My Rhetorical Action Plan

I'm continuing to developing my understanding of my rhetorical situation for the public argument I will be making regarding Tucson's drought preparedness.  In doing this, I will examine my audience, the genre of my argument, and how to handle possible reactions to my argument.

Howcheng. "Catalinas and Tuscon AZ." 4/24/06 via Wikimedia Commons.
Public Domain License.

AUDIENCE

My audience is the Tucson city council.  From what I can tell reading their current drought preparedness plan, they seem to be informed somewhat about the issue, but not in deeply scientific terms, so it's important for them to gain at least somewhat of that knowledge.  As I mentioned before in my "Audience and Genre" post, local political leaders will value many things that do not have much to do with environmental issues, such as managing the local economy and preparing the city budget.

However, they still should value the water resources Tucson has, because water is a huge part of everyday life, and with a limited supply we all would be forced to function much differently.  Overall, the city council must effectively run, take care of, and improve the city, so anything that affects the city's well being becomes an interest of the city council.  However, as I discussed earlier, their priorities might not favor water issues as much as other problems.

 Because the city council must manage the city's well being, anything they will take interest in my argument.  Depending on how persuasive I am, the city council could take action and revise their plan.  In being persuasive, one of the best techniques might be to present statistics about Tucson's water consumption and reliance on the Colorado River through Central Arizona Project, and then respectively statistics about how quickly the Colorado River is shrinking.

It also might be effective to point out exactly how long the water that Tucson has stored will last, because I think it's misleading and actually will support Tucson for a very short amount of time given our current water consumption habits.  In the way of visual elements, perhaps pictures that highlight the shrinkage of Lake Mead, or show how CA is affected by the drought could be helpful.


GENRE

I'm sticking with the genres that I outlined in my "Audience and Genre" post, which include either a letter to city council, or an editorial for the newspaper.

For the editorial, I would aim to have it published in the Arizona Daily Star, since that's the local newspaper for Tucson.  An editorial would express my views while addressing the general public and city council, both of which will be affected by drought and water regulations.  Editorials are formal, but can be somewhat informal, especially when particularly impassioned.  It would probably be most helpful to use pathos and logos.  Pathos is a good way to get people to care about an issue, and making it clear that drought will have emotional impacts is important.  Logos provides powerful statistics that will prove how dire the situation is.

Editorials usually contain only text and no visual elements.  Because the issue I'm looking at is so narrow, the examples I've found are from the LA Times and therefore aren't related to Tucson specifically, but are instead about the CA drought.  You can view them here and here.

A letter sent directly to city council would be effective because it would go directly to the people that would be in charge of making the changes.  The letter would need to be formal and effectively convey that the drought plan needs to be more comprehensive and consider further long term effects and solutions.  To do this, some pathos and mostly logos appeals would be necessary.  Statistics that I mentioned earlier, such as the amount of water Tucson consumes annually or monthly, would be important to include, and stress the consequences of these numbers.

It would also be important to establish that the fact our water tables aren't dropping is less reassuring than it seems, because we're getting out water from the Colorado River, which is shrinking and therefore soon the amount of water we are allocated will be curtailed.  Perhaps a simple graph depicting these statistics would be useful, but too many visual elements could easily become overwhelming.  And again, because this topic is so narrow, the best examples I could find of letters are not related to this controversy; letters like these aren't usually published.  You can view the examples I found here and here.


RESPONSES/ACTIONS

Some positive actions I would like to see as a result of my public argument include:

• Open dialogue about the issue; raised awareness
• A more comprehensive drought plan
• Water regulations put in place to help the city begin reducing its water consumption

Some negative reactions I might receive (and how I would respond to them) include:

• Apathy -- people don't believe that drought and water shortage are a serious concern
• Response: Water shortage is a legitimate concern and we will have to face the consequences of our overconsumption very soon -- California as example
• Concern, but it's not a top priority
• Response: We can't continue to push off this issue because we're going to reach the low levels of the CO River that mean we're allocated less water (that's inevitable), so if we begin thinking about how to reduce our water intake now, the change will be less abrupt, and maybe we will be able to keep our higher allocations of water for longer
• The current drought plan is adequate and enough
• Response: The most drastic measures the current plan propose aren't going to be enough; the beginning steps only include declaring a drought, without actually instituting any real changes.  The best way to solve this issue will happen if everyone begins making a few little changes, and the quicker we can start that, the better.