Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University (2005) : A critical discourse analysis

Abstract

On June 12, 2005 the genius, inventor and revolutionary of the world of technology "Steve Jobs" delivered a speech at one of the most famous universities in the world "Stanford university" on the occasion of graduation. This memorable event changed peoples beliefs and pushed others to act. This speech has all the characteristics of a motivational speech. Accordingly, it inspired millions of people all around the world, and had 34 million views on the internet. Therefore, as researchers we had the curiosity to decode this speech, and we believe that critical discourse analysis is the appropriate method to be used. Thus, CDA led us to Norman Fairclough's model of analysis (2001), which is divided into three levels of analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation. The objective behind this study is to find out the discursive strategies used by Steve Jobs by applying the elements of Fairclough's framework. Mainly, to figure out the ideological, persuasive techniques, and highlight the power of discourse. The findings show that the model suits the selected speech, because it provides a complete analysis from different perspectives such as linguistics and sociology. Steve Jobs used a persuasive language and his language skills to convince the audience; thus, he succeeded to make his ideologies clear. As a conclusion, all the elements of Fairclough's model are relevant to show that language has power and can influence people