Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech Analysis One of the greatest stories about hard work and success came from the genius mind of a college dropout. Steve Jobs gave the commencement speech “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” in 2011 at Stanford University. Throughout his speech, Jobs’ main goal was to connect with the audience on different levels and build trust so they believe him when he says if a person works hard and always follow their dreams, they will be successful. He establishes the connection through his style of writing by using ethos, pathos, diction, and repetition.
Steve Jobs needed to prove to the audience that he was a credible person to talk about following dreams, and working hard. He used ethos to demonstrate how he is
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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) He had been discussing his Calligraphy class for a few minutes, so he added a bit of comedic relief to stop the audience from getting bored. Steve Jobs also added humor in serious parts of his speech to lighten the mood. When speaking about being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs stated “I didn’t even know what a pancreas was!”(Jobs) He put emphasis on that statement to life the levity of the cancer diagnosis and the possibility of facing his own mortality. This made the audience more comfortable with the reality of his