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Rhetorical Analysis Of How To Live Before You Die By Steve Jobs

Decent Essays

Steve Jobs was one of the most successful American entrepreneur. He was the CEO and co-­founder of one of the most renowned technological companies in the world, Apple. In his commencement speech “How to Live Before You Die,” Jobs addresses the very thing us as human beings value the most, life and death. In this emotional speech, the late Steve Jobs uses rhetorical strategies such as his diction, syntax, and other figurative language.

To begin, the author uses diction and his word choice to reach his audience in a very unique way. His diction was informal which really created a connection between the author and the reader. It almost felt as if you were conversating deeply with someone you knew personally. This also added a very deep emotional aspect to the piece. Next, the author used abstract words such as courage and intuition. Also, abstract subjects such as life, death, and love. These concepts gave such an emotional connection with the reader. Adding on to that, this also made the speech feel very important and engaging to the audience. …show more content…

Most of the sentences are medium-length and they are all logically correct. All of the paragraphs are the same length as well which gives the speech an even and symmetrical look and feel to the reader. Throughout the whole speech there is not a single example of polysyndeton, however, there is a couple of instances where the author uses asyndeton. For example, “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle… .” Next, there is one concept that is repeated throughout this whole piece, death. This one concept has the biggest emotional effect on the reader especially considering death itself, was upon him. The overall syntax of the speech makes it easy to read and also to analyse rhetorical

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