Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford University Essay

Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford University - Essay Example This paper aims at identifying the main elements of Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford University that enables the listeners to comprehend and connect with the speaker individually and collectively. In attaining this end, the research will examine the use of logos, pathos, and ethos to make the listeners understand the full speech and some components of the speech. This paper is in the form of rhetorical analysis. It tries to examine the main components of the speech and the kind of message it seeks to communicate to the audience. Rhetoric analysis â€Å"...lays bare or adequately interprets the secret life of a form of communication or speech†. In other words, the paper seeks to decode the main influence that the message seeks to exert on the mind of the listener. It tries to comprehensively examine the kind of information that Steve Jobs seeks to assert on the graduands by breaking down the speak. Rossenwasser and Stephen identify that â€Å"to analyze the rhetoric of something is to determine how that something persuades and positions its readers or viewers or listeners.† Ethos is about the credibility and the ethical appeal that the speaker has over the listener. It is mainly about how the audience relates to the speaker and the contacts that occur whilst the discussion goes on. Although there is no agreed standard in measuring the potency of ethos, the commonest method of evaluating this is to examine the emotions of the audience. The audience reacts by clapping and shouting to show their connection with the speaker. In this speech, there are so many emotions that are shown at different points in the interaction between Steve Jobs and the graduands. There were instances where the crowd screamed and there were other times where they clapped. Also, at the end of the entire speech, there was a standing ovation which gave an indication to a bystander that the speech had had some influence on the people present and this is very much evide nt of ethos. In analyzing the speech of Steve Jobs, there are four main components of ethos that can be conveniently examined to bring to bear the kind of connection that existed between the audience and speaker during the whole speech. Credibility refers to the trust and worth of a person's communication with another. This refers to how factors that cause a listener to place more reliance on the words of another person. First of all, the personality of Steve Jobs is one that grants him so much credibility. Being nominated as the speaker for the event in itself is something that comes with a lot of reputation for the event.