AP Lang Rhetoric Vocab

Ad Hominem

aka name calling, personal attack

Straw Man

Occurs when a speaker intentionally oversimplifies or distorts an opponent's argument in order to make the argument easier to refute.

Slippery Slope

Occurs when a relatively minor first event is said to inevitably lead to a larger (often disastrous) final event.

FALSE DILEMMA

Occurs when a speaker pretends there are only two possible choices or outcomes when, in fact, many exist.

False Analogy

Occurs when a a speaker makes the false assumption that because two things are alike in one respect, they must be alike in others.

Circular Reasoning

Occurs when a speaker uses the claim itself as evidence for the claim.

Hasty Generlization

Occurs when a speaker draws broad conclusions based on a relatively small set of examples.

Bandwagon

Occurs when a speaker attempts to persuade based on the fact that "everyone is doing it" or "everyone thinks this.”

TU Quoque

Latin for "you also"; a type of ad hominem fallacy that occurs when a speaker tries to invalidate an argument by claiming the speaker is hypocritical.

POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC

Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"; occurs when a speaker claims that because two events occurred in succession, one must have caused the other.

Poisoning the Well

A sort of preemptive ad hominem, occurs when negative information is presented about a speaker ahead of time in order to discredit the argument.

Appeal to Tradition

Occurs when a speaker claims that something is true because it has traditionally been believed to be true, or because "it's always been this way."

Appeal to Emotion

Occurs when a speaker intentionally manipulates an audience's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual information.

Appeal to False Authority

Occurs when a speaker uses an alleged "authority" as evidence, when that "authority" actually has little or no expertise on the topic.

Appeal to Fear

A type of appeal to emotion, occurs when a speaker attempts to scare an audience into accepting a claim, rather than providing logical evidence.

Steel Man

interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.

Law of Trivilaity

people within an organization commonly or typically give disproportionate weight to trivial issues

Non Sequitur

a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.

Narcissim of Small Differences

communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation.

Selection Bias

the bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved

Confirmation Bias

our tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms our existing beliefs or ideas.

DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT

a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Dunbars #

is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory by Abraham Maslow, which puts forward that people are motivated by five basic categories of needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. In order to better understand what motivates human beings, Maslow proposed that human needs can be organized into a hierarchy. This hierarchy ranges from more concrete needs such as food and water to abstract concepts such as self-fulfillment. According to Maslow, when a lower need is met, the next need on the hierarchy becomes our focus of attention.

St George in Retirement Syndrome

A metaphor coined by Australian political philosopher Kenneth Minogue. St. George is depicted as a legendary hero who sets out to slay dragons. Alas, the hero succeeds in killing the large dragons, and then the small dragons, until finally, there are no dragons remaining. So-long motivated by his drive to rid the world of dragons, St. George enters retirement with the same identity he always had – as that of a dragon-killer. With no beasts left to slay, St. George finds himself forced to become a hero in a new way. He must invent dragons where none exist, and even swing his sword into thin air, always ensuring that he remains a dragon-slayer.

Chekovs Gun

A dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play.

Tilting at Windmills

To use time and energy to attack an enemy or problem that is not real or important.

Catch-22

A dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.

Chestertons Fence

States that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

Aristotles Golden Mean

Moral behavior is the mean between two extremes - at one end is excess, at the other deficiency. Find a moderate position between those two extremes, and you will be acting morally.

Platos Cave

In the allegory, Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life.

Relativism

The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.

Humes Guilloutine

Arises when a writer makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. In short: normative statements cannot be deduced exclusively from descriptive statements.

Introspective Illusion

We humans tend to trust our own introspection to a greater extent than that of anyone else, because we have no direct means of observing the latter. What this really means is that we tend to evaluate our own actions based on our underlying internal motives, and everybody else’s based on the consequences of their actions. The net effect of this can be devastating, as thinking along these lines makes it impossible for us to appreciate the internal motives of anyone else.

Pournells Iron Law of Bureaucracy

In any bureaucracy, there are two types of people:

1. People dedicated to the goals of the organization.

2. Those dedicated to the organization itself.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization.

Peter Principle

The Peter principle states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be incompetent at the new level, and will not be promoted again.

Rothbards Law

“Everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.”

In other words, if a talent comes naturally, you conclude that it's nothing special. And so you gravitate toward whatever it is you can't do.

Rosenthal Effect

Higher expectations lead to an increase in performance, or low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

Shirky Principle

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

Parkinsons Law

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

Occams Razor

when faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest is likely the correct one.

Hitchens Razor

An principle maintaining that the burden of evidence in a debate rests on the claim maker, and that the opponent can dismiss the claim if this burden is not met: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Example:If I claim to be able to contact the dead, predict the future, read minds etc. it’s not up to you to prove that I can’t – it’s up to me to prove that I can.

I’m the one making the claim – therefore it’s up to me to prove it.

Hanlons Razor

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Alternatively, "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence."

There are very few people who are deliberately bad in the world. But there are a lot of people who are stupid, or just in over their heads.

Murphys Law

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Sturgeons Law

“Ninety percent of anything is crap.”

Actons Dictum

In other words, as a person's power increases, their moral sense diminishes.

Potemkins Village

any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.

Overton Window

the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse.

Concept Creep

a phenomenon where the meaning of a particular concept expands over time, often encompassing a wider range of behaviors or experiences than it originally did

Mission Creep

a term used to describe a situation where a project, task, or endeavor gradually expands beyond its original scope or purpose.

Tragedy of the Commons

an economics problem in which every individual has an incentive to consume a resource, but at the expense of every other individual -- with no way to exclude anyone from consuming.

Pareto Principle

is an aphorism which asserts that 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event.

Streisand Effect

Any attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.

Godwins Law

an adage in Internet culture: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Poes Law

an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.

Cunninghmas Law

The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.

Happiness Paradox

The happiness paradox is the idea that pursuing happiness directly and deliberately can be self-defeating.

Gish Gallop

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique that involves overwhelming your opponent with as many arguments as possible, with no regard for the accuracy, validity, or relevance of those arguments.

Radical Chic

A fashionable practice among socially prominent people of associating with radicals or members of minority groups (Merriam-Webster).

known to be performative and is often performed more for social cachet than genuine commitment to a cause.

Oppurtunity Cost

value of the things you chose not to do. Since you didn’t make that choice you won’t see the value.

In short: Time you spend doing one thing is time you can’t spend doing something else.

Deindividuation

is the perceived loss of individuality and personal responsibility that can occur when someone participates as part of a group.

Social Contagion

defined as the the spread of emotions or behaviors from one individual to another, sometimes without awareness. Adolescents are prone to social contagion because they may be especially susceptible to peer influence and social media.

Moral Panic

A mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behaviour or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society's values and interests. generally fuelled by media coverage of social issues. The phenomenon was first described in 1972 in relation to the ‘Mods & Rockers’ groups of the 1960s.

Zero-Sum Thinking

Zero-sum thinking perceives situations as zero-sum games, where one person's gain would be another's loss. The term is derived from game theory. However, unlike the game theory concept, zero-sum thinking refers to a psychological construct—a person's subjective interpretation of a situation. Zero-sum thinking is captured by the saying "your gain is my loss" (or conversely, "your loss is my gain"). Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) defined zero-sum thinking as:

Motte and Bailey

The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey")

“In other words, I make some claim that’s hard to defend (the bailey). Once pressed, I change the claim with a sleight of hand to one that’s less controversial, but shares similarities with the original one (I run up the motte). And once I convince you of the less controversial claim, I switch back to the original claim and declare victory (I run down to the bailey again).” (The Critical Thinker substack)

Example: Let’s say I believe the coronavirus is a threat to human health but I don’t support all of the lockdowns associated with it.  The Motte & Bailey argument from one end of the spectrum would be: “You don’t believe in science” or “You want my grandmother to die.” The arguments from the other end would be, “Making me wear a mask is tyranny” or “COVID is a hoax.”