Perspective

Research

A theoretically grounded standpoint that shapes what is visible in a phenomenon; must be justified and acknowledged as having limits.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — perspective merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster gives the everyday sense, “a mental view or prospect” and “the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed; also: point of view”, and the older visual one, “the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions”. From Latin prospectus through Old Italian; first recorded 1563, in the drawing sense. The pictorial origin is a useful caution: a perspective is a view from a position, which means naming the position is part of stating the perspective.

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.

Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).