Weblog 8/29/12

Rachel Croft

Comm 315

August 29, 2012

I’ve been a huge fan of Mac products my entire life, so I watched Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address for my assignment.  As I watched this speech, I noticed Jobs’ frequent use of both logos and pathos.  Jobs used a very logical format for his speech; at the beginning, he informed the audience of exactly what he would be discussing in his address and followed that outline precisely.  He offered advice to his audience and proved the advice was sound by sharing some of his own personal experiences.  By sharing these experiences, Jobs also used pathos in his address.  His stories were those of love, loss, sickness, failure, and success.  These experiences were moving and insightful; they really seemed to cause an emotional stir in his audience.  Ethos can also be seen in this speech; Jobs clearly has credibility with his audience, since he is the creator of Mac and every person in the audience probably owned a Mac product or at least used one in the past.  Basically every person in the audience knew that even though Jobs did not graduate from college, he is extremely smart and has done very well in life.  Another was this speech was effective was the way it was directed specifically towards the audience, which was a group of students graduating from Stanford.  Jobs frequently spoke of both failure and success, all the while giving the adolescents advice on how to survive in the real world.  By using the appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as designing a speech specifically for his audience, Steve Jobs was able to create an effective inspirational speech for all the 2005 Stanford graduates.