A Rhetorical Analysis Of Jason Reynolds Commencement Speech

Most commencement speeches are often boring, drawn out, and they seem similar, but this isn’t true about all of them. In his humorous and incredibly inspiring commencement speech given to Lesley University in 2018, Jason Reynolds captivates and teaches his audience through the use of storytelling and comedy to deliver his life advice.

In Jason Reynolds commencement speech, he uses humor and other rhetorical devices in order to appeal to the audience’s emotions. For example, in the first sentence of his speech Reynolds makes a comment on how much of a challenge it was trying to fit all of his hair into the graduation cap. Another instance of Reynolds using humor is when he mocks the way that all the typical commencement speeches go, then ultimately saying that is what he would intend to do in the next five minutes of his speech. Reynolds’ use of humor was a great way to start off his speech, it appeals to the audience’s emotions and allows them to calm themselves a bit and provide a bit of laughter throughout the different, most likely boring speeches, that also occurred at that ceremony. Not only did Reynolds use comedy throughout his speech, he included different rhetorical devices such as metaphors, similes, hyperboles, and many others to help the audience understand the message behind his speech. In the speech he said, “...of being told over, and over,

There are those of us whose wings have been clipped.” The message that Reynolds tries to convey of how some people