keyterms.html I Terms from  A - G:

Use the links for more details regarding the definition if you are interested in additional discussion of a term defined below.  Note that the key terms quiz also tests your reading and critical thinking skills (or lack thereof; if you pay attention in class, you will learn from the lectures what terms are MOST likely to appear on the quiz. Failure to pay attention results in long hours studying many concepts listed below that are, nonetheless, worthwhile learning. In any case, you will learn much useful information that will help you in other college courses and in your business career.) For keyterms H – Z See keyterms2.htm for second half of list.

MEME (from Wikipedia.com): The word meme first came into popular use with the publication of Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene in 1976.  Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene." The base term, mimesis, from the Greek word meaning “imitation,” is also the title of one of the most interesting books in critical thinking and, although a challenging text written by Erich Auerbach, the book is worth your efforts.   Dawkins, whose position on religion and science is distorted by creationists (you be the judge !), used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. Dawkins hypothesized that people could view many cultural entities as so-called replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behavior. Memes (like genes) do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes.

These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes — or not. Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,"but “memeticists” in general promote varying definitions of the concept of the meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in the ongoing debate about memetics.  
(See Mike Godwin, "Meme, Counter-meme," Wired, Issue 2.10, 10/1994)  More discussion at: http://www.memecentral.com/ And http://worldtraining.net/DefineMeme.htm

abstract: Summary of a magazine or journal article, written by someone other than original author.

abstract words:  Words that refer to ideas or concepts.

acceptance speech: A speech thanking for a gift, an award, or other form of public recognition.

action step: [See http://worldtraining.net/Monroe.htm ] Telling your audience what action they can take personally to solve a problem such as sampling healthful food (coping with obesity) or signing a petition (changing the policy on hemp). Here is one description of Monroe's Motivated Sequence. by Dominic Spencer   1# Attention: Hey! Listen to me, you have a PROBLEM! 2# Need: Let me EXPLAIN the problem. 3# Satisfaction: But, I have a SOLUTION! 4# Visualization: If we IMPLEMENT my solution, this is what will happen. Or, if we don't implement my solution, this is what will happen. 5# Action: You can help me in this specific way. Will you help me? 

The advantage of Monroe's Motivated Sequence is that it emphasizes what the audience can (or must) do. Too often the audience feels like a situation is hopeless; Monroe's motivated sequence emphasizes the action the audience can take.  It also helps the audience feel like you understand the problem at hand. It really helps them think you are listening to them instead of just tuning them out. It invites a conversational feeling and helps them see that you care about them and understand them.

action zone:  The action zone is the area closest to the instructor’s speaking position, which tends to be where most students are most involved and attentive at any given time.  

active listening: Giving undivided attention to a speaker in a genuine effort to understand the speaker's point of view.

ad hominem: (Latin: "to the man” ) introducing irrelevant personal assertions about your opponent rather than addressing issues relevant to the audience. A type of red herring that may successfully distract your opponent or your audience from the topic of the debate. This is the first logical fallacy  (as defined in the series of selected logical fallacies that follow) that distorts thinking and argumentation. It is crucial to avoid faulty logical reasoning in your own argument and to discern logical fallacies in an argument you disagree with. 

adrenaline : A hormone released into the bloodstream in response to physical or mental stress.

after-dinner speech: A speech to entertain that makes a thoughtful point about its subject in a light-hearted manner.

Alinsky tactics: recent meme popularized by Newt Gingrich referring to Saul Alinsky, author of “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.”   It inspired many young idealists (including, apparently, Hillary Clinton, who wrote her Wellesley College senior thesis on Alinsky). "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be,” Alinsky begins his book. “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." (See source for more details )

alliteration : Repetition of the initial consonant sound of close or adjoining words.

analogical reasoning:  Reasoning in which a speaker compares two similar cases and infers that what is true for the first case is also true for the second.

anecdotal evidence:  similar to observational selection (e.g., “My parents smoked all their lives and they never got cancer.” Or: “I don't care what others say about Yugos, my Yugo has never had a problem.”) Simply because someone can point to a few favorable examples or numbers says nothing about the overall chances.  (more here)

anthropocene : informal geologic chronological term that marks the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined in the 1980s  by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere. To date, the term has not been adopted as part of the official nomenclature of the geological field of study.

antithesis: The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, usually in parallel structure.

apocryphal : statements or claims asserted that are of dubious authenticity. The word's origin is the medieval Latin adjective apocryphus, "secret, or non-canonical", from the Greek adjective ἀπόκρυφος (apocryphos), “obscure.” It is commonly applied in Christian religious contexts involving certain disagreements about biblical canonicity. The pre-Christian-era Jewish translation (into Greek) of holy scriptures known as the Septuagint included the writings in dispute. However, the Jewish canon was not finalized until at least 100–200 years into the A.D., at which time considerations of Greek language and beginnings of Christian acceptance of the Septuagint weighed against some of the texts.

appreciative listening:  Listening for pleasure or enjoyment.

argument from the negative: Arguing from the negative asserts that, since one position is untenable, the opposite stance must be true. This fallacy is often used interchangeably with argumentum ad ignorantium (listed below) and the either/or fallacy (listed below). For instance, one might mistakenly argue that, since Newton’s theory of mathematics is not one hundred percent accurate, Einstein’s theory of relativity must be true. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the theories of quantum mechanics are more accurate, and Einstein’s theory is flawed. Perhaps they are all wrong. Disproving an opponent’s argument does not necessarily mean your own argument must be true automatically, no more than disproving your opponent's assertion that 2+2=5 would automatically mean your argument that 2+2=7 must be the correct one.

appeal to a lack of evidence (argumentum ad ignorantium, literally "argument from ignorance"): Appealing to a lack of information to prove a point, or arguing that, since the opposition cannot disprove a claim, the opposite stance must be true. An example of such an argument is the assertion that dragons, ghosts, flying saucers, etc., must exist because no one has been able to prove that they do not exist. Logicians know this is a logical fallacy because no competing argument has yet revealed itself that could falsify the claim. The onus, or burden of proof, is always on the person claiming something to be a fact. 

atlas: A book of maps

attitude:  A frame of mind in favor of or opposed to a person, policy, belief, institution, etc.

audience-centeredness:  Keeping the audience foremost in mind at every step of speech preparation and presentation.

bad faith: (Latin: mala fides) double mindedness or double heartedness in committing duplicity, fraud, or deception. The French term, mauvaise foi (“bad faith”), denotes the habit that people have of deceiving themselves into thinking that they do not have the freedom to make choices for fear of the potential consequences of making a choice. By sticking with the safe, easy, default ‘choice' and failing to recognize the multitude of other choices that are available to human beings, people place themselves at the mercy of the circumstances in which they happen to find themselves. Thus, people become more like objects (of investigation, manipulation, etc.) rather than considered as conscious human beings — in short, mindless, passive consumers, not adults or citizens.

bait and switch: unethical tactic used to draw some one (usually a potential customer) in with an outstanding, attractive offer (the “bait”). When people enter or accept the offer, they are instead offered something of lesser value (the “switch”). This violates the New York False Advertising laws, General Business Law 350 and 350-a. It also may violate the Unlawful Selling Practices law, General Business Law 396, if it was intentional, though only the Attorney General can sue under that law. New York City also has a Truth in Pricing Law, NYC Admin. Code, Ch. 5, Subch. 2, enforced by the City Department of Consumer Affairs. Politely demand a “rain check” and return when the item is in stock again.

Balkanisation:  geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with one another. It is considered pejorative but descriptive of tactics seen in Libya, Syria, and soon perhaps, California.

banality of evil : the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at his trial, displaying neither guilt nor hatred, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job" ("He did his duty...; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law." p. 135),[ an example of begging the question]: Is the law reasonable or one that a jury should and would nullify. Hannah Arendt accepted Eichmann's court testimony and the historical evidence available, and made several observations about Eichmann:  Eichmann stated himself in court that he had always tried to abide by Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. Arendt argued that Eichmann had essentially taken the wrong lesson from Kant: Eichmann had not recognized the "golden rule" and principle of reciprocity implicit in the categorical imperative, but had only understood the concept of one man's actions coinciding with general law. Eichmann asserted that he attempted to follow the spirit of the laws he carried out, as if the legislator himself would approve. In Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative, the legislator is the moral self, and all just and reasonable people are legislators; in Eichmann's formulation, the legislator was Hitler!

bandwagon : A fallacy which assumes that because something is popular, it is therefore good, correct, or desirable.

bar graph: A graph that uses vertical or horizontal bars to show comparisons among two or more items.

begging the question: (amplify details) Riddle me this: A father and his son are in a car accident. The father is killed and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon declares: “I cannot operate, because this patient is my son.” Confused ?  If you are, you possibly “begged” a major question. You failed to answer a question (often beginning with “Who says…?) perhaps because your reasoning is muddled with a bogus assumption. The longer you are confused by the preceding scenario suggests the extent to which you allow the begging of questions based on nonsense to be asserted by the media, etc. 

Who says that all surgeons are males? (A related bogus assumption raises the critical question: Who says all nurses are females? A surgeon should not operate on her children as she may find professional demands interfere with personal concerns for her child. Begging the question, assuming something is true without evidence or reasoning, is often used to characterize arguments against evolution in a commonly held premise assumed but not proven: that the Bible constitutes an accurate history of our origins. It would be more useful to say "You're assuming as true already what you are claiming to prove to be true" rather than the cliché, "You're begging the question." At the same time, it would be better to say “This leads us to asking the following question”: or  “This calls to mind the question regarding . . .” instead of “This begs the question:” if for no other reason than to avoid a cliché. Always consider asking: “Who says so?” and “What evidence justifies this reasoning? Is the authority cited qualified to make a judgment?”For example, the current controversy generated by the religious right asserts that homosexuality is a moral choice, thus sinful, and can be “cured” by prayer, prayed away ( See Max Bachmann argue this here; the fact he runs a for-profit “pray away the gay” business scam raises this question: cui bono.) [More here.]

bias: Most discrimination is not caused by intention to harm people different from us, but by ordinary favoritism directed at helping people similar to us.   

bibliography : A list of all the sources used in preparing a speech.

Bill of Rights  :The first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

biographical aid   A reference work that provides information about people. [See DAB ]

blue pill and its opposite, the red pill : pop culture symbols representing the choice between embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red pill) and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill) such as FoxNewz. The terms, popularized in science fiction culture, derive from the 1999 film The Matrix. In the movie, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. [View Here ] The blue pill would allow him to remain in the fabricated reality of the Matrix, therefore living the "illusion of ignorance", while the red pill would lead to his escape from the Matrix and into the real world, therefore living the "truth of reality".  [ The Matrix movie clips: http://j.mp/1uuZTz5 BUY THE MOVIE: http://bit.ly/2c8JJpy ]

boycott: an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for social or political reasons. Sometimes, it can be a form of consumer activism. The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish "Land War" and is eponymouslyderived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord, Lord Erne.

brainstorming :  A method of generating ideas by free association of words and thoughts. [ How to brainstorm suggestions.]

bracketing: describes the act of suspending judgment about the natural world to instead focus on an analysis of the mental experience  Bracketing thus involves setting aside the question of the real existence of a contemplated object, as well as all other questions about the object's physical or objective nature; these questions are left to the natural sciences. Bracketing has been compared to the instructions given to a jury in a trial to analyze only the evidence presented in court, and to avoid the usual inferences or connections they might make between such evidence and other sources of information. Bracketing can also be better understood in terms of the phenomenological activity it is supposed to make possible: the "unpacking" of phenomena, or, in other words, systematically peeling away their symbolic meanings like layers of an onion until only the thing itself as meant and experienced remains. Thus, one's subjective perception of the bracketed phenomenon is examined and analyzed “outside” a specific conceptual bracket. 

bricks and clicks: Term referring to traditional businesses (built from bricks) versus newer, online business enterprises (conducted through web sites using clicks.)

brief example :A specific case referred to in passing to illustrate a point, usually with an anecdote.

burden of proof : The obligation facing a persuasive speaker to prove that a change from current policy is necessary. The onus (or burden of proving or testing what is the case or not) rests on whoever makes the assertion.  

bullshit (also bullcrap):  a common English expletive [ See Russian term “poshlost” below ] which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism BS. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although the term bullshit is more common. It is a slang profanity term meaning “nonsense”, especially in a rebuking response to communications or actions viewed as deceiving, misleading, disingenuous, or false. [See Briloff on Wall Street] Use your judgment in using this term as it should be considered a term invoking “leveling” language but those prone to BS will be the first to object to any use of the term.  As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings. It can be used either as a noun or as a verb. While the word is generally used in a deprecating sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills (See Morris’ documentary UnKnown Knowns), or frivolity (“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”- Donald Rumsfeld), among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt, among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit [Read It Here ] as related to but distinct from lying.  Outside of the philosophical and discursive studies, the everyday phrase bullshit conveys a measure of dissatisfaction with something or someone, but often does not describe any role of truth in the matter. (See essay by Frankfurt)

“bumptious contact” :Under the white racial terrorist regime of Jim Crow in the southern US, black people were bullied and murdered for violating arbitrary rules.  Several decades ago, what is a very recent past in our highly polarized and racially segregated community, this crime of violating white public space was known as “bumptious contact”. For this crime, black people could be arrested, beaten, and even killed simply for being on the sidewalk near a white person. Bumptious contact was part of a racist legal regime that included other crimes, both formal and informal, such as “reckless eyeballing,” not yielding to white people at four-way intersections, or simply asking to be paid a previously agreed upon price for one's labor. [ See Emmett Till outrage]

The “Burden of Leadership”: a psychotic rationalization for the cliché “the end justifies the means” linked as a meme to “the white man’s burden”. We are encouraged to accept as fact the assertion that those few inside the “deep state” circle know the truth, and those outside the circle know a little bit, but as the majority of people are confused then the objective has been achieved in order to stabilize the insanity of world events.

butterfly effect: In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks earlier.

cabal : a group of people united in some close design together, usually to promote their private views and/or interests in a church, state, or other community, often by intrigue. (For more)  

call number : A number used in libraries to classify books and periodicals and to indicate where they can be found on the shelves.

Carrington-class catastrophe:  refers to an 1859 solar event that lead to EMP surges across the world, which resulted in a (literal) meltdown of telegraph communications equipment.

cartel: A cartel is defined as a group of firms that gets together to make output and price decisions. The conditions that give rise to a market are also conducive to the formation of a cartel; in particular, cartels tend to arise in markets where there are few firms and each firm has a significant share of the market. In the U.S., cartels are illegal; however, internationally, there are no restrictions on cartel formation. [More here]

cash cow: A cash cow is a business venture which generates a steady return of profits which far exceed the outlay of cash required to acquire or start it. Many businesses attempt to create or acquire cash cows, since they can be used to boost a company's overall income, to support less profitable ventures, or to “launder” cash illegally acquired. The term is also sometimes used in a derisive way, usually in a discussion of the complacency of a company about its profitable product.

catalogue : A listing of all the books, periodicals, etc. owned by a library.

Catch-22: Catch-22, a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, is set during World War II in 1943 and frequently cited as one of the great novels of the twentieth century. The phrase “Catch-22” is common idiomatic usage meaning “a no-win situation” or “a double bind” of any type. In the book, “Catch-22” posits a military rule, demonstrating the self-contradictory circular logic that prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr  [a bomber pilot] was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of “Catch-22” and let out a respectful whistle. ‘That’s some catch.’”  ( Catch-22, p. 46, ch. 5) (More on Wiki)

causal order: A method of speech organization in which the main points show a cause-effect relationship.

causal reasoning : Reasoning that seeks to establish the relationship between causes and effects.

caveat emptor: Latin term – let the buyer beware

caveat lector: Latin term – let the reader beware

central idea: A one-sentence statement that sums up or encapsulates the major ideas of a speech.

channel: The means by which a message is communicated.

chaos magick: a school of a modern magical tradition emphasizing the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods to manipulate people [see gaslighting] rather than entertain them. Borrowing liberally from other belief systems, “chaos magick” posits as its central belief that belief is a tool for manipulating our inherent “herd instinct” to create a social proof for political or economic gains. Modern practitioners, such as Karl “We create our own reality” Rove, experiment with “retro-chronal magick,” or changing perceptions regarding past events [“the Iraq war was intended to give Iraquis democracy.” “Bush won the 2000 election.”] The proposed mechanism through which this magick works requires the practitioner to maintain a careless memory of how things used to be, asserting that things are in chaotic flux, expecting change will occur because changes will be induced to occur and the ability to accept “changes” as they occur matter of factly is the mark of credibility. The most striking feature of chaos magic is the concept of how Kuhn’s paradigm shift becomes magic thinking, arbitrarily changing your world view (or paradigm), and a major assumption of chaos magic supported by DoD research.

chart : A visual aid summarizing a block of information, usually in list form.

Chatham House Rules: [ i.e., “off the record” ]  Since its refinement in 2002, the rule states: When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The Chatham House Rule is a system for holding debates and discussions on controversial issues, named after the headquarters of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, where the rule originated in 1927. At a meeting held under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to the meeting may quote from the discussion, but is not allowed to ever reveal the identity, employer or political party of the person making a comment. Generally, the Chatham House Rule is imposed as a condition of being allowed to attend a meeting or event: all participants are understood to have agreed that it would be conducive to free discussion that they should be subject to the rule for the relevant part of the meeting.

cherry-picking : Informal popular term referring to the deliberate selecting of information that supports your position, and ignoring information that does not.

chronological order: A method of speech organization in which the main points follow a time pattern. 

The City of London : a separate sovereign State located in the heart of greater London and not subject to British law. It is a Corporation. The City of London and London City is not the same. In fact City of London does not belong to UK, England, Great Britain or Britain.  The City is not a part of England, just as Washington is not a part of the USA. The City of London is a privately owned corporation operating under its own flag, with its own constitution and free from the legal constraints that govern the rest of the country.

City upon a Hill:  a phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14, he tells his listeners, “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” It has become popular with American politicians such as Ronald Reagan.  The phrase entered the American lexicon early in its history, in the Puritan John Winthrop's 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity”.  Winthrop admonished the future Massachusetts Bay colonists that their new community would be “as a city upon a hill,” watched by the world — which became the ideal the New England colonists placed upon their hilly capital city, Boston. [ 1984 Cuomo speech using this reference.]

cliché : A trite or overused expression.

clip art: Pictures and symbols representing  objects, processes, and ideas.

clutter : Discourse that takes many more words than are necessary to express an idea or, often a slide that contains more than one image or clip art.

cognitive dissonance: the excessive mental stress and discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. Stress and discomfort may also arise within an individual who holds a belief and performs a contradictory action or reaction. For example, an individual is likely to experience dissonance if they are addicted to smoking cigarettes and continue to smoke despite knowing how seriously it jeopardizes health. Stress and discomfort increase in proportion to the importance of the beliefs, ideas or values that are contradicted. Cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. A major reason why so many in the right wing refuse to accept the reality of human caused climate change emerges:  If anyone admits to himself that the climate scientists have been correct all along, then he also has to admit that Faux News and Rush Limbaugh have been lying all along, working to condemn his grandchildren to a living hell. That opens the possibility that they've been lying about everything all this time. To accept that you've been conned by psychopaths is too heavy a burden to carry, so most people choose denial. Refusal to accept anthropogenic climate change correlates most strongly, not with education, but with whether or not the individual is a Fox news watcher.  “Cognitive dissonance" may simply be a fancy way of saying "He was lied to, and he's too stubborn to say he got it wrong." But then, we have to acknowledge the role of the liar -- of the person who operates in bad faith. [ Good Shepherd summary ]

coherence: coherence involves orderly arrangement, and at the same  time requires a clear indication often with appropriate transitions of the relationship between ideas posited.

collective conscious or collective conscience (French conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.  The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his Division of Labour in Society in 1893. The French word conscience can be translated into English as "conscious" or "conscience" (conscience morale), or even "perception" or "awareness", and commentators and translators of Durkheim disagree on which is most appropriate, or whether the translation should depend on the context. Some prefer to treat the word 'conscience' as an untranslatable foreign word or technical term, without its normal English meaning. In general, it does not refer to the specifically moral conscience, but to a shared understanding of social norms.  As for "collective", Durkheim makes clear that he is not reifying or hypostasizing this concept; for him, it is "collective" simply in the sense that it is common to many individuals:  cf. social fact.

commemorative speech : A speech that pays tribute to a person, a group of people, an institution, or an idea.

comparison: Statement of similarities among two or more people, events, etc.

comparative advantages order : A method of organizing persuasive speeches in which each main point explains why a speaker's solution to a problem is preferable to other proposed solutions.

composition: This fallacy is a result of reasoning from the properties of the parts of the whole to the properties of the whole itself -- it is an inductive error. Such an argument might hold that, because every individual part of a large tractor is lightweight, the entire machine also must be lightweight. This fallacy is similar to Hasty Generalization (see above), but it focuses on parts of a single whole rather than using too few examples to create a categorical generalization. Also compare it with the fallacy of division (see following).

division: This fallacy is the reverse of composition and the term appears here to show its link to the above term. It is the misapplication of deductive reasoning. One fallacy of division argues falsely that what is true of the whole must be true of its individual parts. Such an argument notes that, "Microtech is a company with great influence in the California legislature. Egbert Smith works at Microtech. He must have great influence in the California legislature." This is not necessarily true. Egbert might work as a graveyard shift security guard or as the copy-machine repairman at Microtech--positions requiring little interaction with the California legislature. Another fallacy of division attributes the properties of the whole to the individual member of the whole: "Sunsurf is a company that sells environmentally safe products. Susan Jones is a worker at Sunsurf. She must be an environmentally minded individual." (Perhaps she is motivated by money alone?)

comprehensive listening : Listening to understand the message of a speaker.

concept : A belief, theory, idea, notion, principle, or the like.

concrete words : Words that refer to tangible objects.

confirmation bias: also called “myside bias,” is the tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation(when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

connective : A word or phrase that connects the ideas of a speech and indicates the relationship between them.

connotative meaning : The meaning suggested by the associations or emotions triggered by a word or phrase.

consensus : A group decision that is acceptable to all members of the group.

Conspiracy Theory [CT]:  term originally a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political wrong doing by two or more people. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators with hard to believe power and cunning. To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end.” The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from "the people". Some CTs prove true with time as new  details emerge.. 

contrast: A statement of the differences among two or more people, events, ideas, etc.

 control fraud: those with control, power, and influence in centralized institutions enriching themselves at the expense of the citizenry by selectively modifying what’s permissible, and doing so in a fully legally compliant process, i.e. within the letter of the law if not the intent of the law. [ See more here.]

controlled opposition: a protest movement that is actually being led by government agents or agents of a foreign power. Nearly all governments in history have employed this technique to trick and subdue their adversaries. Vladimir Lenin “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” [See Facebook ]

conversational quality: Presenting a speech so it sounds spontaneous no matter how many times it has been rehearsed. An exit skill most desirable as it is often the most persuasive.

co-optation : refers to the tactic of neutralizing or winning over a minority by simulating the act of assimilating them into an established group or culture. ( See Philip Selznick, "TVA and the Grassroots") In sociology, co-optation refers to a trend or idea being incorporated into mainstream culture in order to be manipulated and exploited. See also Repressive tolerance   and  Cultural appropriation   [More here]

correlation:  occurs when two or more things or events tend to occur at about the same time and might be associated with each other, but are NOT necessarily connected by a cause and effect relationship. (NOT to be confused with causality)

creating common ground :A technique in which a speaker connects himself or herself with the values, attitudes, or experiences of the audience.

credibility : The audience's perception of whether a communicator is qualified to speak on a given topic. Your credibility may be based on your own experience in relation to the topic, or the apparent thoroughness and grasp of your research topic. [More details on communicating credibly.]

crescendo ending:  A conclusion in which the speech builds to a zenith of power and intensity.o [See

criteria: Standards on which a judgment or decision can be based.

critical listening : Listening to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting or rejecting it.

critical realism: [ from Wiki ] Critical realism, a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014), combines a general philosophy of science (transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. . . . Bhaskar developed a general philosophy of science that he described as transcendental realism and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called critical naturalism. The two terms were combined by other authors to form the umbrella term critical realism. Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualized to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments.

This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect and impose meaning. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, critical realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunctions of David Hume's doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship. The implication of this is that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable. 

Positivism / falsificationism are also rejected due to the observation that it is highly plausible that a mechanism will exist but either a) go unactivated, b) be activated, but not perceived, or c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms, which results in its having unpredictable effects. Thus, non-realization of a posited mechanism cannot (in contrast to the claim of some positivists) be taken to signify its non-existence. It should be noted that Falsificationism can be viewed at the statement level (naive falsificationism) or at the theorem level (more common in practice). In this way, the two approaches can be reconciled to some extent.

. . . critical naturalism argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, when we study the human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical world and must, therefore, adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism, therefore, prescribes a social scientific method which seeks to identify the mechanisms producing social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than those of the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain actions or pre-conditions. Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing, the actions that produce them—a practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research. [ See Matrix excerpt ]

critical thinking: Focused, organized thinking about such matters as the logical relationships among ideas, the soundness of evidence, and the differences between fact and opinion. [Opposed by whom?]

cui bono: Latin phrase: Who benefits? . . . from a change in any rule, policy, law or procedure. One of the first questions you should consider when questioning the usefulness or effectiveness of a policy.  Related to the principle used by journalists: Follow the money.

cultural appropriation: The ridiculous notion that being of a different culture or race (especially white) means that you are not allowed to adopt customs, ideas or practices from other cultures. This does nothing but support segregation and hinder progress in the world.  All it serves to do is to promote segregation and racism.

cultural literacy: being able to understand the traditions, regular activities and history of a group of people from a given culture. It also means being able to engage with these traditions, activities and history in cultural spaces like museums, galleries and performances. When you pursue the goal of cultural literacy, you can better understand and relate to people. You understand and accept other cultures, which lets you make stronger connections with people. More benefits include improved communication and self-reflection. All of these are essential for “thinking globally; acting locally” as citizens in a democratic society. (Source)

Decalogue : AKA (also known as) The Ten Commandments, are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity.  They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the sabbath; as well as prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, dishonesty, and adultery. Different groups follow different traditions for interpreting and numbering them.

Deep State:  term used to imply that the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington conceals another, persistent, unelectable, shadowy, and more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol; exposed by Presidents [ here and here] but ignored by the media.Deep State.  This piece by Benjamin Wittes explains why Trump's war on the so-called “Deep State” has not succeeded -- so far. It's an important, gripping read, so please hit the link. I would add this: The “Deep State,” as the Trumpers conceive of it, is a fiction. It's a convenient bogeyman designed to allow Trump to purge the government of everyone who won't goosestep along with the Alt Right agenda. The phrase "Deep State" was invented (or at least popularized) by Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott, former Canadian diplomat turned poet/anti-war activist/JFK assassination researcher. Scott is on the left. When he used the term, he didn't mean what the Trumpers mean by it. Alex Jones seems to have picked up the concept from Scott -- and I'm guessing that Roger Stone, Trump's Machiavellian pal, picked it up from Jones. Nowadays, we often hear the phrase “Deep State” on Fox News, and even some Trump-worshiping congress folk have started to employ it. In short and in sum: The views of an anti-fascist writer are being used to justify fascism. I wonder what Scott thinks of that? [More here.] 

delivery cues: Directions in a speaking outline to help a speaker remember how she or he wants to deliver key parts of the speech. Most useful when placed on numbered 5x8 note cards. 

demographic audience analysis : Audience analysis that focuses on demographic factors such as age, gender, religious orientation, group membership, and racial, ethnic, or cultural background.

denotative meaning :The literal or dictionary meaning of a word or phrase.

derived credibility : The credibility of a speaker produced by everything she or he says and does during the speech. Your tone and manner should be enthusiastic and confident. If you are not confident or enthusiastic, learn how to fake it.

description : A statement that depicts a person, event, idea, and the like with clarity and vividness.

designated leader : A person who is elected or appointed as leader when the group is formed.

dialect : A variety of a language distinguished by variations of accent, grammar, or vocabulary.

direct quotation : Testimony that is presented word for word. 

dissolve ending:  A conclusion that generates emotional appeal by fading step by step to a dramatic final statement. 

“Dodgy Dossier”: a document released by Prime Minister Tony Blair that made many of the claims used to support the push for the Bush war in Iraq. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!  The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated.  This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time is clear proof of a deliberate attempt to deceive. The British term “dodgy” suggests evasive or deceitful behavior.

Dogfooding: also called “Eating your own dog food,” programmer’s slang term referring to a scenario where a company (usually, a software company which must do so, but also consider Monsanto , a food products firm that does not offer its products to its employees ) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product. Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products. The assumption is that if the company expects customers to buy its products, it should also be willing to use those products. Hence dogfooding  could communicate as a form of testimonial advertising.

domination principle: Also known as "Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi" – “What Jupiter (the Greek god) is permitted, the ox is not.” In a nutshell: Why stockbrokers can use cocaine with minimal legal risk and you cannot.

double bind: Systems theorist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson developed (with others) the concept of double bind, a psychological and social conflict in which contradictory demands generate a form of schizophrenia:   Unlike the usual no-win situation, in a double-bind the subject has difficulty in defining the exact nature of the paradoxical situation in which he or she is caught. The contradiction may be unexpressed in its immediate context and therefore invisible to external observers, only becoming evident when a prior communication is considered. Typically, a demand is imposed upon the subject by someone who they respect (such as a parent, teacher or doctor) but the demand itself is inherently impossible to fulfill because some broader context forbids it. [See Catch-22 ] For example, this situation arises when a person in a position of authority imposes two contradictory conditions but there exists an unspoken rule that one must never question authority.  The term, “double bind” refers to a communication paradox described first in  Samuel Butler's novel, The Way of All Flesh, the first place where double binds were described (but not labeled), according to Gregory Bateson. The semi-autobiographical novel was about Victorian hypocrisy and cover-up. For example, this situation arises when a person in a position of authority imposes two contradictory conditions but there exists an unspoken rule that one must never question authority. Full double bind requires certain conditions to be met: The victim of double bind receives contradictory injunctions or emotional messages on different levels of communication (for example, love is expressed by words, and hate or detachment expressed in nonverbal behavior as the “kiss-slap”; or a child is encouraged to speak freely, but criticized or silenced whenever he or she actually does so).  Often described as “Push it away when you want some more.”

drinking the kool aid: Popular term referring to the loyal to death fervor of Jim Jones’ followers in Guyana where all drank Kool Aid dosed with cyanide rather than return to the US and face legal prosecution.

due diligence:  Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party. In your research due diligence applies to verifying and confirming facts before you “buy into” an argument posited by someone. Also, an investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts with regards to a sale. (For more)

Dunning–Kruger effect: [From Wikipedia] In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability have illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence. Conversely, highly competent individuals may erroneously assume that tasks easy for them to perform are also easy for other people to perform, or that other people will have a similar understanding of subjects that they themselves are well-versed in. As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” [ “anyone can fly a jet plane; I learned on a MS Flight simulator.”]

Dutch auction:  is a type of auction in which the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price. This is also known as a clock auction or an open-outcry descending-price auction. This type of auction is convenient when it is important to auction goods quickly, since a sale never requires more than one bid. Theoretically, the bidding strategy and results of this auction are equivalent to those in a sealed first-price auction.  In a Dutch auction, the item being sold is initially offered at a very high price, well in excess of the amount the seller expects to receive. Bids are not sealed, as they are in some types of auctions. The price is lowered in decrements until a bidder accepts the current price. That bidder wins the auction and pays that price for the item. For example, suppose a business is auctioning off a used company car. The bidding may start at $15,000. The bidders will wait as the price is successively reduced to $14,000, $13,000, $12,000, $11,000 and $10,000. When the price reaches $10,000, Bidder A decides to accept that price and, because he is the first bidder to do so, wins the auction and has to pay $10,000 for the car. Dutch auctions are a competitive alternative to a traditional auction, in which bids of increasing value are made until a final selling price is reached, because due to ever-decreasing bids buyers must act decisively to name their price or risk losing to a lower offer. There is some confusion over terminology. Some financial commentators and some third-party auction sites use the term Dutch auction to refer to second-price auctions, which are different from Dutch auctions.

dyad: A group of two people.

dystopia: A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopia or simply anti-utopia) is a speculated community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.

economic hit men (EHMs) : highly paid professionals who cheat populations of countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the  IMF, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources in Third World countries. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. Much so-called “foreign aid,” such as the billions donated to the Pakistan military, is more like a gift card to be used only for purchases of U.S. military hardware. [See book overview.]

ECHELON: originally a code-name, now used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory nations to the UKUSA Security Agreement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, referred to by a number of abbreviations, including AUSCANNZUKUS  and Five Eyes). It has also been described as the only software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications. It was created in the early 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, and was formally established in the year of 1971. By the end of the 20th century, the system referred to as "ECHELON" had evolved beyond its military/diplomatic origins, to also become "... a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications."

Edmund Burke PC (12 January  1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher, who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party.   Burke is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution.  Since the 20th century, Burke has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism  as well as a representative of classical liberalism. … The statement that "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" is often attributed to Burke. Although it has not been found in his speeches, writings, or letters (and is therefore deemed apocryphal), in 1770 he wrote in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” (Wiki)

egocentrism :  The tendency of people to be concerned above all with their own values, beliefs, and well-being.

either-or  fallacy: type of logical fallacy that forces listeners to choose between two alternatives when more than two alternatives may exist. Logic texts assert that "or" has two meanings: Inclusive (or "weak") disjunction: One or both of the disjuncts are true, which is what is meant by the "and/or" of legalese.  Exclusive (or "strong") disjunction: Exactly one of the disjuncts is true. For example, “Either building code writers, architects and engineers are cavalierly ignoring this catastrophic new understanding of the extreme danger of office fires, or the investigation into the collapse of WTC building 7 on 9/11 was flawed.”

electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy that can damage or destroy network communications, e.g., the internet. Such a pulse may occur in the form of a radiated, electric or magnetic field or conducted electrical current depending on the source, and may be natural or man-made. The term "electromagnetic pulse" is commonly abbreviated to EMP, pronouncing the letters separately (E-M-P). 

Eliza effect: extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." Users breathe life and personality into even rudimentary chatbots that could not learn or generate illusions internally. As Dr. Sherry Turkle explains, "We create robots in our own image, we connect with them easily, and then we become vulnerable to the emotional power of that connection." This tendency of humans to read emotions, intelligence and even consciousness into machines is now called the Eliza effect.

“el once” :  Pronounced “el own-say,” the phrase means “the eleventh,” and it refers to the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Marxist president Salvador Allende, replacing it with 17 years of harsh dictatorial rule under Gen. Augusto Pinochet.  You may have seen the 1982 movie about the coup and its aftermath, entitled “Missing”, directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras, and starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. [See info and the book on this First Amendment legal controversy here.] The film depicts events surrounding the capture and execution of two Americans – Charles Horman, 31, and Frank Teruggi, 24 – a crime carried out by Chilean security forces in the wake of the U.S-backed coup. 

entrainment: brainwave entrainment (pronounced: "ehn - TRAIN - mint") refers to the brain's electrical response to rhythmic sensory stimulation, such as pulses of sound or light. When the brain is given a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or other senses, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what you “see and hear.”  Manipulating our brain through sound, as musicians do when they rehearse, induces that common experience where we are performing an action with someone else: whether speaking, singing, walking, rowing, running and without any effort we naturally start to walk, row, run in synch. The brain is naturally orientated to do this. So when you listen to music or hear your voice while rehearsing a speech, your brain follows a rhythm and fires neurons at the same rate, getting your brainwaves in synch, so to speak. Thus, you should rehearse in a lively, enthusiastic, conscious and engaged manner. [More]

eponymous laws This entry provides links to articles on laws, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a specific person. (It does not refer to eponymous statutes such as Laura's Law; see List of legislation named for a person.) In some cases the person named has coined the law – such as Parkinson's law. In others, the work or publications of the individual have led to the law being so named – as is the case with Moore's law. There are also laws ascribed to individuals by others, such as Murphy's law; or given eponymous names despite the absence of the named person.

equal justice: In the funeral oration delivered in 431 BC and published in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, , the Athenian leader Pericles encouraged belief in what we now call equal justice under law.Thus, when Chief Justice Fuller wrote his opinion in Caldwell v. Texas, he was by no means the first to discuss this concept. There are several different English translations of the relevant passage in Pericles' funeral oration. Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. As quoted above, Pericles said that a person’s wealth or prominence should not influence his eligibility for public employment or affect the justice he receives. Similarly, Chief Justice Hughes defended the inscription “equal justice under law” by referring to the judicial oath of office, which requires judges to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich”. Decades later, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall made a similar point: “The principles which would have governed with $10,000 at stake should also govern when thousands have become billions. That is the essence of equal justice under law.” [More here

equivocation: the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning. Equivocation is the type of ambiguity which occurs when a single word or phrase is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is not grammatical but lexical. So, when a phrase equivocates, it is not due to grammar, but to the phrase as a whole having two unacknowledged distinct meanings. Using a word in a different way than the author used it in the original premise, changing definitions halfway through a discussion, or using the same word or phrase in different senses within one line of argument, means you commit the fallacy of equivocation. Consider these examples: Morgan Freeman: 'Time Didn't Start Until After Life Began On Earth'  (“time” can mean duration or synchronicity); the U.S. Navy’s new motto “A Global Force for Good” implies we are do-gooders, even when meddling in the business of others, but the equivocal phrase “for good,” also implies we never intend to leave: “We are a global force, and wherever we go, we never leave.” Consider also the ending of the US Marine Corps “Creed of the Rifle” to fight “until there is no enemy, but peace.”(More)

emergent leader : A group member who emerges as a leader during a group's deliberations.

empathic listening : Listening to provide emotional support for a speaker.

espionage : or spying involves a government or individual obtaining information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information.  Espionage is inherently clandestine, as it is taken for granted that it is unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. A subset of "intelligence gathering", it may be conducted from public sources and using perfectly legal and ethical means. It is crucial to distinguish espionage from "intelligence" gathering, as the latter does not necessarily involve espionage, but often collates open-source information.  Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term is generally associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies primarily for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage. [History of espionage viewed here.]

ethical decisions:   Sound ethical decisions involve weighing a potential course of action against a set of ethical standards or guidelines. You should make use of any evidence that supports a valid ethical goal no matter how unpleasant the task. [ See http://worldtraining.net/epl.html ]

ethics : Branch of philosophy that deals with issues of right and wrong in human affairs.

ethnocentrism : The belief that one's own group or culture is superior to all other groups or cultures.

ethos : The name used by Aristotle for what modern students of communication refer to as credibility. Related terms: logos, pathos, mythos, thumos)

eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/; from Greek eu, meaning "good/well", and -genēs, meaning "born") is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population.  It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics). (Wiki)

event : Anything that happens or is regarded as happening.

evidence : Supporting materials used to prove or disprove something.

example : A specific case used to illustrate or to represent a group of people, ideas, conditions, experiences, or the like.

excluded middle (or false dichotomy): considering only the extremes. Many people use Aristotelian either/or logic tending to describe in terms of up/down, black/white, true/false, love/hate, etc. (e.g., You either like something or you don't. The accused either stands guilty or not guilty.) Many times, a continuum occurs between the extremes that people fail to see. The universe contains many "maybes."

expert testimony : Testimony from people who are recognized experts in their fields. For any communication you should know who the leading authorities are  considered to be in order to establish your own credibility.

extemporaneous speech : A carefully prepared and rehearsed speech that is presented from a brief set of notes.  

extended example : A story, narrative, or anecdote developed at some length to illustrate a point.

eye contact : Direct visual contact with the eyes of another person. A basic exit skill that helps assure your credibility in our culture where we naively assume eye contact assures credibility.  But caveat !   George Bush in 2001 – “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul. I knew that President Putin was a man with whom I could work.”  

Fabian Society: a group originating in England in 1884, with the purpose of forming a single, global socialist state. They get their name from the Roman general Fabius, who used carefully planned strategies to slowly wear down his enemies over a long period of time to obtain victory. “Fabian Socialism” uses incremental change over a long period of time to slowly transform a state as opposed to using violent revolution for change. Many assert that the philosophy behind Fabian socialism is basically the blueprint of what we call today the New World Order. The Fabian Society used to openly advocate a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. Its original logo was a wolf in sheep’s clothing holding a flag with the letters F.S. But I guess that was not the best way to conceal the wolf from the masses. Today the international symbol of the Fabian Society is a turtle, with the motto below: “When I strike, I strike hard.” – The Fabian Society, The Weather Eye

face: While the philosopher Lin Yutang (1943:200) claimed “Face cannot be translated or defined”, definitions prevail cross-culturally:  The term face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. [Face] is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction. In general, people cooperate (and assume each other's cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face. (Brown and Levinson 1978:66); Face is an image of self, delineated in terms of approved social attributes. (Goffman 1955:213).  Face is the respectability and/or deference which a person can claim for himself from others, by virtue of the relative position he occupies in his social network and the degree to which he is judged to have functioned adequately in that position as well as acceptably in his general conduct. (Ho 1975:883). [ See also “amour-propre”]

fair use: A provision of copyright law that permits students and teachers to use portions of copyrighted materials for educational purposes such as here – credit and support should be given, esp. to open source providers such as the Wikimedia Foundation for maintaining Wikipedia.

fallacy : An error in reasoning. See logical fallacies entry for more]

fallacies of division and composition:  (see above) Errors in reasoning that lead one to assume that if something is true for the part it must be true for the whole, and alternatively, if something is true for the whole it must be true for any part. Not necessarily.

false cause : An error in causal reasoning in which a speaker mistakenly assumes that because one event follows another, the first event is the cause of the second. This error is often known by its Latin name, post hoc, ergo propter hoc, meaning 'after this, therefore because of this.'

false flag: (or black flag) describes covert military or paramilitary operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by entities, groups or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them. Operations carried during peace time by civilian organizations, as well as covert government agencies, may by extension be called false flag operations if they seek to hide the real organization behind an operation. Term sometimes used to refer to those acts carried out by "military or security force personnel, which are then blamed on terrorists."  In its most modern usage, the term may refer to those events which governments are cognizant of and able to stop but choose to allow to happen (or "stand down"), as a strategy to entangle or to prepare a nation for war. Furthermore, the term "false flag terrorism" may even be used in those instances when violence is carried out by groups or organizations which, whether they know it or not, are being supported by the "victim" nation simply to co-opt and thus control the message of the opposition.

falsifiability: the belief that for any hypothesis to have credence, it must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory. (More here.)

favorite “son”/carpetbagger: popular terms for political candidates who are from your own community (hence you expect them to show favor for you) and distinguished candidates who come from somewhere else, hoping they can prevail despite not being a favorite local candidate.

feedback :The messages, usually nonverbal, sent from a listener to a speaker.

FBI: acronym for Federal Bureau of Investigation.  [ If an Agent Knocks . . . . ]

fiat money:  currency which derives its value from government regulation or law. It differs from commodity money, which is based on a precious metal such as gold or silver, which has uses other than as a medium of exchange. The term derives from the Latin fiat ("let it be done", "it shall be"). (Wiki)

The Five Ws, Five Ws and one H, or the Six Ws:  Questions whose answers are considered basic in information  gathering. They are often mentioned in journalism (cf. news style), research, and police investigations.  They constitute a formula for getting the complete story on a subject.  According to the principle of the Five Ws, a report can only be considered complete if it answers these questions starting with an interrogative word: Who is it about? What happened?;  When did it take place? ; Where did it take place? ; Why did it happen? ;  Some authors add a sixth question, “how”, to the list, though "how" can also be covered by "what", "where", or "when": How did it happen? Each question should have a factual answer — facts necessary to include for a report to be considered complete. Importantly, none of these questions can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no".

fixed-alternative questions : Questions that offer a fixed choice between two or more alternatives.

flak: term for a type of anti-aircraft weapon now also refers to negative responses to a media statement or program or an informal term for a media relations representative. Such responses may be expressed as phone calls, letters, telegrams, e-mail messages, petitions, lawsuits, speeches, bills before Congress, or other modes of complaint, threat, or punishment. Flak may be generated by organizations (such as government security agencies or corporations)  or it may come from the independent actions of individuals. Large-scale flak campaigns, either by organizations or individuals with substantial resources, can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media.

font:  A complete set of type of the same design, in serif or sans serif. Examples include Arial and Times New Roman.

Fourth Estate: The concept of media as the fourth estate implies that the media keep a powerful watch on the activities of the other three “estates” a term describing the three diverse factions ruling Europe: clergy, aristocracy, and middle classes, thus in England, Church, House of Lords and House of Commons. In India, the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary are the three estates, and the press is intended to keep a vigil on the functioning of these three estates, and is described as the fourth estate. [Read more.] 

frame of reference : The sum of a person's knowledge, experience, goals, values, and attitudes. No two people can have exactly the same frame of reference.

gaslighting: a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.  The term "gaslighting" comes from the play (and film) Gas Light. In those works a husband (Charles Boyer) uses various tricks, including turning gas lamps lower than normal, to convince his spouse (Ingrid Bergman) that she is crazy. Epitomized in the classic Chico Marx scene: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes.” from Duck Soup; Unrated Comedy, 1933. ·Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo Marx are at their very best in the political satire Duck Soup, often regarded as one of the funniest satires.

gazetteer : A geographical dictionary.

general encyclopedia : A comprehensive reference work that provides information about all branches of human knowledge.

general purpose : The broad goal of a speech. 

generic 'he'  : The use of 'he' to refer to both women and men. Prefer using plural forms for general statements and avoid the PC issue. Prefer using the logical form, “Some” when a proposition applies to at least one instance. “Some (i.e., at least ONE person) prefer to tease their mustache hair.”

Georgia Guidestones: Engraved in eight different languages on four giant stones that support a common capstone were 10 Guides, or commandments. That now-demolished monument is alternately referred to as The Georgia Guidestones  or the American Stonehenge. Though relatively unknown to most people, it was an important link to a hierarchy that some assert dominates the world in which we live. The 1980 origin of this strange monument is shrouded in mystery because no one knows the true identity of the man, or men, who commissioned its $20M construction. [ See population control ]

gestures : Motions of a speaker's hands or arms during a speech.

Gish Gallop: (a type of fallacy in reasoning) The term "Gish Gallop" was coined by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. The phrase refers to a debate tactic that was a favorite of Duane Gish, a young-Earth creationist who was also a highly skilled debater. It involves overwhelming opponents with a rapid-fire series of arguments, often without providing sufficient evidence or allowing for proper rebuttal. A classic example is when a proponent of some pseudo science bombards an expert with many weak arguments and start a new argument each time the expert successfully refute one of them. Dr. Scott states: "On the radio, I have been able to stop Gish, et al, and say, 'Wait a minute, if X is so, then wouldn't you expect Y?' or something similar, and show that their 'model' is faulty. But in a debate, the evolutionist has to shut up while the creationist Gallops along, spewing out nonsense with every paragraph." [More here]

giving away the store: deliberately offering assets, funds, benefits or appeals to an audience in order to gain support with little regard for the practical outcome through subsidies, sweetheart contracts, etc. Often a cover for money-laundering, giving away assets to loyal “bad actors” leads to “blessed” oligarchs – see map of land given to railroad builders who simply employed engineers from the US Army after those engineers built the railroad system that defeated the slave-economy of the confederate states. Btw, See one way that “governmental generosity” helped “robber barons” acquire their financial kingdoms. .

global plagiarism: Stealing a speech entirely from a single source and passing it off as one's own.

glocal: combining of terms global and local. An example of reframing seemingly desirable goals with unstated,  perhaps undesirable outcomes.

The Golden Rule: or ethic of reciprocity as a maxim, ethical code or morality that essentially states either of the following:  (Positive form of Golden Rule): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. [Do unto others…] (Negative form of Golden Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (also known as the Silver Rule). This concept describes a "reciprocal," or "two-way", relationship between one's self and others that involves both sides equally, and in a mutual fashion.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” —Leviticus 19:18 (Wiki) The Other, more current, Golden Rule asserts “Whoever owns the gold makes the rules.”

goodwill: The audience's perception of whether the speaker has the best interests of the audience in mind.

good cop-bad cop: also called “joint questioning by friend and foe”, is a psychological tactic used  for interrogation. 'Good cop/bad cop' tactics involves a team of two interrogators who take apparently opposing approaches to the subject. The interrogators may interview the subject alternately or may confront the subject at the same time. The 'bad cop' takes an aggressive, negative stance towards the subject, making blatant accusations, derogatory comments, threats, and in general creating antipathy between the subject and himself. This sets the stage for the 'good cop' to act sympathetically: appearing supportive, understanding, in general showing sympathy for the subject. The good cop will also defend the subject from the bad cop. The subject may feel he can cooperate with the good cop out of trust, or fear of the bad cop. He may then seek protection by and trust the good cop and provide the information the interrogators are seeking.

gossip:  Ontologically insignificant discourse, idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. In British dialect, the word refers to a godparent. Gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology origins. This has found gossip to be an important means by which people can monitor cooperative reputations and so maintain widespread indirect reciprocity. Indirect reciprocity is defined here as “I help you and somebody else helps me.” However, gossip can also hurt reputations and become a form of relational bullying.  With the advent of the internet gossip is now widespread on an instant basis, from one place in the world to another what used to take a long time to filter through is now instant. The term is sometimes used to specifically refer to the spreading of dirt and misinformation, as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals. Some newspapers carry "gossip columns" which detail the social and personal lives of celebrities or of élite members of certain communities. See keyterm, trolls.

graph: visual aid used to show statistical trends and patterns. Avoid abuse.

The Great Game: Russo-British Rivalry: “The Great Game” was the euphemism the British used when referring to their strategic rivalry with the Russian empire. The "Great Game" between Great Britain and Russia played out across the 19th Century, not just in Afghanistan but across the south Eurasian periphery. But it was not a game. It was a dirty, bloody, costly engagement for all sides. The Russians and British used Afghanistan's craggy heights and boulder-strewn valleys to play the "Great Game" of espionage and cold war against each other. The British tried three times without luck to add Afghanistan to their Indian empire. [More here ] See also the film,” Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

guanxi : Chinese term describing the basic dynamic in a personalized networks of influence, and is a central idea in Chinese society. In Western media, the pinyin romanization of this Chinese word is becoming more widely used instead of the two common translations—"connections" and "relationships"—as neither of those terms sufficiently reflects the wide cultural implications that guanxi describes.  Closely related concepts include that of ganqing, a measure which reflects the depth of feeling within an interpersonal relationship, renqing (人情 rénqíng/jen-ch'ing), the moral obligation to maintain the relationship, and the idea of "face" (面子,miànzi/mien-tzu), meaning social status, propriety, prestige, or more realistically a combination of all three.  Guanxi has a major influence on the management of businesses based in China, and also those owned by overseas Chinese, known as the bamboo network.

Go To keyterms - H through Z at  http://worldtraining.net/keyterms2.htm

Keyterms content largely based upon: The Art of Public Speaking, Eighth Edition by Stephen E. Lucas. © 2004 by the McGraw-Hill Companies and, of course, Wikipedia  (Please consider donating to them even if you assert, as many students do, that Wiki is simply another CIA front. After all, another excellent reference is their  CIA Factbook ! And besides, caveat emptor prevails as a constant reminder to think critically – even regarding statements from your esteemed instructor! ).  All rights reserved. Various internet sources cited above are reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law