Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

Great Storytelling
Lu Jia

Few commencement speeches enjoy more fame than Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford. It was regarded highly both by his direct audience – as evidenced by their repeated cheers and applauses; and by the mass media – a Forbes article praised it “still inspirational after 10 years”. Video of the speech attracted 22 million views on Youtube and his famous ending quote “stay hungry, stay foolish” quickly became catchphrase of the year. Apart from Jobs’ status as a legendary inventor, what else might have contributed to the success of this speech? This essay attempts to evaluate Jobs’ commencement speech from the rhetorical perspective by exploring how the speech was crafted into a fitting response to its rhetorical

As Dr. Blizer pointed out, “a work of rhetoric is pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself; it functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world”.1 Jobs’ commencement speech was made on June 2005, following his return to Apple and the successful launch of iPod. As CEO of Apple and Pixar, Jobs was invited by Stanford, a top university situated not far from the Apple headquarter, to speak at its 2005 commencement ceremony. His audience was Stanford’s graduating class who were both intelligent and probably had high hopes for a speech made by the famous CEO – they were intellectually and mentally ready to be engaged and

He prepared his script in a way that the main structure of each story was identical. Each story would begin with a thought-provoking, Zen-like title – “connecting the dots”, “love and loss”, “death”; followed by a story of his life; and end with a revelation. The three episodes also followed chronological order – they concern college, career, and eventually death. This structured organization divided the speech into three organic parts; brought clarity to an otherwise lengthy speech; and enabled his audience to stay focused the entire time – it exemplifies the successful adoption of logic (logos) to organize the content of a