Steve Jobs Rhetorical Devices

In his wisely crafted and remarkably creative speech given to Stanford graduates in 2005, Steve Jobs distinctly relates and emotionally persuades his audience through repetition and imagery to enforce the idea of following your dreams. Jobs uses his personal experiences throughout his life by using emotion to convey to his audience the importance of living a life you’re proud of. He also develops his credibility through the use of imagery and repetition.

Steve Jobs has lived a difficult life, experiencing many hardships and misfortunes throughout his time. He uses these experiences to display emotion and teach his audience a valuable life lesson. In one of the stories Jobs told, he stated “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was

Jobs started his life with high expectations from his parents, but his life didn’t go as planned. After dropping out of college, creating his own company and being fired from it, and eventually becoming very successful later in life, he was taught many lessons. His success was shown through the use of repetition, as he repeats the phrase “connect the dots.” This phrase is used in different contexts throughout his speech, but each time he uses it to show that even though he started from nothing, having no idea what he was doing in life, it all turned out okay. The dots connected themselves and he turned out to be a very successful man, even if he was never able to predict that for himself. Jobs also uses imagery to show his credibility. In his speech he explains, “Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.” He shows the audience exactly how he had started, explaining from the beginning in college, to eventually creating his own company. He sets the scene by saying that he was only twenty years old, working in his garage. This shows the listeners that he has truly worked hard for everything he has in life. His credibility is continuously built up throughout the