Refutations
Refutations are the heart of the debate. Even the best case ever written cannot
win a round. It has been mentioned quite a bit that you must defend your case
and attack your opponent's. Well, that's what refutations are: argumentation
against your opponent's case and argumentation that reaffirms your case. There
isn't much to say about refutations, but here are a few tips that might help:
-ROADMAP AND SIGNPOST. I cannot stress how important this is. I don't like
using fancy cute little names like that but this is a very important thing and
it's really easy. In the beginning of each speech, tell your judge where you
are going. For instance, if I was affirmative, I might say something like,
"First I will refute my opponent's case, then I will return to reenforce my own."
Signposting is very similar. When refuting anything, tell the judge where you
are. If you are saying something against his contention 2 subpoint a, say it!
For instance, on affirmative I might say something like, "My opponent's contention 2
subpoint a says that Bill Clinton is a liar, my response is that he was just a little
horny, and that would be an inappropriate thing to say on national telvision."
When refuting something a little further into the debate and several arguments
have been made, it might be a good idea to say what part of whose case you're on,
and in a couple words say your opponent's last argument. For instance, "Against
my contention 1 subpoint a, my opponent says that it is never ok to lie, my response
is that Bill was perfectly correct in not telling the complete truth because
millions of TV watchers would have puked on the spot."
-Use direct clashing argumentation. There is a saying, "two boats sailing
in the night", or something like that. Basically, if the arguments that you
and your opponent present have nothing to do with each other, or they avoid
the real issue, there is no way the judge can decide which arguments make more
sense and you will have a really boring and crappy round and the judge will start
to draw pictures during your speech.
-Examples are good, but get real arguments and analysis in your refutations.
Examples can help you reenforce your arguments if you have time for them, but
you may run into some trouble if you replace analysis with examples. First of
all, if your arguments depend soley on examples, you may be having a hasty
generalization. For instance, just because criminal Joe Bob raped 20 women
after being let out of jail, it doesn't mean that all criminals will rape 20
women after being released from jail. Second, examples may not cover the entire
resolution. For instance, just talking about how great Martin Luther King, Jr.
was does not make civil disobedience good. He lived quite a while ago in
different social conditions. Make sure you cover the real issues of the resolution
in your arguments.
-Practice word economy. Don't use more words than you have to. This is always
important, but especially for the affirmative. If you haven't noticed, a 7
minute neg speech is followed by a 4 minute aff speech, and a 6 minute neg
speech is followed by a 3 minute aff speech. Basically, the affirmative has a
lot of ground to cover in not much time. So you don't want to use 10 words
when you can use 5.
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Email: kerwinguy@yahoo.com
