My Rhetorical Action Plan

photosbyflick "Peace, Love, and a Yellow VW" September 30, 2011 via Flickr
non-commerical reuse with attribution

In this blog post, I will create my rhetorical action plan based on the provided questions.

1. Audience: Who are you going to try to persuade with your public argument? Arguably, I'm not trying to convince anyone. My argument is more of a reasoned rant about some of the ridiculousnesses currently governing automotive emissions laws in light of the recent VW diesel cheating scandal. My argument is, however, particularly aimed at car enthusiasts who probably agree with me.
• Knowledge: What does the audience know about the topic, test, or idea? How do they know the topic (where do they get their knowledge from)? Do they have certain predispositions or opinions about the topic that you will need to address? 
  The Volkswagen has been publicized in the general media a lot. Considering that I am mainly writing essentially an opinion piece addressed at car enthusiasts, such an audience would probably get most of their information from publications such as Car and River and websites such as Jalopnik. Obviously, what VW did was wrong and everyone has that predisposition. As far as anything else goes, they probably haven't developed particularly firm positions.
• Values: What do you know about how the value, ideals, principles, or norms (standards of conduct) that members of the audience might hold? 
  Car enthusiasts don't necessarily subscribe to a very specific set of values. 
• Standards of Argument: What type of research or evidence do you think will be persuasive for your audience? How might you have to translate this research for them? 
  I think in regard to this particular issue, logical discussion and hard facts would be the best approach as the simple fact is that VW vehicles vastly exceeded the allowable NOx emissions under current American emissions law. From that, a discussion about the emissions laws and their problems could follow.
• Visual Elements: What visual images or elements might your audience respond to? Why? 
  A good graph might be appropriate for this article as well as some appropriate pictures though I am not sure how appropriate visuals will be depending on the genre I choose to write in.
• Purpose: Why is your audience reading or listening to your argument? Are you trying to expand their understanding of an idea, encourage them to take action on an issue, challenge a long-held tradition or viewpoint, etc.? How likely is your argument to motivate your audience? The audience is likely to listen to my argument because they have similar interests (they care about cars). I am trying to expose a perhaps unique opinion about the issues that the VW cheating scandal raises. Hopefully, my argument is good enough to make my audience consider the validity of my opinion and argument.
2. Genre: What form of writing will you use? I could use either a blog post or an opinion piece/column to support my viewpoint. Here is an example of a column/news article and here is another example of an opinion piece. Examples of a blog post about the VW scandal are included here and here.
• What is the function of the genre? What is it designed to do for your readers? Or, why did you choose it? The genre give you guidelines for how to approach the topic based on the conventions of the genre. I will most likely write my public rhetoric as an opinion column as it allows me great latitude to pursue and explanation of my own personal opinions.
• What is the setting of your genre? Where could you see it being used? The setting for something written in this genre would most likely be a car magazine or a car blog either online or in print.
• How might you use the rhetorical appeals we have studied -- ethos(character), pathos (values/emotion), and logos (logical argumentation) in this genre? 
  Logical appeals would probably work best in this genre. I can think of little use of other appeals as it is not really an emotional topic.
• What type of visual elements, if any, will you use in this genre?
  A good graph might be appropriate for this article as well as some appropriate pictures though I am not sure how appropriate visuals will be depending on the genre I choose to write in.
• What type of style (formal, informal, conversational, academic, etc.) will you use in this genre?
  I think an informal style would be most appropriate for this sort of writing. I am not writing an all out news article and therefore don't need a strictly formal writing style however an opinion column is also not that far removed from news to be truly informal or conversational.
3. Responses/Actions: Explain the possible actions you would like your audience to take after they read or view your argument.
• Positive reactions
• They might agree that diesel is still a good solution for high efficiency cars.
• They might agree that mileage and emissions tests conducted in labs are unrealistic.
• Because of the unrealistic nature of the current mileage and emissions tests, they might agree that we should make those tests more realistic and lower the required standards on automakers to make them realistic.
• Negative rebuttals
• Electric cars are the answer.
• Subject automakers to stricter real world emissions tests.
• Hit VW with even more fines.