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Steve Jobs Connotative Speech

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In the year of 2011, the world lost one of the most successful figures in the high-tech business — Steve Jobs. He was the creator of Apple, Pixar Animation and NeXT. On the day of Stanford University 114th Commencement in 2005, he shared his personal anecdotes and urged the graduates to seek their dreams and discover the window of opportunities in life's hindrances, as well as death itself. They very first line of his speech, Steve Jobs compliments the Stanford graduates as he instantly appealed their emotions. “I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement for one of the finest universities in the world” (Jobs). He then states that he never graduated from college. He humiliates himself a little bit making the audience feel very accomplished at the same time. We cannot deny that the …show more content…

“Denotative meaning is the literal or dictionary definition of a word. Connotative meaning is the interpretation of a word based on personal experiences” (Beebe, Mottet, Page 49). Steve uses the denotative meaning of the word “commencement”. The dictionary definition of commencement is a ceremony in which degrees or diplomas are conferred on graduating students. Also used as the denotative meaning is the word “death”. Steve uses the connotative meaning of the phrase “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” (Jobs). I think he used this phrase to keep the students reminded that they are only just starting the life they are far away from; the only way they will get to where they want to be is to continue the progress and keep up the hard work. He uses the connotative meaning of the word “renaissance” (rebirth/revival) to portray the current state of Apple. Also, he uses the connotative meaning of receiving a “death sentence” aka his cancer diagnosis but is saved later by a “rebirth” aka his

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In Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005, he used pathos to connect with the audience’s emotions and establish trust in their heart and future. For example, Steve Jobs said, “you have to trust that they will connect in the future”(par. 8). In this quote Steve Jobs used pathos to persuade the students to have faith that everything will work out well, but they cannot piece everything together until the future becomes the present. Steve Jobs truly connects with the audience by connecting the speech to the audience’s emotions and belief in their passion.

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Steve Jobs 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs talks about his experience when he had been diagnosed with cancer. The doctor had told him that he need to prepare to pass away soon. That same day, he went back to get a biopsy the doctor found that his cancer was curable. This experience made him realize every day is not promised.

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Walking into graduation, every graduate expects to hear the same speech with little variance about reaching an important milestone in life but still having many more milestones. Paul Hawken delivered a different message with his commencement address, You Are Brilliant and the Earth Is Hiring. His message was filled with hope for the future since people are working together to build a better world for all. Hawken begins with, “Humanity is coalescing.

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Jobs’ portrayed a concrete diction through the phrase “I was lucky, I found what I loved to do so early in life” (Jobs, 2005, Pg. 2). This phrase helped the language of the text reflect back to Jobs’ purpose of the commencement speech. Jobs’ later got fired from Apple Corporations,“I felt that I had let the previous generations of entrepreneurs down- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me” (Jobs, 2005, Pg.2). Jobs’ enlightened tone slowly declined into a calm, gloomy mood which portrayed that not everything in life came easy to Jobs and success was earned through hard work and devotion. Jobs’ purpose in this second story was to illustrate the difficult times he had, however through determination and hard work he was able to overcome them and do what he

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Great Storytelling Lu Jia Delivered on a campus in California to an audience of a few thousands, yet it ended up inspiring tens of millions from both U.S. and worldwide; worshiped by Silicon Valley as the ultimate career talk, yet it embodied many aspects of life - chance, love, loss, and ultimately death. Short but smart, targeted yet universal, poignant and timeless – thus is Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford. Some attribute its success to Jobs’ personal influence and charisma – they do add significant weight to the speech, undeniably. But close inspections from the lenses of rhetorical analysis allow us to appreciate this speech from a different perspective – in particular, how the speech was crafted into a fitting response to its rhetorical situation and how Jobs managed to strike a chord with his audience through the masterful use of logos, pathos and ethos, whether planned or not.

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The Steve Jobs commencement speech was a speech that was given by the former Apple Inc. CEO to Stanford University during the 114th commencement on 12th June 2005. The speech Steve Jobs gave Stanford University is a very effective speech, because of his use of rhetorical devices. Jobs especially use his background and childhood to play upon his rhetorical approach. In Steve Jobs, he tells several stories about love, detection, death, loss. The main part of the Speech is how Steve Jobs encourages the students to pursue their dreams, and do what makes them happy, even if it all doesn’t go after the plan.

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This includes a lot of formal terms and informal phrases, which Jobs weaves together to convince the audience that he can be as personal as he is professional. Jobs uses this trade off when he talks about his termination from Apple, humbly saying that he felt that he had failed the “next generation of entrepreneurs”. He says this to show that his failure does not cause him fury or despair, and he says his feelings at that moment frankly. He also says that when he was out of Apple, he was “very publicly” out. This formal vocabulary emphasizes the supposed finality of his time with Apple, which is vindicated when he eventually rejoin the company.

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Co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs, in his commencement speech at stanford university, illustrates three distinguishable points of his life. Jobs’ is very successful in his approach to inspire the graduates by speaking on the experience and insight he has gained. Jobs has a simplistic yet elegant tone and diction to convey his hardships to communicate how much life has to give and teach us in an inspirational way. Jobs begins his speech by dethroning himself as the well-known self made billionaire to create a connection to the graduates. He starts by putting the audience on a higher plateau with “I am honored to be with you”(1) and “ this is the closest I have been to a college graduation”(2) and when speaking of himself and his speech, he states it is “No big deal”.

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Jobs outlines exactly what his speech is about by explaining in the first paragraph that he would be telling three stories that pertain to his life. By choosing to share three different stories about connecting the dots, love and loss, and death, it made him speak in a conversational style, making the audience more comfortable. When an audience is engaged, it is much easier to connect with the speaker. Jobs’ also decided to use humor within his words and phrases to engage the audience. He states “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces...and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.”(Jobs)

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At Apple, Steve Jobs was firmly believed that it is essential to encourage the employees and make them show the best. He always reminded employees that Apple is a good company, it was a honor to become one of the number of this company. It was to make them understand that everyone was noticed. This led employees to believe in their abilities, know their talents so that they could show the best in the

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In the speech “Steve Jobs Commencement Address to Stanford University, Class of 2005” , Apple CEO Steve Jobs provides his audience with personal experiences and the rough periods he went through in his early years before founding apple that helped him succeed. With the use of his stories Jobs creates a character that prevails through obstacles and manages to achieve his goals, which inspires his audience to look up to him and show that failure is sometimes necessary to succeed. At the beginning of his speech, Steve Jobs begins describing his life with a series of stories that helped him reach his success, this helps Jobs create ethos because his audience will understand the hardships he went through to be where he is today, instead of just thinking of Jobs as the founder of Apple and not really knowing about the struggles he had to go through.

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