Name calling

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title: "Name calling" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["harassment-and-bullying", "names", "pejorative-terms"] description: "Directing insulting or demeaning labels" topic_path: "general/harassment-and-bullying" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Directing insulting or demeaning labels ::

Name-calling is a form of argument in which insulting or demeaning labels are directed at an individual or group. This phenomenon is studied by a variety of academic disciplines such as anthropology, child psychology, and political science. It is also studied in rhetoric and a variety of other disciplines.

In politics and public opinion

Politicians sometimes resort to name-calling during political campaigns or public events with the intentions of gaining advantage over, or defending themselves from, an opponent or critic. Often such name-calling takes the form of labelling an opponent as an unreliable and untrustworthy source, such as use of the term "flip-flopper".

Common misconceptions

Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" is not on its own an example of the abusive argumentum ad hominem logical fallacy. The fallacy occurs only if personal attacks are employed to devalue a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker; personal insults in the middle of an otherwise sound argument are not fallacious ad hominem attacks.

References

References

1. "The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy". Plover.net.
2. "Logical Fallacy: Argumentum ad Hominem". Fallacyfiles.org.
3. [http://theautonomist.com/iindv/articles_stand/perm/fallacies.php#adhom Ad hominem fallacy] {{Webarchive. link. (2013-07-19 , Logical Fallacies, Formal and Informal, ''Independent Individualist''.)
4. "AdHominem". Drury.edu.
5. "Logical Fallacies» Ad Hominem (Personal Attack)". Logicalfallacies.info.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::