[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page

Re: More T musings

Sean Upton wrote:

> **Help!!!! What does a good T debate look like???   This is a question
> that is only being answered in a haphazard manner.  We sort of get to
> glimpse at a good T debate, but oftentimes it's something that there
> aren't really good guidelines for mastering.  This is a discussion that
> we really need to have on the L.

Well, i think the thread that Rod Phares started here is not only 
interesting but fundamentally important.  it seems that one thing which 
is missing is the depth of student understanding of the topicality 
question.  it would not hurt, during the off-season, for debaters to go 
back and read some of the standards on some key theoretical questions.  
I think that on Topicality, Frank Cross's booklet is a very useful 
STARTING POINT.  It will help to get a sense of what is being OMITTED 
from good negative topicality debate.  Part of this is because so many 
issues were just considered enthymetically obvious.  As a result they no 
longer became discussed or taught and the meanings left behind in the 
enthymemes.
Secondly, this type of approach provides a methodology for clearly 
analyzing a new resolution.  One doesn't quote Cross or go back to the 
days of seven-tiers of abstraction in the topicality argument, the 
analysis of the specific resolutions in light of these considerations 
will create resolutional specific rhetoric concerning these notions and 
the enthymemes can be re-created in the forms of field-specific-warrants 
for the interpretation...not back to the abstraction debate.  It is easy 
to begin this process early in the summer by examining each proposed 
resolution within the topic area in these terms before going and hunting 
down all the definitions.  The interpretations will ultimately include 
definitions, but this is a very small part of the field-specific 
warrants for employing that definition in defense of an interpretation.

Next, I think that it is obvious from others concerns that the 
topicality argument be more developed in the first-line attack.  Given 
the affirmative presumption, a shell is simply not sufficient to 
PERSUASIVELY dispute of the affirmative's presumptively acceptable 
interpretation which is field-specifically described explicitly and 
implicitly throughout the first affirmative constructive.

Finally (for now), it seems that the pace of topicality debate needs to 
slow a bit.  Often when people are debating an argument poorly or not 
nearly to their potential it is because they are just going faster than 
they can process the information competently.  The time advantage notion 
of topicality is a deathknell to topicality arguments.

i'm certain i'll think of more to MUSE.

david rhaesa

"A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on." - William 
S. Burroughs
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page