“I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation”. This was said by one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the entire world, Steve Jobs himself on the morning of June 12th, 2005 right before his commencement speech at Stanford university. Steve Jobs gave the speech titled “Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish” to 25,000 students that day, and it turned out to be one of the most truly motivating speeches that is given in the most one-dimensional way. Jobs presented an effective message to his listeners by building a strong opening by making the audience feel comfortable and building a connection with them, his rhetorical devices and his rule of three: birth, death and rebirth.
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A rhetorical device is “is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective, using sentences designed to encourage or provoke a rational argument from an emotional display of a given perspective or action.” (Wikipedia). Jobs uses three different rhetorical devices: antithesis, parallelism and repetition. The first antithesis example he used is “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in…”. The second was “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” And the last antithesis example Jobs uses is “…Death is very likely the single best invention of life”. Using antithesis in his speech was effective by making the audience better understand ones point they are trying to make through what they are saying. By doing so the audience could make the comparison of the two ideas, to see the complexity of two ideas, and to emphasize the ideas that are juxtaposed. Jobs also uses parallelism by stating “…that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. Using parallelism gave rhythm to Jobs speech and emphasized related ideas. The steadiness in form also makes it simpler for the readers to comprehend and recollect the ideas presented. The last rhetorical device presented was repetition. He uses repetition by stating “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” three different times throughout his speech. The repetition used gives major weight to what he is trying to persuade the audience to do, adds strength to his key arguments and makes it much easier to remember what he
The most …show more content…
A rhetorical device is “is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective, using sentences designed to encourage or provoke a rational argument from an emotional display of a given perspective or action.” (Wikipedia). Jobs uses three different rhetorical devices: antithesis, parallelism and repetition. The first antithesis example he used is “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in…”. The second was “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” And the last antithesis example Jobs uses is “…Death is very likely the single best invention of life”. Using antithesis in his speech was effective by making the audience better understand ones point they are trying to make through what they are saying. By doing so the audience could make the comparison of the two ideas, to see the complexity of two ideas, and to emphasize the ideas that are juxtaposed. Jobs also uses parallelism by stating “…that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. Using parallelism gave rhythm to Jobs speech and emphasized related ideas. The steadiness in form also makes it simpler for the readers to comprehend and recollect the ideas presented. The last rhetorical device presented was repetition. He uses repetition by stating “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” three different times throughout his speech. The repetition used gives major weight to what he is trying to persuade the audience to do, adds strength to his key arguments and makes it much easier to remember what he