For your essays

Re our conversation about rigour in the research and analysis

In Taylor’s (1989) book on writing in the arts and social sciences, he suggests that the following different approaches offer a range of academically legitimate ways to engage with published work.

•   Agree with, accede to, defend, or confirm a particular point of view.

•   Propose a new point of view.

•   Concede that an existing point of view has certain merits but that it needs to be qualified in certain important respects.

•   Reformulate an existing point of view or statement of it, such that the new version makes a better explanation.

•   Dismiss a point of view or another person’s work on account of its inadequacy, irrelevance, incoherence or by recourse to other appropriate criteria.

•   Reject, rebut or refute another’s argument on various reasoned grounds.

•   Reconcile two positions that may seem at variance by appeal to some ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ principal.

•   Develop an existing point of view, perhaps by utilising it on larger or more complex datasets, or apply a theory to a new context

(Adapted from Taylor 1989:67)