Offshoring Rhetorical Analysis

Offshoring is the process of relocating a specific business process or department of the company to another country (usually to a third world country or a country with less regulations/laws). The YouTube video, Offshoring, filmed by Morph based on the book Offshoring by John Urry explains why a company decides to use this business strategy as a course of action, and then it discusses the problems that arise in the country where the company has chosen to offshore. An analysis of the video reveals that the maker used logos to further support its ethos and used pathos in its graphics to both inform and persuade the reader. The article “Why we can all stop worrying about offshoring and outsourcing” written by Ben Heineman for The Atlantic online
The emotions that arise from the video are angst, dread, compassion and rebellion. The emotions angst and dread were aroused by the graphics and sound effect of the video in example throughout the video the sound effects where very eerie and fitting to the subtopic discussed at the moment. The whole video is illustrated with graphics that were hand drawn; they were colored in mostly in different shades of black and white to portray a grim and clandestine environment in exception to red which was used to portray blood. An example that the illustrations were used to portray dread and compassion are a drawing the illustrator did of a small child working at a sweat shop and then a drawing of another child scavenging through waste. The emotions compassion and rebellion where influenced by the videos graphics but they were mainly affected by the words chosen to describe offshoring. The choice of vocabulary for the video was calamitous, it made corporations be viewed as destructive entities that the audience needs to stand up against. It chose phrases such as “the vast lawless oceans” (morph,2013) and “the powerful hide options to avoid responsibilities” (morph,2013) to express the corruption corporations seek to better benefit themselves. The
It was mainly using facts to persuade the audience in a logical manner. The whole video was just facts being spoken that were incorporated and used to further improve its ethos and pathos. The video used points presented in the book which the video was based on such as giving the statistic that “90% of goods are transported in huge container ships, 40% fly flags of conveniences” (morph 2013). The facts stated in the video were all the cons of offshoring, this was useful to persuade the audience but it decreases the videos logos because they only portrayed one side of the argument. An example of the type of statements is ”money, goods, waste, energy, and people all offshored to avoid laws, taxes, rules, regulations.” (morph,2013) this shows how corporations offshore a section of their business property in order to gain something by not having to meet certain standards a country may have. Logos was the rhetorical issue that the article focused the most on, although its logic were hindered by the fact that the author did not give information on where the research came from. In the article the author was discussing a sub-genre of offshoring and within the same sentence there was a link that took you to a different article that gave more information on that sub-genre. This type of strategy to support the authors facts were used throughout the article which raised its logic. Although the author did focus on