Writing dialogue with reader

The PACE session this week, run by Sarah North, was about the dialogue with the reader, and started with an analysis of some out of sequence sentences from Jean Aitchison (1989) The Articulate Mammal. There were questions in the extract that performed an important function by signalling to the reader what was coming next.

Questions and their answers may be nested. So the main and first question comes not with an answer, but raises another question which must be answered before the main question can be addressed. You have such a situation when perhaps you are discussing whether or not to go to the cinema:

Q1: Do you want to come to the cinema?
Q2 What's on?
Ans2 Let's look it up - oh x is on (but that leads to another question...)
Q3 What time is it on?
Ans3 Here's the timetable .... decision on timetable
Ans2 (completed): decision on whether or not to go and see x
Ans1 Decision on whether to go to cinema.

I shall look for the questions, and perhaps this sort of structure in the next few papers that I read.

I need to think of the questions that my research will answer, and at this stage think especially about what the literature will answer. To create my argument, I must anticipate what the reader will be thinking and persuade the reader.

One of the hypotheses behind my research is that
public sector managers find it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the consultants that they bring in.

What could be the queries or doubts or objections to this hypothesis? I guess:

• Where's the evidence of the difficulty?
• Why the public sector in particular?
• What's evaluation?
• What do you mean by effectiveness?
• Should anyone bother to evaluate consultants? Why should public sector managers? Why not someone else?
• This assumes that consultants are managed. What evidence is there for that?
  

If you're reading this, please do comment and tell me if you have a query, doubt or objection to this hypothesis.