Rhetorical Analysis Thesis

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL DOCUMENT

INTRODUCTION

Rhetorical analysis plays an important function in understanding professional documents because it allows an individual to anticipate and capture the thoughts of a writer depending on the context of the research they are analyzing. A student can rely on rhetoric analysis to understand how a professional writer is entertaining, persuading, or simply informing them. Mostly, a rhetorical analysis allows a reader to feel the thought process of a writer rather than simply following his or her ideas in an outline. It’s usually the first step to analyze the appeals or strategies that the professional writer employed. A writer uses rhetoric through the tone that they use, their flow of ideas, how they target a specific audience, etc.

In this rhetorical analysis, I will analyze “The Coming Accounting Revolution: Offshore Outsourcing of Tax Return Preparation” by Jesse Robertson, Dan Stone Ph.

D., Lisa Niederwanger, Matthew Grocki, Erica Martin, and Ed Smith. The authors are accounting professors and one of them is a MBA doctoral student. The five authors investigate the procedures, processes, and vendors whom CPA firms can outsource their tax compliance work overseas. The paper was written in 2004. The writers' motivation is to address a market gap that was upcoming in regards to outsourcing services to developing countries. The overseas outsourcing of tax compliance work can save accountants’ time to focus on consulting work to clients, save money, and speed the delivery of clients’ returns. There are some issues about tax return outsourcing that includes privacy and security risk and staff concerns regarding downsizing. Firms must have a strong network system and software specialists to keep all the data safely and prevent themselves from natural disasters and

hackers.

In this assignment, I will investigate the logos, ethos, kairos, division and classification, last but not least comparison and contrast. To conclude, I will sum up briefly the main points and express my thoughts and understanding of the article.

ANALYSIS OF RHETORIC APPEALS

Kairos

The kairos, or tone of a paper, is an important indicator of how well an author is best equipped to tackle the topic while at the same time, it allows people to read the mind of the writer to determine their state of thoughts when they began developing the outline. Through kairos, an individual gets a chance to communicate their attitude and emotions. In this paper, the authors have relied on a neutral professional tone that is direct to the point and guided by accounting register. In the paper, the writers demonstrate best their note tone in the statements “Tax outsourcing offers several potential benefits to CPA firms. Tax outsourcing frees tax professionals’ time from form filing and data entry to allow for more attention to higher margin services such as tax and estate planning.” (Robertson)
Another aspect of Kairos is flow and transition. Flow and transition allows the reader to follow the points that have been adopted hence arousing logic and better comprehension of what the writer intends to communicate. The best part to demonstrate the flow of though is the introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, the writers begin by finding a gap that will be the underlying guide to all the thoughts that follow. They note that although outsourcing is still a controversial topic and still yet to mature outsourcing has become a phenomenon in other disciplines. Accountants and economists expect the trend might accelerate and in so doing they offer an example (Robertson). In conclusion, the authors note, “However they anticipate some firms to be reluctant owing the privacy topic, they anticipate those firms that adopt the practice to reap benefits.” (Robertson).
Ethos

Ethos on appealing to ethical concern such as giving personal information to the third party “The AICPA Code of Professional Conduct states that members in public practice shall not disclose any specific confidential client information without the specific consent of the client.” (Robertson). In this statement, the writer expresses his attention about confidential information is giving out so easily to foreigners. Are they trustworthy to deal with our information? In another statement, the writers note one of the concerns discouraging outsourcing the challenge of privacy and security risks for exposing one's confidential data such as the social security. The writers offer an example of how clients may not prefer to have other third parties directly having access to such information considering they are not supervised (Robertson).

In another segment, the write states another concern is that outsourcing jobs to developing countries may lead to unemployment rate in the United State increases. Robertson writes, “Decreased staff morale and staff concerns about layoffs are also important challenges to a firm considering outsourcing tax services.” Outsourcing jobs saves company tons of money, yet it’s harmful to working people in the home country. It doesn’t make any sense while we are still recovering from the recession 2007, companies outsource jobs to profit other countries.

Logos

Logos focuses on finding logic and pattern. In this statement, writer displays facts and numbers to prove that outsourcing tax compliance benefits accounting firms “A staff accountant earning an annual salary of $45,000 (plus 20% of salary in benefits) costs a firm about $39 per billable hour. Some sources suggest that the current cost of outsourcing through facilitator is about $20 per billable hour.” (Lombardo). The writer’s main objective is to offer the reader a chance to learn the benefits that outsourcing offers. It is a direct statement that could be made longer, the writers communicate the facts just as they feel accounting register would best be used.

ANALYSIS OF RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
Division and Classification
The division and classification of paper also plays an important role in allowing the reader to understand the writer’s intent on writing. In this case, the writer divide and classify their information into the report format where they document all their thoughts and supplement the knowledge with ideas that other professionals in the field have developed.
Relying on the report format where the writer uses subtopic shows their ability to plan ahead and anticipate issues. Also, their modes of communication is one where they rely on existing information or the secondary data to show the potential of outsourcing tax return preparations from other individuals all around the globe. Being that it’s a report rather than original research, much of their ideas rely on drawing conclusions from other people’s information. In the end, this is the information they rely on to show patterns and likely changes that will influence what they have investigated.
Comparison and Contrast
The purpose of comparison and contrast is to state the differences and similarities between two subjects in the same category. Comparison and contrast is used in the article to help the reader evaluate advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing tax compliance work to a third party. Everyone has a different point of views; therefore, the writer uses the point by point method carefully to break down the shortcomings and benefits of outsourcing professional jobs to foreign countries. He usually starts off with the disadvantages first then the benefits come after. That’s a smart, persuasive way. The majority of people like to hear the bad news first then followed by the good news so it can make them feel better. Also, the author successfully uses the transition words such as but or however to separate the shortcomings and advantages “Firms may also be concerned that political instability in the country of the service providing company may interrupt processing operations. However, such concerns have not prevented many large service organizations from the overseas outsourcing of their service operations.”(Robertson).
In another statement, he applies strong facts and evidence to convince the reader that outsourcing jobs overseas is not a bad thing. Robertson writes, “Some argue that the overseas outsourcing of U.S. jobs is un-or anti-American. But some economists argue that the overseas outsourcing of jobs improves world labor market efficiency.”

CONCLUSION
By conducting the above analysis, we get a better understanding of what could have motivated the writers to begin their analysis. The tone adopted gives way to the adopted register which is in line with the field that the writers hope the topic will address. The structure adopted in formatting the paper also plays an important role in determining how the writers will communicate their thoughts. The flow of ideas in the paper follow a specific structure of introduction, then more information and conclusion based on the given information. This structure allows a reader to comprehend how the writer came up with the topic to some of the solutions they may have obtained in the process. In this outline, the tone introduces the reader to the professionalism of what the writers intend to review. Through tone, reader can easily envision that the writers are motivated to communicate their findings since it’s a trend they have been observing over the years and through the trend, they have been able to conduct a research from other professionals. Even then the writers have to compel the attention of an audience by relying on ethos and logos. Ethos on appealing to all the ethical concerns such as giving confidential data to the third party while logos focuses on finding logic and finding pattern.
Rhetorical strategies such as division and classification, as well as comparison and contrast are skillfully used by the authors. It is clear from that outline that they have extensively relied on research by other professionals in the accounting field hence allowing them to made decision and conclusions based on this information. The division and classification introduces us to the process that the writer relied upon to plan all the sections of the paper to address the topic. From the introduction through to the conclusion, reader can easily determine how the writers came up with each of the subtopics. The authors successfully use comparison and contrast to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing jobs overseas. However, it's up to the readers to evaluate whether outsourcing would be applicable.
In my opinion, I would recommend the writers to develop this paper in the structure of a research paper where they blend their information and involve other professionals in the field through methods such as interviews as opposed to simply recording findings (Andriessen).
References
Alkire, Scott. LLD 100A Course Reader. San Jose: Maple Press, 2017
Andriessen, Jerry, Michael Baker, and Daniel Suthers, eds. arguing to learn: Confronting cognitions in computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Vol. 1. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013. Print
Robertson, Jesse C., et al. "The coming accounting revolution: Offshore outsourcing of tax return preparation." (2004). Print