How To Write A Rhetorical Analysis Of Steve Jobs Speech

Most commencement speeches are boring and talk about how proud the speaker is towards the class, and the cliche notion of how hard they’ve worked and how much they deserved to be graduated. Steve Jobs, however, gave them an unorthodox bit of wisdom. He simplified his speech into three stories, all with different didactic representations. He speaks effectively by relying on his personal anecdotes, reputation, and logistical understanding of his past to appeal to his audience as well as grab their attention and keep them interested. First, Jobs speaks effectively and uses pathos of his anecdotes to grab the audience’s attention by their emotions. He uses the anecdote of death, and his pancreatic cancer. “About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly type of cancer that is incurable,” he talks about his hardship to build sympathy for himself. He speaks in a certain syntax in order to grab the audience's’ attention and listen to what he has to say. …show more content…
Steve Jobs is already renowned as a successful business person and due to his name and reputation, he has already built credibility and trust. “Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world,” and “We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion dollar company,” he demonstrates his life’s successes and build reliability to the audience that he is a person that you should take advice