✍🏽ap english language review

Self-deprecation

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 deliberately downplays or makes light of their own abilities, status, or position to build rapport with an audience.

AP course connection

Topic 2.1: 2.1 Analyzing audience and its relationship to the purpose of an argument

Unit 2

"Self-deprecation" also found in: