Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address at Stanford University

Name Course Date Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address at Stanford University, 2005 - Analysis Steve Jobs is famous for his contribution to the field of technology as well as his powerful and influential speech ability. Contrary to several other business leaders, Jobs writes his speeches as well as presentations with a lot of rhetorical aspects. This is evident in his commencement address at Stanford University over ten years ago. During his speech, he showed elaborate use of rhetoric. Despite not being a college graduate, Steve Jobs is very successful. Besides, his early stages of life were unstable and heretical. In his speech at Stanford University, he applies his background to play on his rhetorical strategies as he speaks to the graduates. During the speech, he uses both love as well as a loss to capture the emotions of his audience. He purposed to convince his audience to depend on their intuition and pursue their heart desires to be happy. Besides Steve uses repetitive structures and talks about adversity as a way of growth. He interlinks emotional and structural repetitive life events to motivate the graduates to go after their passions. In the fourteen minutes of speech, he connects with his audience using different personal life events as well as through reflecting on his life. Besides, Jobs appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos of his subjects. This enables him to develop a strong argument and come up with a convincing speech. He persuades the graduates that they have to do what they love and at all times ensure that they are happy even and that not everything always goes as planned. Jobs starts appealing to his audience’s emotions from the first line of his speech. He begins by complementing the graduates. Jobs says that “I am honored to be with you at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.” He proceeds by humor by ironically telling the audience that he “never graduated from college. This is the closest I have ever gotten to a college graduation.” Just from the two statements, Steve had already incorporated pathos in his speech. This is by his show of humility which makes the graduates feel highly accomplished. As I noted, he also set a humorous mood for the remaining part of the talk. Jobs’ introductory speech make relaxed and comfortable throughout his talk. Right after the brief yet very effective introduction, Steve goes ahead to narrate to the graduates three extremely emotional stories. His stories are base on his life events – stories that his audience cannot only connect with but also relate to. As he speaks throughout, he employs simple words that make up short and concise sentences. Steve builds up his speech precisely around three primary points. His sentences are made up triads all through. In the first anecdote, he talks about his disadvantaged early life background as well as his childhood. Steve starts by saying that his “biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.” Jobs further narrates to the...