Speech outline so far

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Intro

Allow for me to paint you a picture. You wake up early in the morning for work or school. Still a little tired, you walk to the bathroom and get ready for a shower. As you turn the handle, nothing spouts from the showerhead. Confused, you try the sink. As you turn the handle for hot water, a single dark-brown drop of liquid drips from the faucet. You then realize that the day has come that your town had been nervously anticipating: The day that water runs dry.

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Transition

While it may seem like a grim fantasy, it is not very far from becoming a reality. In fact, millions of people already live like this and must go to great extremes in order to drink water that is usually unsafe anyway. However, organizations like Lien Aid are doing their part in spreading the word to prevent this future from coming to fruition. This PSA is a great example and is representative of their tremendous efforts in solving the water scarcity crisis.

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Body

By using rhetorical pieces like commonplaces and pathos, Lien Aid’s PSA creates an emotional call to action by tugging at our heartstrings. They present the known-to-all idea of wishing to achieve our dreams but having such hopes getting dashed by something outside our control. They do this by showing us a little boy who wishes to swim competitively but can’t because his community does not have enough water to keep the swimming pool filled. Obviously, not everyone dreams of being a competitive swimmer, but even so we can all still understand the disappointment and the dire situation that this child is facing. The PSA evokes pity from the viewer, encouraging us to take action and do our part to rectify this issue. This is where the ad draws from pathos, one of Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals.

This is what I have so far. I aim to add more, but I’m still not 100% sure on what I want it all to look like.