Thursday, April 3, 2014

Outsourcing Rhetorical Analysis


The new popular kids on the block, in terms of business, are offshoring and outsourcing. It has become quite the topic of many people due to its amazing pros and devastating cons. Apurva Bose in her article, “Outsourcing: An Indian Perspective” shows off her parallel structure and wide range of diction to explain that outsourcing is a flourishing trend, but shouldn’t compromise a career’s true purpose.                                   

            Throughout the article it seems to me that the author has an affinity for parallel structure. It was used several times throughout the article; however, it got repetitive. It was effective in terms of getting her arguments across clearly. It was interesting in the beginning because the claim that was made was elaborated on, and made it more clear to the reader. After some time of using, it actually did opposite of what it was doing in the beginning. The claim became a little lost in her constant use of parallel structure. There were points in the article such as, “…getting skilled expertise…to to saving on manpower…” became more of like a catalog, a listing of ideas, than using parallel structure to get her major claim across clearly and effectively.         

            Unlike the parallel structure confusing the reader, the diction clarified her claim a little bit more. Her choice of words captured situations very well, helping to make the major claim understandable. The first word of many great word choices was, “bandwagon.” When she used this word she was describing how outsourcing became a big trend. The term “bandwagon” has a lot of connotations to it. It’s more of neutral word, it doesn’t have any good nor bad connotations to it; however, when you think of bandwagon it’s just the hot new things. It’s not a necessity. Since outsourcing isn’t a necessity, it’s just a way to do business more effectively. It’s nothing more than an aid, and an aid shouldn’t compromise the integrity of anything. And that’s what the author is trying to point out. If outsourcing is the hot new trend and aid, it shouldn’t compromise the integrity of a line of work such as, architecture.

            Her diction was a little more enjoyable than her tone. The tone was very critical towards India and the US. No country was better than the other in this situation, which is good because there is no bias in this article. The critical tone added to the sense of power in this article. It gave the article a little jump start because her critical tone was driven by the pathos she introduced in the beginning with her anecdote about the position she was offered.

            The claim had the potential to be really strong because she had great diction, a strong voice, and a strong consistent tone. But the main reason that it was weighed down is because the overuse of parallel structure. Other than that, this article was pretty good, but could’ve been better and more clear.

1 comment:

  1. Kaela, you've got the right idea here. Your thesis is excellent and your choices are good. Next step is not to micro-focus on the rhetorical devices. Use them in conjunction with an analysis of her claims: how does her diction support her claims? How does it help make her claims effective or ineffective--and then tell us exactly which claims. So you're simultaneously analyzing the argument and the devices. Does that make sense?

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