Introduction
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford university commencement address illustrates how rhetorical components should be utilized while giving a discourse. The speaker uses humor, individual encounters, and perceptions from their life, among other expository strategies, to interface with his crowd in his discourse. He likewise requests to his crowd’s ethos, pathos, and logos to reinforce his point and urge individuals to seek after their fantasies regardless of whether things go according to plan (Page). Jobs can impart his message of never agreeing to anything short of delight and satisfaction. Steve Jobs’ Stanford University address is a perfect representation of rhetoric in which the speaker encourages his audience never to refuse to pursue their dreams and move forward despite the mistakes they make along the way.
The Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in the Speech
Steve Jobs is a well-known businessman, and because of his position at Apple, he had to become a great speaker. When persuading the crowd, Jobs has learned to utilize logical apparatuses. Ethos is concerned with the speaker’s reliability, while pathos is used for expressing feelings, and logos is about promoting logical thinking. Throughout the speech, Steve Jobs marvelously utilized the expository methods of ethos, pathos, and logos. The rhetorical tool of ethos is used to call upon the speaker’s reliability: “I never graduated from college,” Jobs said at the outset. Truth be told, this is the nearest I have at any point been to moving on from secondary school” (Stanford University 12). By expressing that he did not move on from school, Steve Jobs uses ethos to permit the crowd to get uncertain about his accreditations to be given the discourse.
During the commencement speech, Jobs acknowledged how honored he was for getting the chance to speak to students in one of the greatest universities in the world. He then proceeds with the initiation address by engaging the audience through emotion at the point when he applauds Stanford University graduates, saying, “I’m respected to go with you today for your start from maybe the best school on earth” (Page). He says that he has never continued education after secondary school and that being at that stage was the closest he had ever gotten to acquiring a diploma (Page). Jobs establishes pathos by showing his modesty and causing the crowd to feel profoundly cultivated for their achievements when they move on from Stanford.
Jobs has a bright and outstanding personality, a world-renowned and forward-thinking genius in his industry. A really legitimate and appropriate choice about which college graduates can be excited. Jobs is seen to be using logos in his speech while portraying the troubles he confronted while choosing how to manage his life. Subsequent to exiting Reed College, he struggled. “It was not all heartfelt,” Jobs said. I rested on the floor in companions’ rooms since I did not have an apartment. Each Sunday night, I would walk the seven kilometers across town to obtain one excellent dinner, and I would return coke bottles for the five-penny stores to purchase food with” (Stanford University 13). He is endeavoring to connect with his crowd in any way conceivable by educating the graduates regarding his difficulty. Besides, if Steve Jobs could beat misfortune, so could Stanford University’s brilliant graduated class. The speaker utilizes absolute opposites to make sense of his idea close to the furthest limit of the main story.
Pathos refers to the use of emotions as the primary means of connecting with an audience. This is undoubtedly the most difficult of the three elements to apply because, unlike ethos and logos, it necessitates the use of ingenuity. On the other hand, Jobs used this theme throughout his speech because it is a collection of personal experiences. Jobs’ speech resulted from a one-of-a-kind rhetorical circumstance (Page). As mentioned, he begins by noting that he has never graduated and explains why going to college is so important to him. He can portray the hardships, pain, and delight he has experienced throughout his life through his anecdotes.
In rhetoric, logos refers to logic and arguments that rely on facts like dates or historical events. Jobs referenced several significant dates from his personal life in his speech. For example, he talks of dropping out of college when he was 17 years old. Furthermore, Jobs discussed Apple’s history, from its inception to the release of the first Macintosh, as well as the factors that contributed to the company’s success (Gallo 6). As a result, Jobs makes no reference to any broad historical truth instead of relying solely on his example to make his point. While one could argue that this technique is biased because it is based on one person’s viewpoint, Jobs highlighted well-known data such as Apple’s income and employee count ten years after its founding, which helped develop the credibility of his remarks and a better connection with the audience.
The majority of his speech was in a flowing, conversational tone that immediately pulled him closer to his audience. In the case of his speech, this is not a disadvantage. Instead, it is a positive aspect because he chose language that young people would use and understand: “your intuition, destiny, life, karma, whatever,” he said (Stanford University 14). His conversational tone, however, did not detract from the gravity or importance of his message. Jobs turned to shorter, more rhythmic words when explaining the meaning of his stories, followed by a far more appealing tone as if he were a father eager to pass on his greatest wisdom to his children: “If you have not discovered it yet, keep looking. Do not accept anything less than what you are entitled to” (Stanford University 14).
Conclusion
In the commencement speech, Steve Jobs intends to urge graduates to search out opportunities that they will love pursuing despite the mistakes they may make. The speech was effective due to Jobs’ unique method for coordinating the talk and blending the informative solicitations to discuss remarkable thoughts and contemplations of friendship, adversity and passing in an intriguing design. Jobs is fruitful in accomplishing his objective, in this manner, inspecting his control of influence techniques exhaustively is fitting. The speaker represents the idealistic utilization of manner of speaking requests in the creation and conveyance of one of the most persuading initiation addresses to point out understudies’ significant subjects that can assist them with completely changing them (Gallo 7). The discourse is viewed as a model for how explanatory strategies should be utilized in talks. His utilization of ethos, logos, and pathos, as well as reiteration, parody, and different strategies, empower him to accomplish his objective of conveying his message. Jobs can pass on his message of never settling and continuously taking a stab at significance to his crowd in an extremely powerful and justifiable way through this address.
Works Cited
Gallo, Carmine. “Why Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech Still Inspires 10 Years Later.” Forbes, 2019.
Stanford University. “Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address (2005).” Stanford News, 2021.