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

Application: metatext
Ask your student to look at their sample thesis for examples of the kind
of metatext described above. In what other ways do thesis writers ‘talk
about their text’?
Bunton (1999) discusses further ways in which thesis and dissertation writ-
ers talk about the organization of their texts. He groups these as previews,
overviews and reviews. Previews look forward in the text: they anticipate what
will come in the text, and may summarize or refer to a later stage of the
text. A preview may refer to the thesis as a whole, a chapter, a section of the
text, a paragraph or a sentence in the text. The following, from the previous
extract, is an example of a preview which refers to a chapter that is yet to
come in the text: ‘The chapter which follows will present the theoretical
framework for the study’.
Overviews may look in both directions, forward or backward in the text.
They may also refer to the current stage of the text, in overall terms. They may
refer to a whole chapter or a section of the text. The following is an example of
an overview. It describes the contents of the present chapter, in overall terms.
The purpose of this chapter has been to test the findings of the first stage
of the study as well as submit the texts analysed in the first stage of the
study to a contrasting analytic perspective. It has also presented an analy-
sis of a number of specific purpose texts as a demonstration of how the
framework described in Chapter 4 can be applied to provide an explana-
tion of genre assignment. This chapter has also investigated the
relationship between frames and language. Finally, it has reached a num-
ber of conclusions based on this further stage of the study.

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The overall shape of theses and dissertations
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Reviews look back, repeat, summarize or refer to an earlier stage of the text.
The following example, from the second chapter of a thesis on barrister–client
interactions, is an example of a review. It is then followed by a preview.
The previous chapter of this study described the background to the
study, including reference to other research in legal settings. It also
described the aspects of conversation analysis which will be drawn on
for this study. Those aspects of investigation, further, were placed
within an ethnomethodological framework. The chapter also described
the focus of the research and its conceptual framework. Finally it
defined the scope, design and limitations of the study and the concepts
and terminology employed.
This chapter presents information relating to the method of data col-
lection and analysis of that data. It describes the physical setting of the
interactions, the participants in the interactions and, further, the purpose
of the interaction.
(O’Shannessy 1995: 19)