Rhetorical Pathos In Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs showed his unknow talents when dropping out of Reed college to pursue his company that he created which was Apple. He worked in a small garage expanding his business, of course he thought the company could become a big hit but not as big as what it came to be. He showed his unknown talents by increasing his business worldwide making computers, phones, and other sorts of technology that people all over the world were craving for. Steve Jobs started from the bottom as a college dropout to making billions of dollars and increasing his company all over the

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

1. In his speech, Steve Jobs presents several elements of pathos. Write down five of the examples that involve Jobs’ use of pathos and explain why he shares these elements with the audience.

Steve Jobs was like the Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Albert Einstein of our time.  He not only innovated personal computing, but personal media and communication, iTunes which became one of the most popular music and video retailers and Pixar which was one of his side projects had become one of the greatest animation digital movie creators and software. But all that is a just part of the list of his legacy, because in the end he still left behind Apple which is world’s most valuable company, which is valued at $350 Billion Dollars.

Ethos is known as credibility or ethical appeal. Ethos refers to the speakers’ character, as it would appeal to the audience. We tend to believe a person who we see as a credible

The second story allows the audience to truly measure success and what it takes to become successful. He again induces pathos from the audience. When he talks about his trouble during creation of the Macintosh. He was hired as an employee to develop the Macintosh and fired quickly, rendering all his time and effort unfinished. This difficulty brought him to create a new company. He says, “It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.” He uses stylistic devices such as metaphors, metonymy and hyperbole to not only convey his meaning, but also add some element of humor in his delivery.

This essay is about the elements of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos, in Steve Jobs Harvard commencement speech. The element of Ethos is covered in his talks about dropping out of college, in his first story. The element of Pathos is covered in his story about his brush with death. And Logos is covered all through the story, and is mainly hinted at when he talks about being fired from Apple, and then becoming the CEO of three companies.

One of the reasons Jobs was so persuasive to all audiences was his meticulous use of ethos, pathos, and logos. The driving force of his rhetoric was that he adjusted his use of ethos (appealing to ethics) depending on his audience. This is well explained in an article published by the journal Group & Organization Management that examines Steve Jobs’ rhetorical strategies. “We find that customized rhetorical strategies are influenced by his perceived ethos (credibility) in the respective situations, which in turn influences the extent of logos (appeal to logic) and pathos (appeal to emotions) employed” (Heracleous). The way that Jobs applied ethos while communicating

Ethos appeals to ethics, and it’s a way of convincing someone about the credibility of the persuader. Whatever you read, whether it’s a news article, commercial, or a post on Instagram, you are evaluating the message for a sense of the character and the credibility of the sender. Our culture teaches us to be doubtful of these messages. Because of this, people strive to influence our opinions by building up their credibility.

Jobs found an effective way of balancing his use of Ethos, Pathos and Logos to control the delivery and receipt of his message. His tone is informal, he speaks in the first person singular to his audience (I) himself and (you) his audience to the components of (we) as equals. He constructed a persuasive rhetorical stance with the use of Ethos: The persona of the rhetor is larger than life, a world renowned an innovative genius in his field. A very credible and appropriate choice to excite college graduates. Isn't this an uncertain goal college graduates aspire to achieve? Yet from the onset of the speech, the rhetor engaged his audience with his use of pathos to soften the larger than life figure addressing them. First with his use of pathos announcing the title of the speech they would hear.‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love’ suggesting to his audience, this is not about me. It is about me only to the extent of aiding you on your journey to achieve your success. I am here for you today.

He explains how being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him and was what freed him to enter one of the most creative periods of his life. Finally, Jobs reiterates his last story as he talks about ‘death’. This section of Job’s speech was incredibly emotional and he effectively utilized pathos and personification strategies. By talking about battle against cancer and his life struggles, he kept the audience interested and invested. He even uses a strategy of antithesis by relating death to life, or by saying, “To only look forward is to look backward,” are only a few of many parallel structures of contrasting words he effectively uses to keep the audience captivated.

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

In Steve Jobs’s speech, he talked about his experiences and the outcome of each one. Early in Steve Jobs’s life he was successful and when that was taken away everything seemed lost. He never gave up hope even though things appeared lost. He kept living his life in the present and did not worry about the future. Some people would’ve given up after getting removed from a company, they created or diagnosed with cancer. No matter how bad things seems for Steve Jobs’s he

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

Jobs’ speech took place in the 2005 graduation of the University of Stanford, in the city with the same name in California. He was assigned the commencement speech for the event. Even though Jobs himself was a college dropout, he had deep respect for institutions and students, and that speech he gave in Stanford was the only one he had agreed to give as, despite being a good public speaker, he never participated in this kind of event. He had an audience of more than twenty thousand people and yet he managed to make it look as if it was just himself in the podium with a microphone talking to peers. There was nothing more than that in his place and he didn’t need anything else.