Rhetorical analysis of ‘Class Reproduction in Professional Recruitment: Examining the Accounting Profession’ by Kerry Jacob

Particular, or in particular

In the first paragraph of the introduction section, the word ‘particularly’ or the phrase ‘in particularly’ are used several times. It seems to be a good way to (1) show which area the paper is going to contribute to, and (2) narrow down from the broad area to a niche and hence introduce the research topic.

Be polite and show respect to authors of prior studies

Identifying the gap in prior literature requires researchers to be critical as well as confident. The voice that ‘they are idiot’ should always jump out. However, researchers do need to show their respect to authors of prior studies (as they will also be thought as idiots by the following researchers). As reflected in Kerry’s work, one way to criticise previous works while being polite at the same time is to say something like ‘this paper extends prior studies on…’, or alternatively, to say like ‘While issues of … have been considered in the accounting literature, … (which is the topic of the paper) is relatively under-explored’ (p. 569). If got sufficient space, one can even extend the above expression into several sentences. Kerry uses ‘There has been some effort in the accounting literature to…’ to show both his politeness (p. 570). He then goes on to say ‘…the issue of …has not received the same level of attention’ (p. 570) to show his brightness.

Importantly, the aforementioned method to show both politeness and brightness also helps to signal the significance of the current study as it summaries what have been done in prior studies and articulates the gap in literature. Therefore, it suits well in the abstract, introduction and also the literature review section.

Introduce prior research works and the gap

Kerry seems be keen to use ‘historical’ to signal that he is going to talk about documented findings. For example, he writes ‘within the historical literature it is clear that…’ (p. 569), and ‘Historically it is clear that…’ (p. 570). One can then talk about what is not clear in the literature or what the difficulties are if one is going to apply the findings in literature to the settings of the current study.

Another way to introduce the gap is to say something like ‘Although / While…. (something positive), followed by a comma, and then goes on to express the main idea which is the critique of literature.