consider is the intended audience for their
thesis or dissertation, their readers’ role and purpose in reading their text, how
their readers will react to what they read, and the criteria they will use for
assessing their text. For example, are the students writing for academics in the
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Introduction

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field, for their examiners, or for their supervisor? And who counts most in judg-
ing whether their text meets the requirements of their particular area of study?
Theses and dissertations are typically written for a primary readership of
one or more examiners. In some cases the student’s supervisor may be one of
the examiners and in other cases they may not. If the supervisor is not one of
the student’s examiners, they will be a secondary reader of the student’s text,
not a primary one. This difference between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ reader-
ships (Brookes and Grundy 1990) is significant, and is often not immediately
obvious to students. In the case of thesis and dissertation writing, it is the pri-
mary reader that is the final judge as to the quality of the student’s piece of
work, rather than the secondary reader. As Kamler and Threadgold (1997:
53) point out, a dominant or ‘primary’ reader within the academy, ‘quite sim-
ply counts more than other readers’ (such as friends, learning advisors and
anyone else the student shows their text to). It is important, then, for stu-
dents to consider the expert, ‘all-powerful reader’ of their texts who can either
accept, or reject, their writing as being coherent and consistent with the con-
ventions of the target discourse community (Johns 1990) and how they will
(potentially) read their text.