A Rhetorical Analysis Of Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech

Around the globe high school and college seniors are preparing for the end of school and the commencement ceremony that will bring it to a close. On June 12, 2005 Steve Jobs delivered a commencement speech at the University of Stanford and told three stories about his life to the graduating class, about connecting the dots, love and loss, and about death. Jobs was able to appeal to the emotion of the audience because he told of his adoption, dropout of college, owning two successful companies, falling in love and being diagnosed with cancer, all while leading a happy life. While Steve Jobs may have delivered a compelling and captivating speech, it was unsuccessful due to his argumentation and tone, organization, and representation of material. Many people will argue that Jobs delivered a successful speech that day, but due to his argumentation and tone his speech was unsuccessful. As previously …show more content…
While Jobs does not appear biased, in fact, he seems to simply be recounting events from his life as he remembers, the information he presents could be perceived as subjective to some due to the way he presents it. Jobs does present some facts, such as when he talks of the creation of his companies, however, much of the facts he presents is tinged in a variety of emotions, which could dissipate some of his credibility. Jobs attempted to establish credibility by name dropping well-known people and companies, as previously mentioned. His persistent use of emotion throughout his speech is another manipulation tactic, one that he utilizes well. Throughout all of this Jobs does manage to keep a fair attitude, he never says that he thinks college is absurd but simply states that after trying it, college was not for him. Overall,the information presented is consistent for the author’s purpose, which one has to infer, due to a lack of a clear thesis, is to do what you