This is a rhetorical analyze of the speech of Steve Jobs when he delivered commencement speech “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” to the graduates of Stanford University on June 12, 2005.
I noted three noteworthy elements in speech:
- It have a strong opening
- Theme of birth/death/rebirth.
- Simple structure
These three elements have a big importance how Steve Jobs have created his speech and also how he has include the rhetorical aspects ethos, Pathos and logos into it.
Steve Jobs opening the speech with “I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.” He mention early in the speech that he never graduates from the collage (“I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation”) and this shows his humility about how great work the students does and also makes them to feel good and keep attention. He try to be personal and talking about rights and wrongs and his emotional feelings about his disappointment and bewilderment about his chose of collage, when he wasting his parents saved money to something he don’t wanted to be. Due to his stories, he creates a persona about himself and he makes himself out to be a person who carries on even in the darkest of times and who has overcome many obstacles when things didn’t look good. By describing life events and how close he was to death, he awoke much emotional feelings and aslo breaks down the barriers between his personality and professional roles.
Through Jobs strong opening and by present a persona of himself and talking about life experiences, creates the ethos aspect to this speech and by talking about death and as well happiness, makes a strong emotionality by the whole story. This also includes the rhetorical aspect pathos.
One more reason why this story awoke attention as the audiences and keep them interested during the whole speech are because of its simple structure (logos), which is a part of the aspect in rhetoric.
The speech can be divided in three parts.
He tells the audiences in the beginning of the speech “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” This creates a curiosity, which is a good way to awake attention and engagement.
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