Rhetorical Analysis Of Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

On June 4, 2003, world-wide known comedian, Will Ferrell delivered a very influential and amusing speech to the Harvard graduating Class of 2003. Ferrell expressed this graduating speech with something new and unique. He doesn’t present his speech like any other class day speaker; he is very inspirational and wants the students to see how different their life is going to be once they leave this graduation ceremony. Ferrell compellingly employs a very lighthearted tone, which includes humor, and pathos to effectively gain the audience’s attention and successfully tell students about the “real world”.

Walking into graduation, every graduate expects to hear the same speech with little variance about reaching an important milestone in life but still having many more milestones. Paul Hawken delivered a different message with his commencement address, You Are Brilliant and the Earth Is Hiring. His message was filled with hope for the future since people are working together to build a better world for all.

To dream is to desire an achievement which seems unobtainable. Most everyone has trouble convincing themselves that their dreams are within reach. Jim Carrey once said, “So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.” This is a result of allowing dreams to remain dreams and, instead, opting to take a more reliable path. In doing so, a sense of emptiness that never completely dies out is often developed. Jim Carrey has spoken publicly numerous times about his feelings toward following dreams, however, his commencement speech at the Maharishi University of Management stands out the most. Carrey's experience as an actor undoubtedly aided in his ability to project a highly impactful message to his audience.

One of the greatest stories about hard work and success came from the genius mind of a college dropout. Steve Jobs gave the commencement speech “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” in 2011 at Stanford University. Throughout his speech, Jobs’ main goal was to connect with the audience on different levels and build trust so they believe him when he says if a person works hard and always follow their dreams, they will be successful. He establishes the connection through his style of writing by using ethos, pathos, diction, and repetition.

In some aspects of life, society begs for perfection; It holds you to the highest of standards.

The Steve Jobs commencement speech was a speech that was given by the former Apple Inc. CEO to Stanford University during the 114th commencement on 12th June 2005. The speech Steve Jobs gave Stanford University is a very effective speech, because of his use of rhetorical devices. Jobs especially use his background and childhood to play upon his rhetorical approach. In Steve Jobs, he tells several stories about love, detection, death, loss. The main part of the Speech is how Steve Jobs encourages the students to pursue their dreams, and do what makes them happy, even if it all doesn’t go after the plan.

Hook: I never knew that one day, one idea could have such a big impact. That one thing could change the history, set up the rest of the country to follow suit with this specific topic, and things that need a change in general.

The City College of New York referred to as CCNY was founded in 1847, as the Free Academy of the City of New York. The college was originally opened “to provide the children of immigrants and the poor access to free higher education based on academic merit alone.” (CITATION NEEDED) Over the years it pushed towards the progressions countless other institutions were often indifferent towards. They found ways to accept and nourish great minds that would have been otherwise excluded in their time. It is no great wonder that Former First Lady Michelle Obama devoted her last commencement address to the 2016 graduates of this institution.

Every writer or speaker spends a lot of time prepare what they what to say and how they want to say it. It is a long process and takes a lot of time; because they need to think and re-think about the main idea and the purpose. Also they need to be awareness that it is difficult to engage people in spoken or written form. In order to communicate effectively most of them use rhetorical enhances communications and presentation skills. Rhetoric is an ancient art which started in Greece but it is still use it now day in speeches on different situations. There are excellent examples of that on graduation speeches. Ed Helms, famous actor, gave an effective speech on the Cornell class of 2014 because he knew who their audience was, he used correctly

Delivered on a campus in California to an audience of a few thousands, yet it ended up inspiring tens of millions from both U.S. and worldwide; worshiped by Silicon Valley as the ultimate career talk, yet it embodied many aspects of life - chance, love, loss, and ultimately death. Short but smart, targeted yet universal, poignant and timeless – thus is Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford. Some attribute its success to Jobs’ personal influence and charisma – they do add significant weight to the speech, undeniably. But close inspections from the lenses of rhetorical analysis allow us to appreciate this speech from a different perspective – in particular, how the speech was crafted into a fitting response to its rhetorical situation and how Jobs managed to strike a chord with his audience through the masterful use of logos, pathos and ethos, whether planned or not.

For example he had all the money and he still wanted to work more on his inventions. For instance, when Steve jobs wad all the money he desired he still wanted to improve in his products. He was passionate about his customers and their ability to change the world using hi products (Forbes). Secondly, Steve jobs had a moto going through life. His moto to succeed was to “stay hungry and stay foolish”. As a leader you should stay passionate in your own work or your products (Forbes). Thirdly. Job was to into his work even when he was diagnosed with cancer and he refused to have surgery because he was so busy and invested in his products. After his cancer was getting in the way of his attendance at Apple Corporation he had to resign from his job. For all these reasons, Steve jobs used passion to succeed in his work and have the motivation to create his

In my point of view, I found Bill Gates as the most promising leader throughout the globe. Bill Gates was the youngest, wealthiest CEO of all time, but this success was not only achieved by luck. His inspiring charming personality and effective communication skills made him the real “BILL GATES”. One of his talks on the teacher’s feedback is much of an importance. The name of the presentation is “Bill Gates: Teachers need real feedback” and the target audience is teachers as well as general public.

Obama begins his speech by the use of pathos by acknowledging the hardships of the Americans. “Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible - tonight is your answer.” (Obama, 2008). Barack Obama was elected president on Nov 5, 2008. He argues in his speech that whatever was going on in the country, it is going to change, it was a dawn of a new beginning. He begins by building his credibility by showing that others who doubted the people of his country, tonight was their answer, and telling an anecdote about a old lady who had seen the country progress. Ultimately at the end, he ends his speech strongly by making the audience say “Yes, we can”, and getting applauded by the audience.

In the speech “Steve Jobs Commencement Address to Stanford University, Class of 2005”, Apple CEO Steve Jobs provides his audience with personal experiences and the rough periods he went through in his early years before founding apple that helped him succeed. With the use of his stories Jobs creates a character that prevails through obstacles and manages to achieve his goals, which inspires his audience to look up to him and show that failure is sometimes necessary to succeed.