Topic Subtopic Professional Communication Skills The Art of Debate Course Guidebook Professor Jarrod Atchison Wake Forest University PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2017 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. J arrod a , tchison P .d. h Associate Professor of Communication and Director of Debate Wake Forest University Jarrod Atchison is an Associate Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University, where he has taught since 2010. He is also the Director of Debate for the Wake Forest University Debate Team, which dates back to 1835 and has won multiple national championships. As an undergraduate at Wake Forest University, Dr. Atchison was a Presidential Scholar in debate who was ranked the third overall individual speaker at the 2001 National Debate Tournament, at which the team ranked second overall in the nation. i After graduating from Wake Forest University, he was an assistant debate coach and Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia, where he helped coach the winners of the 2007 Rex Copeland Award, which is given to the top-ranked debate team in the nation headed into the National Debate Tournament. After receiving his Ph.D. in Communication, Dr. Atchison helped revive the debate program at Trinity University before being offered the Director of Debate position at his alma mater. Dr. Atchison has published extensively on the study of argumentation and rhetoric and is the author of a forthcoming book on the rhetorical leadership of Jefferson Davis. He researches 19th-century American public address, with an emphasis on the American Civil War. Additionally, Dr. Atchison researches public argument, including the best practices for intercollegiate debate. Dr. Atchison has been nominated twice for the Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Wake Forest University. He teaches such courses as Debate and Advocacy, Argumentation Theory, Conspiracy Discourse in American Public Address, Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, the Rhetoric of the South, and Pivotal Speeches of the American Civil War. In the summer, Dr. Atchison works with high school students on the art of debate and was consistently voted the top-ranked lecturer at the University of Michigan summer debate workshop. • ii T C able of onTenTs Jarrod atchison, Ph.d. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i course scoPe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Lecture 1 The Hidden Value of Debate ..................................................................5 Lecture 2 When and How to Use Debate .............................................................15 Lecture 3 The Proposition: Choosing What to Debate ........................................25 iii The arT of DebaTe Lecture 4 The Structure of Argument .................................................................35 Lecture 5 Using Evidence in Debate ....................................................................45 Lecture 6 Fallacies in Your Opponent’s Research ................................................57 Lecture 7 Fallacies in Your Opponent’s Arguments .............................................69 Lecture 8 Elements of a Good Case ......................................................................79 Lecture 9 Arguing for the Affirmative .................................................................89 Lecture 10 Building Affirmative Cases ..................................................................99 Lecture 11 Arguing for the Negative ...................................................................109 Lecture 12 Building Negative Cases ....................................................................119 Lecture 13 The Crucible of Cross-Examination ..................................................129 Lecture 14 Asking and Answering Leading Questions ........................................139 iv Table of ConTenTs Lecture 15 Open-Ended Questions: Setting Traps ..............................................149 Lecture 16 Essentials of a Persuasive Rebuttal .....................................................159 Lecture 17 Dealing with the Unexpected in Debate ............................................173 Lecture 18 “Even If” Arguments: The Essential Weapon ....................................183 Lecture 19 Debate Jujitsu: Flipping the Warrant .................................................193 Lecture 20 The Power of Concessions ..................................................................203 Lecture 21 Conditional Argumentation ..............................................................213 Lecture 22 Line-by-Line Refutation ....................................................................225 Lecture 23 Judging Debates: The Art of the Decision ..........................................235 Lecture 24 Winning the Cocktail Party ..............................................................245 BiBLiograPhy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 image credits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 v vi C s ourse Cope Debate involves an incredibly important set of skills not limited to high school or intercollegiate debate tournaments. Anyone who has met or interacted with a debater knows that debating can help build confidence, train people to think quickly on their feet, and become strong advocates for what they believe. The goal of this course is to introduce you to the art of debate, but the idea is not to make you a nationally ranked debater. Rather, our focus is on how to apply the concepts of debate to your personal and professional lives. We begin by exploring what debate is and what makes it different from an informal argument. We learn that debate is the formalized enactment of argument and that it has several components: structure, agreement before disagreement, and the resolution to be debated. All the participants must agree 1 The arT of DebaTe to the format of the debate, including the organization of speeches and the amount of time to be allotted for everyone to speak. Beyond the format all the participants must agree to the stakes, the topic, and a neutral third party who will serve as the judge. How do you make your really big decisions? Do you act on your gut? Do you use a pro and con list? In this course, we will explore how debate can be a powerful method of decision making. Debate can distill the messy, complex, and sometimes emotional disadvantages of informal argumentation into the benefits of comparing ideas through the rigor of intellectual contestation. To maximize the benefits of learning the art of debate, we must establish proficiency in the core concepts of building proposals, rigorously testing arguments, and preparing to argue against a well-prepared opponent. The course explores the obligations associated with proposing change along with how to build and attack affirmative and negative cases. In addition to learning how to determine the strengths and weaknesses of an argument, we explore how to conduct a cross-examination to reveal those strengths and weaknesses for the judge. We learn how to use open-ended and leading questions to reveal the holes in an opponent’s case. To learn more advanced argumentation techniques, we explore what to do when someone presents an unexpected argument, how to “flip the warrant” to use our opponents’ evidence against them, and how to use “even if” statements and conditional logic to add a degree of nuance and rigor to our arguments. We examine the power of a strategic concession to refocus the debate to the strength of our positions. In short, we explore the techniques that transform a decent debater to a great debater. Those techniques are not limited to formal debate and can play a crucial role in decision making in any organization. The last section of the course focuses on using debate to help with assessment in the context of rebuttal speeches to transition from merely summarizing 2