Identifying a writer's stance & perspective

• "Stance" literally refers to where you stand - your position, argument or thesis. In reviewing other work, you need to make it clear to the reader if your attitude is positive or negative. Often this decision is influenced by your ‘perspective’:
• "Perspective" - the angle or viewpoint you take on the text. A reviewer's discipline, or theoretical position, is likely to influence their reaction to a text - i.e. their ‘stance’

So why are literature reviews often called ‘Critical Reviews’?

• Taking a "critical" approach usually means getting ‘underneath’ the texts to identify - or at least try to interpret - the stance & perspective of the writer.
• You are expected to present the reader with views on a problem or issue either
  1. from different perspectives, or at least
  2. which emphasise different aspects of an issue or problem.

If you fail to do this, it suggests either that:

• you are reviewing a subject or topic (a bit like a lecture or textbook does) rather than people's ideas about a subject/topic, or
• the topic has not been studied, or been considered worth studying - that it is non-controversial and therefore not academically very interesting.

Assuming the topic is interesting and controversial, and that you are able to find conflicting views, you need to put your effort into identifying and summing up the nature of those differences. These differences are not always clear from explicit statements in the text. Once you become familiar with the area, you may recognise a writer's general perspective from the references they make to other writers to support their positions.
For an excellent example of how this can be done, look again at   Alastair Pennycook's Language and Gender review [Example 3]

Anyway, as we said earlier, you should start with a more general textbook, whose job is to highlight the range of perspectives or areas of emphasis. This will provide you with the basic underlying structure of your review.

Advice on evaluating a text - and its author.

• be wary of accepting 2nd-hand criticism of an author or text, especially when it is either extremely supportive or dismissive in tone.
• be wary of judging a text or writer on a very small sample of text, which may not constitute a representative sample of the author's views (e.g. quoting a writer out of context).