Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech Analysis

The passage given is a speech by the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, at a University in California. We can see that this planned speech was delivered to an audience filled with students, parents and staff. The speech incorporates stories that aim to motivate and inspire the listeners. Based on the fact that this speech is transcribed and available to us digitally,it is another indication that the audience is not limited to the people that attended but is for everyone across the globe. 

The speaker begins by using an informal first person register when addressing his audience. This suggests that he wants to relate to the audience and make them feel comfortable, considering that they are mainly young adults and this speech is aimed to inspire, the speaker wants the audience to give their full attention. We see that the speaker uses the first person by “I am honoured’ or ‘I was born”. He also ends his introduction with the rule of three. This suggests that he wants to emphasize the idea of how nonchalant his three stories are going to be. The speaker wants the audience to engage with his stories and he doesn't want to make a big deal out of it so that they aren't scared from it. 

Then, the speaker says “So why did I drop out?”. This is a rhetorical question, which he follows up with an answer. The rhetorical question suggests that the speaker wanted the audience to pause and think about how someone so successful did something so drastic. It is by no means an invitation for the audience to follow suit but a focus on how the speaker is an anomaly. That dropping out created a lot of unexpected opportunities. 

In the answer to the rhetorical question, the speaker emphasizes that since birth, everything pointed him to the path of college. He uses the adverb “strongly'' to describe his biological mothers desire for him to be adopted by college graduates. He later says “she refused to sign the final adoption papers” when she found out his parents never went to college. This is a very ironic sentence for the speaker to follow up with after telling the audience he dropped out of college. It implies that things happen for a reason, that while it is not an ideal situation or an expected outcome, it reaps better benefits.  

We see the use of pragmatics in the fifth paragraph where the speaker is critical of the cost. He says “he couldn't see the value in it”. This reveals that the speaker believed college did nothing but drain his parents bank accounts. The use of the abstract noun “value” belittles the idea of university to the listeners. This is because a very successful entrepreneur is saying that because of the high cost, he didn't see the practicality of college. It also shows a semantic field of money. Words like “expensive”, “savings”,  “money'' all relate to the cost of college and how he did not think it was worth it. He mentions his parents savings twice which shows remorse as he feels that his parents money was being uselessly and foolishly spent on something he didn't see any worth in and he wanted to change that, hence why he dropped out.

‘Intuition’ and ‘Curiosity’ are two other abstract nouns used by the speaker to describe himself having, which helped contribute to his success. Intuition meaning gut feeling and curiosity meaning his inquisitive nature allowed him to learn things he otherwise wouldn't have known. The speaker uses these words as reference to the starting point of his life changing. Because he was curious and intuitive, he joined a calligraphy class where he learnt everything there is to know about calligraphy. He uses the phrase ‘beautiful, historical, artistically subtle’ to compare calligraphy to science. This implies that his passion for the arts was far greater than for science and that he was able to identify and enjoy the beauty that this class has to offer.

He then goes on to explain how he used the knowledge he obtained and integrated it into the first ‘Macintosh’ computer. He doesn't further elaborate on ‘Macintosh’ which suggests that he's assuming the audience has knowledge of the word and is familiar with the term. He continues with this assumption as he introduces words like ‘Windows’, ‘Fonts’, ‘Typeface’, and ‘Mac’ to the audience which is appropriate as he is generally speaking to young adults/adults whom many of which are tech savvy. 

The speaker starts to conclude his first story by referencing the beginning phrase of ‘connecting the dots’. He uses repetition with the word ‘very’ which is an emphasis that although it may have been unclear in the beginning, as time went on, the picture became extremely clear. The speaker then goes on to say “you can't connect the dots looking forward”, this idiom is very commonly used and implies that you can only judge a situation's success rate after it happened and not before. Those things will only make sense when you look back at it and not when you're looking at it or for it. 

He then finally brings in abstract nouns in a sentence again by saying “you have to trust in something”, “your gut, destiny,life,karma, whatever”. The use of the modal verb ‘have’ when talking about trust shows the importance the speaker wants to get across to the audience.It's an affirmation that everything will work out in the end, if you “have trust in something”. “Destiny”, “Karma” are both abstract nouns that have meanings of spirituality, things that are beyond our control. Destiny means fate, what has already been written for your future and Karma means cause and effect. The speaker uses these words to tie in the meaning of connecting the dots of the past. He implies that whatever you do, believing and trusting in something will allow you to look back at all your decisions with a positive light.