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Rhetorical Analysis Of How To Make Filthy Water Drinkable

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For my paper I choose a talk by Michael Pritchard entitled “How to make filthy water drinkable.” This speech is interesting because in some regards it seems more like a sales pitch or SharkTank presentation than a Ted Talk. In his nine minute speech, Pritchard quickly explains how lack of access to clean drinking water, specifically during national disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes, is a serious problem not just in third world countries, but also in developed nations. He then spend the duration of his presentation trying to convince you that the solution to this epidemic is to supply everyone with one of his LifeSaver bottles. The speech starts off quite bland, and lacks any major attention grabber. Pritchard simply says, “I'd like to talk about a couple of things today.” Despite lacking an exciting beginning, he does a good job introducing his topic. From the beginning of his speech, it is clear that he is going to be talking about water. The speaker also relates his speech to …show more content…

He explains that in a crisis the first thing we do is ship over water and then a few weeks later we set up camps. The reason this is a issues is because forcing 20,000 people to congregate in a camp spreads disease which ultimately means more resources are required. He claims that if people were supplied with LifeSaver bottles instead then they could stay put and make their own sterile drinking water. He also talks about the cost associated with this solution. He states that one of his jerry cans is sufficient for a family of four for three years and only costs .5 cents a day to run. Along with this he say that with just eight billion dollars, we can hit the millennium goal's target of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and with 20 billion dollars, everyone can have access to safe drinking water. It is with this, and no real conclusion, that he ends his

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