✍🏽ap english language review

Self-deprecating humor

Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated August 2025
Verified for the 2027 exam
Verified for the 2027 examWritten by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated August 2025

Definition

A rhetorical strategy in which a speaker or writer makes jokes about their own shortcomings or failures to create rapport with the audience and establish credibility.

AP course connection

Topic 8.2: 8.2 Considering how sentence development and word choice affect how the writer is perceived by an audience

Unit 8

"Self-deprecating humor" also found in: