Steve Jobs Ethos Pathos Logos

In 2005 Steve Jobs was asked to give a commencement speech to the graduating students at Stanford university. Steve Jobs, a tech millionaire, got his start as the co-founder of Apple, one of the most influential tech companies around today. Him and his friend, Steve Wozniak, started the company out of their garage, little did they know that it would turn into the multi international company we know today, relied on by millions. Due to all of his experience and success at overcoming hardships, Steve Jobs was the perfect person to ask when Stanford was looking for their speaker in 2005. His speech is full of timeless, relatable stories and experiences that support the life advice he is giving to these students. In his speech Pathos and Logos

Steve Jobs uses an array of different types of rhetorical devices such as metaphors, antithesis, and analogies. One of the best uses of rhetorical strategies in his speech is the use of antithesis. One of them is when he said, “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.” (Steve 2005). This is an effective strategy because it makes the speech flow in a manner that is hard to zone out too, it has things that keep you hooked all the way through. This is the type of speech you hear and keep with you, it holds weight rather than being something easy to forget. This speech motivates and hooks you with its language. This is the perfect approach for a commencement speech, as the intent is to catch your attention and give you solid advice that you would hold with you for the rest of your

He makes it all clear when he explains the relevance of the stories and how the approach he took in these scenarios eventually helped lead to other good things in his life. Which is an effective application of the logos strategy. While Jobs is continually using the pathos strategy, he mixes it with logos by explaining things in a way that is nothing but logical. Almost everything he says in his speech is hard to fault, because the logic is there. An example of this would be when he talks about dropping in on the calligraphy classes that he later drew inspiration from for the fonts and typefaces for their first computer, the Macintosh. In his own words he states, “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.” (Steve 2005). This is him using logic, as he would say, to “connect the dots” (Steve