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A literary theory perspective on accounting: Towards heteroglossic accounting reports

Norman B. Macintosh (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, and)
C. Richard Baker (University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth, Massachussetts, USA)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 1 May 2002

4731

Abstract

This paper adopts a literary theory perspective to depict accounting reports and information as texts rather than as economic commodities and so available for analysis from the vantage point of semiotic linguistic theory. In doing so it takes the literary turn followed by many of the social sciences and humanities in recent decades. It compares and contrasts four dominant genres of literary theory – expressive realism, the new criticism, structuralism, and deconstructionism – to developments in accounting. The paper illustrates these and other ideas in the context of the controversies surrounding the oil and gas accounting crisis and practices circa 1961 to 1990. The paper concludes by outlining a new way of preparing accounting reports based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the heteroglossic novel. This approach calls for making accounting for an enterprise an ongoing conversation rather than a monologic process of closing down on a single meaning.

Keywords

Citation

Macintosh, N.B. and Baker, C.R. (2002), "A literary theory perspective on accounting: Towards heteroglossic accounting reports", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 184-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513570210425600

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited

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