Reading accounting writing

Accounting texts are generally taken as unproblematically linked to the intentions of their authors, whether they be the writers of articles and papers or the producers of financial statements themselves. This paper argues against the logocentric notion of an intentional unitary author and in doing so grants the reader the freedom to actively read a text. The post-structuralist insights of Roland Barthes are used to show the workings of logocentrism and how the text can be disrupted by the reader. The disruption is exemplified in the paper through the undertaking of a detailed deconstruction of a magazine article on an accounting subject.