Analyzing Context

Robert Couse-Baker "yellow miata in left turn lane" January 21, 2015 via Flickr
reuse with attribution

In this blog post, I will answer the questions about context posed on page 340 of Writing for Public Lives. Here goes:

1. There are not really fundamentally different schools of thought about my topic. It is very obvious that Volkswagen cheated their diesel emissions tests and lied to millions of customers However, what I will delve into is my opinion on some of the reactions to this scandal as well as some of the reasons it happened. Another interesting view on the cause of the debacle is included here as well.
2. Some of the things I want to point out include the fact that the hyper-strict NOx emissions standards that VW ran afoul of are optional on diesel trucks. This is very suspect as most diesel passenger cars are imports while most diesel trucks are domestically manufactured. Also contentious is who is at fault as well as detractors who have taken this scandal as a reason to abandon diesel as a viable fuel.
3. Everyone does agree that what VW did was wrong and needs to be fixed however. A good example can be found here.
4. I wouldn't say there are clear cut ideological differences in regard to the VW scandal but two different groups involved are relatively un-knowledgeable people in the general public as opposed to car enthusiast and auto industry insiders who have a much better idea of what is actually going on. Generally, the less someone knows about something like this, the more reactionary they tend to be. This is an example of a more reactionary approach.
5. No audience is necessarily asked to take a specific action.
6. I think my chosen perspective which is critical of the illegal actions that VW took but generally in favor of responsibly using diesel cars will serve me very well in making my argument.
7. I don't think I have much to worry about from more reactionary perspectives as my views are quite reasonable and measured.

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I read Mira and Swati's blog posts for the Read/Reply/Reflect assignment for this blog post. Both were very well constructed and thoroughly investigated. Reading their blog posts, I realized that it was a little bit hard for me to do this assignment as there are not as clear cut sides in my controversy as there are in Mira's and Swati's. This made some of the analysis for this particular assignment harder as everyone can pretty much agree that cheating your emissions tests on a massive scale is pretty bad. The argument for me, on the other had, is more about what the implications of the VW scandal are and how it should be handled.