Investigating the Interpersonal and Textual Meaning of Steve Jobs’ Stanford Speech in Terms of Hyland’s Metadiscourse Theory

Despite his remarkable influence on IT industry and on our daily lives, Steve Jobs’ speeches have seldom been researched. This paper sets out to explore the interpersonal and textual meaning of Jobs’ famous Stanford speech in light of Hyland’s theory of metadiscourse (2005). Hyland (2005) categorizes metadiscourse resources into interactional metadiscourse resources and interactive metadiscourse resources. By analyzing the interactional and interactive metadiscourse resources found in Jobs’ Stanford speech, the interpersonal and textual meaning of the speech is clearly revealed. It can be concluded that by the elaborate use of various metadiscourse resources, Steve Jobs successfully projects his ideas and supports his position, and at the same time, builds a good relationship with the audience and achieve mutual communication. This article also argues that Hyland’s categorization of metadiscourse, as a significant analytical framework in discourse analysis, offers a promising application in exploring interpersonal and textual meaning of language.