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| 9931660576 | ad hominem | Latin for "to the man," this fallacy refers to the specific diversionary tactic of switching the argument from the issue at hand to the character of the other speaker. If you argue that a park in your community should not be renovated because the person supporting it was arrested during a domestic dispute, then you are guilty of this fallacy. | 0 | |
| 9931665409 | ad populum (bandwagon appeal) | This fallacy occurs when evidence boils down to "everybody's doing it, so it must be a good thing to do." | 1 | |
| 9931669481 | alliteration | Repetition of the same sound beginning several words of syllables in sequence. | 2 | |
| 9931670488 | allusion | Brief reference to a person, event, or place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art. | 3 | |
| 9931672239 | analogy | A comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things. Often, it uses something simple or familiar to explain something unfamiliar or complex. | 4 | |
| 9931674534 | anaphora | Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines. | 5 | |
| 9931675758 | anecdote | A brief story used to illustrate a point or claim. | 6 | |
| 9931676464 | annotation | The taking of notes directly on a text. | 7 | |
| 9931677320 | antimetabole | Repetition of words in reverse order. "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." ~JFK | 8 | |
| 9931679318 | antithesis | Opposition, or contrast, of ideas or words in a parallel construction. "We shall...support any friend, oppose any foe..." ~JFK | 9 | |
| 9931681554 | appeal to false authority | This fallacy occurs when someone who has no expertise to speak on an issue is cited as an authority. A TV star, for instance, is not a medical expert, though pharmaceutical advertisement often use celebrity endorsements. | 10 | |
| 9931686393 | archaic diction | Old-fashioned or outdated choice of words. | 11 | |
| 9931687130 | argument | A process of reasoned inquiry. A persuasive discourse resulting in a coherent and considered movement from a claim to a conclusion. | 12 | |
| 9931688904 | assertion | A statement that presents a claim or thesis. | 13 | |
| 9931689515 | asyndeton | Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words. "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." ~JFK | 14 | |
| 9931692947 | audience | The listener, viewer, or reader of a text. | 15 | |
| 9931693746 | begging the question | A fallacy in which a claim is based on evidence or support that is in doubt. | 16 | |
| 9931695269 | circular reasoning | A fallacy in which the argument repeats the claim as a way to provide evidence. | 17 | |
| 9931696360 | claim | Also called an assertion or proposition, it states the argument's main idea or position. It differs from a topic or subject in that it has to be arguable. | 18 | |
| 9931698999 | claim of fact | A claim that asserts that something is true or not true. | 19 | |
| 9931699949 | claim of policy | A claim that proposes a change. | 20 | |
| 9931701702 | claim of value | A claim that argues that something is good or bad, right or wrong. | 21 | |
| 9931702817 | closed thesis | A statement of the main idea of the argument that also previews the major points the writer intends to make. | 22 | |
| 9931705095 | complex sentence | A sentence that includes on independent clause and at least one dependent clause. | 23 | |
| 9931706137 | compound sentence | A sentence that includes at least two independent clauses. | 24 | |
| 9931707070 | concession | An acknowledgement that an opposing argument may be true or reasonable. In a strong argument, it is usually accompanied by a refutation challenging the validity of the opposing argument. | 25 | |
| 9931709440 | connotation | Meanings or associations that readers have with a word beyond its dictionary definition, or denotation. They are often positive or negative, and they often greatly affect the author's tone. | 26 | |
| 9931713448 | context | The circumstances, atmosphere, attitudes, and events surrounding a text. | 27 | |
| 9931714802 | counterargument | An opposing argument to the one a writer is putting forward. Rather than ignoring it, a strong writer will usually address it through the process of concession and refutation. | 28 | |
| 9931716729 | cumulative sentence | Sentence that completes the main idea at the beginning of the sentence and then builds and adds on. | 29 | |
| 9931718545 | deduction | A logical process wherein you reach a conclusion by starting with a general principle or universal truth (a major premise) and applying it to a specific case (a minor premise). The process is usually demonstrated in the form of a syllogism. | 30 | |
| 9931722252 | diction | A speaker's choice of words. Analysis of this looks at these choices and what they add to the speaker's message. | 31 | |
| 9931724438 | either/or (false dilemma) | In this fallacy, the speaker presents two extreme options as the only possible choices. | 32 | |
| 9931725907 | enthymeme | Essentially a syllogism with one of the premises implied, and taken for granted as understood. | 33 | |
| 9931727163 | equivocation | A fallacy that uses a term with two or more meanings in an attempt to misrepresent or deceive. | 34 | |
| 9931728702 | ethos | Greek for "character." Speakers appeal to this to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. It is established by both who you are and what you say. | 35 | |
| 9931731738 | faulty analogy | A fallacy that occurs when an analogy compares two things that are not comparable. For instance, to argue that because we put animals who are in irreversible pain out of their misery, so we should do the same for people, asks the reader to ignore significant and profound differences between animals and people. | 36 | |
| 9931734988 | figurative language (figure of speech) | Nonliteral language, sometimes referred to as tropes or metaphorical language, often evoking strong imagery, they often compare one thing to another either explicitly or implicitly. Other forms include personification, paradox, overstatement (hyperbole), understatement, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. | 37 | |
| 9931740858 | first-hand evidence | Evidence based on something the writer knows, whether it's from personal experience, observations, or general knowledge of events. | 38 | |
| 9931744273 | hasty generalization | A fallacy in which a faulty conclusion is reached because of inadequate evidence. | 39 | |
| 9931745701 | hortative sentence | Sentence that exhorts, urges, entreats, implores, or calls to action. | 40 | |
| 9931746910 | hyperbole | Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point. | 41 | |
| 9931748228 | imagery | A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds. It may use literal or figurative language to appeal to the senses. | 42 | |
| 9931749883 | imperative sentence | Sentence used to command or enjoin. | 43 | |
| 9931750820 | induction | A logical process wherein you reason from particulars to universals, using specific cases in order to draw a conclusion, which is also called a generalization. | 44 | |
| 9931752704 | inversion | Inverted order of words in a sentence (variation of the subject-verb-object order). | 45 | |
| 9931753731 | irony | A figure of speech that occurs when a speaker or character says one thing but means something else, or when what is said is the opposite of what is expected, creating a noticeable incongruity. | 46 | |
| 9931755817 | juxtaposition | Placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or differences. | 47 | |
| 9931756985 | logical fallacies | Potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses in an argument. They often arise from a failure to make a logical connection between the claim and the evidence used to support it. | 48 | |
| 9931759969 | logos | Speakers appeal to reason by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back them up. | 49 | |
| 9931763354 | metaphor | Figure of speech that compares two things without using like or as. | 50 | |
| 9931764729 | metonymy | Figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is related to it or emblematic of it. "The pen is mightier than the sword." | 51 | |
| 9931766071 | modifier | An adjective, adverb, phrase, or clause that modifies a noun, pronoun, or verb. The purpose of it is usually to describe, focus, or qualify. | 52 | |
| 9931767685 | mood | The feeling or atmosphere created by a text. | 53 | |
| 9931768910 | occasion | The time and place a speech is given or a piece is written. | 54 | |
| 9931770736 | open thesis | A thesis that does not list all of the points the writer intends to cover in an essay. | 55 | |
| 9931772078 | oxymoron | A paradox made up of two seemingly contradictory words. | 56 | |
| 9931773694 | paradox | A statement or situation that is seemingly contradictory on the surface, but delivers an ironic truth. "To live outside the law you must be honest." ~Bob Dylan | 57 | |
| 9931778928 | parallelism | Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. "Let both sides explore...Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals...Let both sides seek to invoke...Let both sides unite to heed..." ~JFK | 58 | |
| 9931781965 | pathos | Speakers appeal to this to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to it might play on the audience's values, desires, and hopes, on the one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other. | 59 | |
| 9931784509 | periodic sentence | Sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end. | 60 | |
| 9931786467 | personification | Attribution of a lifelike quality to an inanimate object or an idea. | 61 | |
| 9931787743 | polemic | An aggressive argument that tries to establish the superiority of one opinion over all others. Polemics generally do not concede that opposing opinions have any merit. | 62 | |
| 9931790091 | polysyndeton | The deliberate use of multiple conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words. "I paid for my plane ticket, and the taxes, and the fees, and the charge for the checked bags, and five dollars for a bottle of water." | 63 | |
| 9931793461 | post hoc ergo propter hoc | This fallacy is Latin for "after which therefore because of which," meaning that it is incorrect to always claim that something is a cause just because it happened earlier. One may loosely summarize this fallacy by saying that correlation does not imply causation. "We elected Johnson as president and look where it got us: hurricanes, floods, stock market crashes." | 64 | |
| 9931799796 | propaganda | The spread of ideas and information to further a cause. In its negative sense, it is the use of rumors, lies, disinformation, and scare tactics in order to damage or promote a cause. | 65 | |
| 9931804007 | purpose | The goal the speaker wants to achieve. | 66 | |
| 9931805221 | qualified argument | An argument that is not absolute. It acknowledges the merits of an opposing view, but develops a stronger cause for its own position. | 67 | |
| 9931806768 | qualitative evidence | Evidence supported by reason, tradition, or precedent. | 68 | |
| 9931808019 | quantitative evidence | Evidence that includes things that can be measured, cited, counted, or otherwise represented in numbers--for instance, statistics, surveys, polls, census information. | 69 | |
| 9931811647 | rebuttal | Gives voice to possible objections | 70 | |
| 9931813189 | refutation | A denial of the validity of an opposing argument. In order to sound reasonable, it often follows a concession that acknowledges that an opposing argument may be true or reasonable. | 71 | |
| 9931818813 | rhetoric | The art of finding ways of persuading an audience. | 72 | |
| 9931819698 | rhetorical appeals | Rhetorical techniques used to persuade an audience by emphasizing what they find most important or compelling. The three major ones are ethos, logos, and pathos. | 73 | |
| 9931822336 | rhetorical question | Figure of speech in the form of a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than for the purpose of getting an answer. | 74 | |
| 9931828758 | satire | The use of irony or sarcasm to critique society or an individual. | 75 | |
| 9931830911 | second-hand evidence | Evidence that is accessed through research, reading, and investigation. It includes factual and historical information, expert opinion, and quantitative data. | 76 | |
| 9931833238 | simile | A figure of speech used to explain or clarify an idea by comparing it explicity to something else, using the words like, as, or as though. | 77 | |
| 9931836261 | SOAPSTone | A mnemonic device that stands for subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, and tone. It is a handy way to remember the various elements that make up the rhetorical situation. | 78 | |
| 9931839033 | speaker | The person or group who creates a text. This might be a politician who delivers a speech, a commentator who writes an article, an artist who draws a political cartoon, or even a company that commissions an advertisement. | 79 | |
| 9931842406 | stance | A speaker's attitude toward the audience (differing from tone, the speaker's attitude toward the subject). | 80 | |
| 9931845663 | straw man | A fallacy that occurs when a speaker chooses a deliberately poor or oversimplified example in order to ridicule and refute an idea. | 81 | |
| 9931847831 | subject | The topic of a text. What the text is about. | 82 | |
| 9931847843 | syllogism | A logical structure that uses the major premise and minor premise to reach a necessary conclusion. Major premise: Exercise contributes to better health. Minor premise: Yoga is a type of exercise. Conclusion: Yoga contributes to better health. | 83 | |
| 9931853950 | synecdoche | Figure of speech that uses a part to represent the whole. "In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course." ~JFK | 84 | |
| 9931856422 | syntax | The arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. This includes word order, the length and structure of sentences, and such schemes as parallelism, juxtaposition, antithesis, and antimetabole. | 85 | |
| 9931860409 | text | While this term generally means the written word, in the humanities it has come to mean any cultural product that can be "read"--meaning not just consumed and comprehended, but investigated. This includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, political cartoons, fine art, photography, performances, fashion, cultural trends, and much more. | 86 | |
| 9931865312 | tone | A speaker's attitude toward the subject conveyed by the speaker's stylistic and rhetorical choices. | 87 | |
| 9931868052 | understatement | A figure of speech in which something is presented as less important, dire, urgent, good, and so on, that it actually is, often for satiric or comical effect. Also called "litotes," it is the opposite of hyperbole. | 88 | |
| 9931872611 | wit | In rhetoric, the use of laughter, humor, irony, and satire in the confirmation or refutation of an argument. | 89 | |
| 9931875486 | zeugma | Use of two different words in a grammatically similar way that produces different, often incongruous, meanings. "When you open a book, you open your mind." ~JFK | 90 |
