If I have one thing that I want to establish over the course of next year is the elimination of the phrase “public debate.”
I used this term a lot without understanding the full implications of the insidious nature of this phrase. It’s used by those who are deeply involved in the world of tournament-contest debating in order to make what they do legitimate.
You will never hear those who support tournament debate call their work “tournament debate” – they use the term “debate” for it, referring to things made for general audiences as “public debate.” This is no accident.
What this does is make debate that is created for audiences about publicly interesting topics appear to be the diminished, non-real, trivial form of debating. “Real” debating is for elites; it is for those who know what true debate looks like. It takes years of hard work to master. It’s an exclusive realm for debate experts. Not only do they know the right arguments, they know the right topics too.
This is in direct contradiction to the art of rhetoric, which is always about audiences. The measure of a good argument is whether the audience buys it. It’s a thwarting of “real” debate to totally remove audience from the picture and then claim that you are studying how to make good speeches to move minds on an issue.
The centering of the bizarre practice of tournaments-as-debate has been accepted without critique by most rhetoric and communication scholars. To resist the centering of a very limited and very anti-rhetorical practice of debate, I believe we should stop saying “public debate.” The reason why is that debate necessitates a public in the form of the audience, which serves as a synecdoche for the public.
Instead of saying “public debate,” let’s indicate that this is “real” debate by calling it “debate.” That is, any debate for an audience on an issue that most debate coaches and tournament champions would consider boring, too simple, unfair, or “played out” is what debate is, and where it lives best (bios). And yes, debate can be characterized as a living thing. More on that in a future post.
For the tournament-centric model of debate, we should push that from the center by calling it “contest debate” or “sport debate.” I don’t think there will be much objection from the tournament-centric participants as they already envision themselves as participating in something they already envision as a metaphor of American intercollegiate football. The approach says it all.
Perhaps this is a triviality or a strange bone to pick. I believe in the power of words, the power of naming. For too long we in the debate world have used the phrase “public debate” without understanding it’s full and sinister implication of removing debate from the discourse forms that everyone should be able to engage in productively. By making it something elite, something that requires the ample time and resources of privilege to master, we have done a disservice to rhetoric, to communication. Perhaps a renaming is all we need to start a revolution in conceptualizing debate where it should be: Something base, something everyday, and something that anyone and everyone should be able to practice in their daily lives. Contest debate doesn’t offer that. We don’t casually hold pick-up debates like we do with basketball and football, even though there’s an NFL and an NBA? Why? There’s a lot less insecurity there, and a recognition that practicing the art, no matter the skill level, or the reason, is valuable. Tournament debate professionals have missed that insight by dismissing debate’s place, it’s heart – the art of rhetoric.
Comments
4 responses to “A First Resolution for 2021, emphasis on “resolution.””
This is an expanded version of my comment in LinkedIn.
I agree with the point that unmarked “debate” should refer to debate in the real world in front of the audience. But “You will never hear those who support tournament debate call their work ‘tournament debate’ ” is an exageration, perhaps indended for rhetorical effects?
When tournament/competitive debate people use the term “debate” without any adjective, the default reference is tournament debate but the “tournament debate” is often used to make a contrast, at least in scholarly journal articles and textbooks.
Another contrast of interest is between “academic debate” and “real-world debate”/”applied debate” (Freeley & Steinberg, 2009). Before reading Freeley & Steinberg’s book, I was thinking of the real world debate is the primary and academic/tournament debate is modeled after real-world debates. But it could be the case that academic debate is in a sense “pure” form of debate and real-world debates are those forms applied to particular purposes.
In terms of marked/unmarked use of terms, “British debate” is another example. In competitive debating, Americans refer to “Parli” (extemporaneous) debating as “British” but from the British point of view, it is the default style of debating, and American “Policy” debate is a marked form. It is a minority style in the world, just like an “American” football in contrast to Rugby football or soccer.
These are good points! I don’t find a lot to disagree with here, but I will say that what motivates the post is the dangerous equivocation that instruction in tournament or academic debate is instruction in “debate,” or perhaps “debate as it should be.” There are a lot of markers for different kinds of debate as you rightly point out. Thinking about Kenneth Burke’s idea that identification is compensatory with division, I am concerned what the identification of a particular kind of debate says about what’s left out of the identification. “Policy” debate is a great example where they are happy to be a minority style because they believe that they capture all “debate” has to offer and more. Instead of identifications that purport to capture the best or provide a normative sense of debate as it “should be,” there’s great benefit in very limiting identifications of debate, or at least more attention to the division that appears anytime we name debate with something other than “debate.”
This is an expanded version of my comment in LinkedIn.
I agree with the point that unmarked “debate” should refer to debate in the real world in front of the audience. But “You will never hear those who support tournament debate call their work ‘tournament debate’ ” is an exageration, perhaps indended for rhetorical effects?
When tournament/competitive debate people use the term “debate” without any adjective, the default reference is tournament debate but the “tournament debate” is often used to make a contrast, at least in scholarly journal articles and textbooks.
Another contrast of interest is between “academic debate” and “real-world debate”/”applied debate” (Freeley & Steinberg, 2009). Before reading Freeley & Steinberg’s book, I was thinking of the real world debate is the primary and academic/tournament debate is modeled after real-world debates. But it could be the case that academic debate is in a sense “pure” form of debate and real-world debates are those forms applied to particular purposes.
In terms of marked/unmarked use of terms, “British debate” is another example. In competitive debating, Americans refer to “Parli” (extemporaneous) debating as “British” but from the British point of view, it is the default style of debating, and American “Policy” debate is a marked form. It is a minority style in the world, just like an “American” football in contrast to Rugby football or soccer.
These are good points! I don’t find a lot to disagree with here, but I will say that what motivates the post is the dangerous equivocation that instruction in tournament or academic debate is instruction in “debate,” or perhaps “debate as it should be.” There are a lot of markers for different kinds of debate as you rightly point out. Thinking about Kenneth Burke’s idea that identification is compensatory with division, I am concerned what the identification of a particular kind of debate says about what’s left out of the identification. “Policy” debate is a great example where they are happy to be a minority style because they believe that they capture all “debate” has to offer and more. Instead of identifications that purport to capture the best or provide a normative sense of debate as it “should be,” there’s great benefit in very limiting identifications of debate, or at least more attention to the division that appears anytime we name debate with something other than “debate.”