Homelessness was my chosen issue for my speech and the main purpose was to inform the audience. Through my speech, I wanted to inform the issue of homelessness today due to the fact that people are still blind to it. My intention was to raise awareness about the problematic issue of homelessness which is clearly evident in today’s general society. My goal was to promote change and ask for assistance in treating the issue. My intended audience was simply for everyone, however particularly targeting this message to young adults and adults.
Young adults may be very well aware of this as it is not very difficult to find a homeless out in the streets and feel a slight guilt. However, they may not know that there are so many out there that are suffering on the streets. Adults are also a targeted audience because I believe that they are in the most powerful position to promote change as they have power to aware other people through the uses of social media. I have used a variety of techniques in my speech to convey my message.
With the technique of rhetorical questions, my purpose to get gain thoughts and feelings of how they feel about the issue and if they can recall their latest insight of it, “But what is homelessness to you? ”. It was to get the audience’s initial thoughts of what homelessness really is and how important it is. Furthermore, another technique used was a biblical allusion. By referring a biblical reference from the bible we can emphasise how urgent the problem must be dealt with. Through this, we can also create a sense that the issue of homelessness is very problematic and needs dire help.
In my speech, I have also included the effect of LOGOS by adding statistics and facts about the homeless people of Australia. The effect of this creates an eye-opening for the audience and awareness that the issue is ongoing. In addition, intertextuality is used between relating the text of homelessness and human rights and how it juxtaposes. Human rights provides basic needs of human life which comprise of freedom of speech, social security, privacy which homeless people do not have.
I would have to be under the impression and expect the audience to have the same, that this is an act of injustice. By applying these techniques to my speech, hopefully my aim of informing and changing the audience’s mind about the topic has had an impact. Two texts which I have studied in class that has influenced which gave me ideas of techniques to incorporate in my poem was ‘Dear Mr President’ by Pink and ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon. When deciding a topic for my speech, the song ‘Dear Mr President’ gave me an idea on the subject matter of homelessness.
There is use of rhetorical question in the song as Pink creates an sense that the person the song is written for is deceitful, therefore changing the audience’s perspective on the person(President Bush), “What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street? , “Who do you pray for before you go to sleep”,”What do you feel when you look in the mirror? ”, “Are you proud? ”. This not only questions President but also involves other political leaders and government if they are standing up to certain issues.
Imagine’ by John Lennon was a song which influenced the activism of an ideal world or just to ‘imagine’ a world with no violence, where there would be only peace. This song brings up issues which corrupt society into a place that it shouldn’t be like. This brought up to me the idea of homelessness and how we as people sometimes lack our respect and care for others. Overall, both texts has influenced me to compose a speech dealing with homelessness in Australia.