Ellen DeGeneres 2009 Commencement Speech Rhetorical Analysis
This paper analyzes Ellen DeGeneres's 2009 university commencement address, examining how she uses humor, personal storytelling, and vulnerability to engage her audience and deliver a substantive message. The analysis traces the speech's structure from comedic opening to personal revelation, covering DeGeneres's early career struggles, the personal tragedy that launched her comedy, her public coming-out and its professional consequences, and her concluding argument that adversity — whether personal or collective — is a powerful teacher. The paper highlights how DeGeneres balances entertainment with sincerity to convey a central theme of personal authenticity and resilience.
- Introduction: Overview of DeGeneres's persona and speech context
- Humor and Opening Engagement: How DeGeneres uses jokes to build rapport
- Personal Struggles and Career Beginnings: Early odd jobs and modest ambitions
- Tragedy, Coming Out, and Career Setback: Personal loss, comedy career, and public coming-out
- Central Theme: Authenticity and Resilience: Living truthfully despite professional consequences
- Conclusion: Connecting DeGeneres's lessons to graduates' experience
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper closely tracks the chronological structure of the speech itself, making the analysis easy to follow and well-organized.
- It balances attention to rhetorical technique (humor, transitions, personal narrative) with content summary, giving readers both what DeGeneres said and why it works.
- The identification of the speech's central theme — authenticity over conventional success — is stated clearly and supported by specific examples from the address.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sequential rhetorical analysis: it moves through the speech section by section, identifying the speaker's strategy at each stage (opening humor to build rapport, personal tragedy to establish credibility, career setback to introduce the theme) before synthesizing the argument in the conclusion. This approach allows the writer to show how structure itself is a persuasive tool.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an overview of DeGeneres's persona and delivery style, then follows the speech's own arc: comedic icebreakers, humble beginnings, personal tragedy, professional success, public coming-out and its fallout, and finally the thematic conclusion connecting her experience to the graduates' post-Katrina context. The paper ends by restating the speech's core message in the writer's own terms.
Introduction
After a warm and lengthy introduction that includes many notable achievements, Ellen DeGeneres is brought to the podium to begin her commencement address. She is incredibly entertaining throughout the speech, displaying an innocence coupled with confidence that produces a highly likable personality. She is humble and personable, which is evident from the opening moments through to the end of the ceremony — at which point she begins dancing and running through the crowd of students. She opens by acknowledging the guests, including the distinguished ones as well as the undistinguished ones, and mentions, "you know who you are" (University, 2010). The entire speech is embedded with short jokes such as this one.
Humor and Opening Engagement
After greeting the guests, Ellen talks about her process of accepting the commencement invitation. She admits that she did not know what a commencement was, so she broke the word down into pieces — "common cement." She also mentions that she did not attend the university, or any other university, and subsequently mocks the students by implying that they wasted their time and money since she is now a big celebrity without a formal education. After this short joke, she transitions into the central message of the speech by sharing what she has learned through the school of hard knocks.
She begins the next transition with another round of humor, noting that people who are in robes at ten o'clock in the morning have generally "given up" (University, 2010). This consistent use of self-deprecating and observational comedy serves as a vehicle for building genuine rapport with the audience before she introduces more serious subject matter.
Personal Struggles and Career Beginnings
DeGeneres talks about her humble career beginnings and all of the odd jobs she had taken in her youth. Her goal at that stage in her life was simply to have basic cable — and even that was optional. Through these anecdotes, she establishes herself as someone who rose from modest circumstances, lending credibility to the lessons she is about to share. This use of ethos through personal experience is a recurring rhetorical strategy throughout the address. Following this reflection on her beginnings, she introduces tragedy into the speech.
Conclusion
The primary theme of the speech is revealed clearly in the conclusion. Ellen argues that despite whatever your definition of success is early on in your career, goals often change. She had wanted to be a big celebrity, but then wanted to maintain her own sense of personal integrity and be true to herself. She also notes that through personal tragedy and the most devastating experiences, a person can learn the most. She closes by relating to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which the graduating class of 2009 had lived through, implying that they could draw on that collective experience as a similar source of learning — just as she had drawn on the losses and setbacks of her own life.
References
Sigl, A. (2015). Ellen DeGeneres' commencement speech: Is she getting through to anybody? Retrieved from Digital Commons: http://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=pure
University. (2010, March 4). Ellen at commencement 2009. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e8ToRVOtRo
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