Rhetorical Analysis Of Bill Gates's Harvard Commencement Speech

Steve Jobs effectively uses pathos throughout the speech to appeal emotions of his audience, effectively connecting with audience. Jobs starts off his speech by using pathos saying “I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation” (Jobs). From these first two

 A. Attention Getter: As college students, it is in our nature to procrastinate, whether it be doing essays hours before they’re due, 8 page research papers the night before, rushing to do last minute slides for a presentation or writing your informative speech that’s a third of our grade, during every break I had. We all, including myself, procrastinate. We can all thank Bill Gates for making our times of procrastination slightly more bearable by creating the Microsoft software that is accessible, easy to use and constantly evolving to meet consumer needs.

Steve Jobs, a businessman in Silicon Valley, gave the Stanford Commencement Address in 2005. Rhetorical tools are used to persuade the audience. Ethos deals with the speaker's credibility, Pathos appeals to emotion and Logos appeals to logic. Steve Jobs’ successfully used the rhetorical tools Ethos, Pathos, and Logos throughout his speech.

When people think of a hero they think of Superman, Batman, or Spiderman, but what they should think of are people that make difference. Bill Gates has made a huge difference in today’s world; he is an extremely successful entrepreneur, an active philanthropist, and a very motivated person in general. With this motivation he has and will accomplish anything he puts his mind to. He was CEO of Microsoft and became the richest man in the world. He also created one of the most credible and generous charitable organization in the world. As a positive influence on today’s world, Bill Gates has proven himself as person with his good work ethic, positive attitude, and great accomplishments.

Move over, parents and teachers. Someone with even more authority wants to tell kids to work harder in school: the president of the United States of America. In 2009, in the first year of his presidency, Barack Obama opened the school year with a speech to students, asking them to take charge of their own education. His speech, which he filled with many anecdotes meant to establish credibility and create inspiration, sent students an important message about their education. However, Obama could have made his speech stronger if he had avoided several missteps in the content and delivery of his message.

I consider Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 to be one of the most effective speeches. He uses mechanics of speech to craft a well-rounded speech that is crowned by his use of rhetorical devices. Jobs gives relevant and fundamental knowledge of his life and experiences with his rhetorical approach. In his speech to the Stanford’s graduation class, he tells different stories of love, loss, discovery and difficulty he faced in his life to encourage new graduates as they continue to mature in life. He encourages students to pursue their dreams and not be discouraged by failures they might experience in life.

Famous fantasy author J. K Rowling, the “mother” of Harry Potters, addresses the commencement speech at Harvard in eighth June, 2008, which is titled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure.” She genuinely talks about her personal experience in order to helpfully instruct graduates. Rowling shares her valuable experiences on her heartbroken failures, as audiences have high achievements in academic study, but unfamiliar with normal failures. The purpose is to share her mature views with the upcoming graduates to prepare for future unavoidable failures which everyone will face. Rowling’s colorful speech flexibly adopts abundant rhetorical devices, such as persuasive pathos, strong ethos,

Former President, Barack Obama, in his speech “Obama’s Commencement Address at Arizona State University”, the purpose is to convey the ideas that there is always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve. His rhetoric is so successful because of his effective use of pathos, kairos, and structure matters.

President Obama, like all Presidents before him, delivered a farewell address to the United States on January 20, 2017. As he stepped down as President he was eloquent and it was as clear as ever that he is a master of oration. Obama will go down in history as the first Black President as well as a strong orator who had the ability to captivate an audience through his use of ethos, pathos and logos amongst other rhetorical devices. His farewell address is a perfect example of Obama’s mastery of discourse as it is chock full of oratorical devices. Obama’s message to the American people and to the rest of the world is that it is essential that we maintain a sense of what it means to have a democracy and that in order to maintain peace and

A Rhetorical Analysis of Steve Jobs Commencement Speech for Stanford University's Graduating Class of 2005: Jobs titled his speech "You've got to find what you love." Steve Jobs is best known as an American entrepreneur, inventor and industrial designer. He was the cofounder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc. and founder, CEO and chairman of Pixar Animation Studios. Jobs and cofounder of Apple Inc. Steve Wozniak are wildly recognized as pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

Donald Trump recently gave a speech discussing rising Radical Islamic Terrorism, immigration from the Middle East, and a need for a rise in national security while Manchester, New Hampshire on June 13th 2016. He centers his whole speech around discussing how bad a President his opponent, Hillary Clinton, would be in difficult times. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of Finance in 1968 with a bachelor 's degree in economics, and has become a very successful businessman. He’s the Republican nominee for this upcoming presidential election, and is a very controversial candidate and person. He has come under fire for many of his views that he discusses in his June 13th speech. While Trump does make some agreeably points, he renders his speech ineffective because of his heavy reliance on Clinton’s opinion to form his own. If Trump were to become President, his stance on important issues would need to be reached with careful consideration, and not just based on doing the opposite of his opponents.

Jobs’ uses pathos starting from the first line of the speech. He starts by saying “I am honored to be with you today” and give the audience a sense of importance. He then says, “I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.” This statement has two main uses in appealing to emotion. First, by using the phrase “this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation” he is relating to the audience by stating this is an important day to him as it is to them. Second, he is giving the audience a

Donald Trump’s speech addressed to the United Nations General Assembly on September 19, 2017 was not effective. Despite the speech having a universal message that is hard to disagree with, you can tell exactly which parts of the speech were written by a speech writer, and which parts of the speech were written by Trump himself. This wouldn’t be an issue if Donald Trump’s inflections weren’t full of fallacies and unnecessary statistics. For example, in the third paragraph, President Trump tries to establish his Ethos by listing improvements in the United States since he took office. But many of these cherry-picked improvements have absolutely nothing to do with him being elected. They also have nothing to do with the general theme of the speech. This speech did have examples of effective rhetorical strategies. However, the bad far outweighs the good in this speech and takes away from the good message it originally had.

Steve Jobs chooses to present his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 with an unpretentious, humble tone stating this is the closest he has ever gotten to his actual college graduation. This tone of unpretention and humility makes it clear the speech will not be filled with hyperbole or "when I was your age" platitudes. Instead the humor and humility and set the foundation for a blatantly honest journey through his life and the need to concentrate on ones' passions and beliefs above all else. He takes the audience through his own academic journey, making sure to show them it was highly nonconformist in structure yet directly aligned to what mattered most to him. He said these years at Reed College helped to understand typography, which led to the development of proportionally-spaced fonts on the Apple Macintosh, a technological first. He can't resist taking a jab at Microsoft during this stage of the speech, staying like many other Apple innovations, Windows also stole this aspect of font design. The students loved it and erupt in applause and laughter. He's clearly connected with the audience and allowed them into his life. He then progresses to discuss what death means to him, in poignant terms, prescient of his own untimely passing. He wraps up the speech by telling the audience to "stay young, stay foolish" and never to take anyone else's expectations as your own limits to reality. As one of the

Bill Gates is not only a genius, but also an innovator in education, technology, and philanthropy. A prodigy, Bill Gates shares an education fact with Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and even his competitor Steve Jobs: no college degree. Instead, he devoted his time to his passion for technology, going on to create the most profitable technology company in the world. For much of the past decade, Gates allocated both his profit and attention to philanthropy. Evidence of his innovation, industry and curiosity can be seen at an early age.