Writing Skill - Rhetorical Device Perspectives

Writing can be considered a social activity. When you write, it is usually for a purpose. Academic writing includes any of the following: research paper, theses, assignments, reports, and it caters to a particular audience. In order to succeed in almost career or degree study, writers have to be able to write to their particular audience and be understood. Knowing who your audience will enable you to decide what to include in your written text, to make assumptions about what they know and what they wish to know.

Being able to write well naturally is rare. One usually has to work consciously to improve writing skills and this may involve studying the ways expert writers create a text. Here, I would like to refer to the writing styles or rhetorical devices used in Jacobs (2003) "Class Reproduction in Professional Recruitment: Examining the Accounting Profession". A good abstract and introduction can capture readers' attention, introduce the present study and show that it is important or needed.  In this paper, the author has used various rhetorical devices to report his research in the abstract and introduction section:

(1) Clear introduction to capture the readers
The author reports the purpose of the research very clear in the first sentence of abstract and introduction section and emphasize the purpose of study. In the abstract, the author brings out the purpose of study in the first sentence "This paper argues..." and lasts sentence "This paper presents an analysis...". In the introduction, the first sentence "This paper explores..." and second sentence "The focus of this paper is..." as well as last sentence "This paper explores..."

(2) Presenting the gap
In the introduction paragraph, the author describes the problem that exists in the field. He further points out the limitation or gap in the field and state how his work can fit into the field. In the first paragraph of the introduction, the author presents the gap "However, the literature on ... suggests that more subtle forms of discrimination and class reproduction can operate."

(3) Fits the purposes of research into an important area of research
In the second paragraph of the introduction, the author demonstrates the mastery of knowledge by highlighting the an important area of research on gender discrimination in the recruitment of accounting profession. The author has cited more than 10 literature to study the background of the issue.

Next, the author has tried and established how the research fits into an important area of research and the significance of the research area on class reproduction in accounting professions. The last sentence of second paragraph points out that "Although discriminatory exclusion on the basis of class in generally assumed, this area has received little consideration,...". In the third paragraph, the sentence "But although class is an important..." leads to the assumption of the relationship between class reproduction and the accounting profession. Further, the author describes two sides of this relationship.

Source: 

Jacobs, K. (2003). Class reproduction in professional recruitment: Examining the accounting profession. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 14, 569-571.