Connecting Strategies in Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement Speech at Harvard University

Abstract

This research aims to analyze Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement Speech at Harvard University to explore its wording and the interaction between the speaker and the audience. A Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach (MDA), and the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity were adopted in this study. The results show that intertextually, Mark Zuckerberg narrated his experiences and stories, quoting famous sayings, and inserting religious text into his speech. Interdiscursively, he imported different discourses including discourse on entrepreneurship, discourse on racism, and discourse on globalization. These mechanisms helped weave his speech text coherently and harmoniously into the context. Moreover, his actions and interactions, for instance, joking with the audience, made the formal style of speech delivery more casual, reducing the distance between the speaker and audience. Also, the audience members were encouraged to become engaged in his speech, helping to create harmony among both the local and global communities.