In this workshop we will have a more in-depth look at what each speaker in a debate should do.
Please note, however, that these are just the basic guidelines that you should follow; as you will
see later on, there are various tricks and nuances how the structure presented here can be
twisted depending on the situation and your style.
Opening Government - Prime Minister
Prime Minister has a unique role in the debate, because he gets to define what the debate is
about. Specifically, he has to do two things: (1) define the problem and (2) define the
mechanism through, which that problem will be solved.
For example, if the motion is “This House Would invade Syria”, you firstly have to define what is
the problem, i.e. why would we want to invade Syria and secondly, you have to talk about the
mechanism, i.e. who is invading, what kind of invasion are we talking about etc. In this debate it
might be enough to say that the problem is an ongoing civil war and the kind of invasion that
you want to have is sending UN troops there, although, you might want to be more eloquent
than that in order to sound more persuasive!
Sometimes it’s even enough to take a similar case that has already happened and say “this is
what we will do”. For example, if the motion is “This House Would Legalize All Drugs”, instead of
spending time talking about unimportant thing, it’s absolutely okay for you to say “the rules that
apply to alcohol will apply to all drugs from now on”.
However, please keep in mind, and this is very important, that the whole course of the debate
might be in your hands, because if you define a debate in a bad way, the debate might become
so horrible that judges will hate you. Forever.
One of the example of a bad definition is called squirreling. It means that you define a debate in
such a narrow way that opposition doesn’t have any argument left. For example, if in the motion
on Syria mentioned above you say something like “we will invade Syria with UN forces, but only
if nobody will die, everyone will be happy and we will have rainbows all over Syria for a week”.
This is mental, don’t do that. Ever. This is unrealistic and you can’t really expect anything like
that to happen. There are no clear rules (obviously) for how you should define a debate and
what constitutes as squirreling so it’s absolutely up to your judgement. A rule of thumb might be
along the lines of “if you wouldn’t like to debate on such definition being on opposition, the
definition might be bad”.
Sometimes, however, you might not need to define the mechanism, because it is very obvious
or unnecessary. For example, if the motion is “This House Believes That Black People Shouldn’t
Use N-word”, you don’t really need to talk about the plan, because there’s none. A rule of thumb
might be that, more often than not, if the motion is “This House Would…” - you need a plan, if
the motion is “This House Believes That” - you don’t need a plan. However, that’s not always
true and you should decide for yourself whether you need to talk about a plan or not. More often
than not it will be very obvious.
After you do all the things above, you just go straight to your arguments. At the end of the day,
Prime Minister’s structure should look like this:
Definition of the debate: ~ 1 minute
Arguments: ~ 4 minutes
Opening Opposition - Leader of the Opposition
The first thing to say on the role of this speaker is that sometimes, i.e. in very rare
circumstances, you might need to redefine the debate. For instance, if the definition of the
debate on Syria is as given in the previous crazy example, you can legitimately say “this is crazy,
the debate should be defined like this…”. Please note that this happens very rarely and usually
debaters, even experienced ones, can count on their fingers how many times they have
redefined the debate in their carriers, so don’t abuse this, because it might ruin a debate as well!
Other than that, the first thing you have to do in this role is to rebut the previous speaker. More
often than not, Prime Minister will make arguments and it’s your responsibility to tell the judge
why these arguments are wrong. For instance, if Prime Minister tells that if we intervene in Syria
it will stop all the violence, your role would be to say “Prime Minister told us that if we intervene,
all the violence will end, however, this is not the case, because of x, y and z.”.
It doesn’t mean, however, that you need to rebut all the arguments that are made in the
previous speech. If somebody is crazy enough to make 15 arguments or whatever, it doesn’t
mean that you need to rebut all 15 of them, because most probably most of them are crazy and
unimportant, but most importantly, because you would like to leave some time for your own
arguments as well. Furthermore, if the argument is obviously false and you know that judge will
not buy that, you might not want to spend much time rebutting it, though, you might feel a
temptation to spend a minute of your speech telling the judge why the previous speaker is silly.
But don’t do that, it will only take your time without giving you much benefit.
After your rebuttal, you just move on to explain your arguments. All in all, the structure of this
speaker should look like this:
Rebuttal: ~2 minutes
Arguments: ~3 minutes
Deputy Prime Minister & Deputy Leader of the Opposition
Both of these speakers have pretty much equivalent roles. In addition to rebuttal and
argumentation, however, you might also like to tell why the previous speaker was wrong in his
rebuttal of your partner’s material, i.e. you might want to rebut his rebuttal… You don’t
necessarily need to do that openly, i.e. you don’t need to say “as I’m done with my rebuttal, I will
move on to rebut the rebuttal…”. Better than that, you might simply integrate that into your
rebuttal, as simple as that. But again, you shouldn’t rebut every single claim that they made
against your partner’s material, rather you would like to attack only the most important and
strongest points that they made against you.
Other than that, you simply move to your argumentation. Please note, however, and this is very
important, you are in a team with your partner, which means that you don’t need to compete for
the arguments with him. This then means that according to unwritten debating rules, the most
important arguments must be in the speech of the first speaker in your team. Otherwise it
wouldn’t be fair if the most important arguments come only in the second speech of the
opposition, which means that Opening Government didn’t have a chance to engage with them.
This is unfair for the other team and you are likely to be penalized for that, but moreover, this is
unwise strategically, because you might want to respond to the criticism to these arguments,
which you can’t do if they are in the second speaker’s speech.
Rebuttal: ~2 minutes
Argumentation: ~3 minutes
Member of Government/Opposition
Again, these speakers have equivalent roles. You simply need to rebut previous speakers and
make arguments. This is harder, however, as all the arguments you might have wanted to make
have been already made by the previous team. We will certainly have a workshop on this
specific topic, but in terms of what you need to do, it is quite simply - you make rebuttal and
arguments.
One note on rebuttal - you don’t necessarily need to rebut all the points that have been made in
the debate up until your speech. It is very likely that some of these points have been responded
to sufficiently well by the other team and there’s no reason for you to re-rebut them. Instead you
should follow the debate and see which arguments are still “on the table” and which arguments
were dealt with entirely by the other team. This is, again, your call to make and you will learn
these nuances as you practice debating.
Rebuttal: ~2 minutes
Argumentation: ~3 minutes
Whip Speaker of Government/Opposition
These speakers have unique roles in the debate. Firstly and most importantly, they can’t make
new arguments, partly because nobody can respond to them. Instead you should summarize
the debate. Please note that it doesn’t mean that you should say what happened in the debate,
i.e. what was said by each speaker, as that would be a waste of time since judges have their
own notes. What you have to do instead is to tell the judge why your side of the debate and
more importantly, why your team had the best arguments.
The debates usually have what are called “clashes”, i.e. the points on which teams clashed. For
instance, in the debate on the motion “This House Would Legalize All Drugs”, the government
side will say that individuals should be able to make these choices freely, while the opposition
will claim that the government is legitimate to intervene in this particular case.
This is an obvious clash point in the debate and your role is to say something along the lines of
“the debate clashed on the point of whether the state is legitimate in interfering with individuals’
choice in this particular case. The government said x, y and z, while opposition said a, b and c.
Here are the reasons q, w and e as to why our side has won this point”. When talking about q, w
and e, you need, if possible, to use your partners’ material in doing that. In other words, in
analysing and explaining to the judge why your side won the debate, you need to use your
partners argumentation. It doesn’t mean that you need to repeat what your partner said, but
rather use the framework of that argumentation in your own analysis.
It might sound complicated and it might be true, but then again it might not! That’s some brilliant
observation, right? Anyway, to put it bluntly, you simply need to tell the judge why your partner
was the most awesome person in the debate.
Technically, your whole speech is a kind of rebuttal so you don’t necessarily need to have a
separate part in your speech where you do rebuttal, however, if there are some points that have
been made, but they don’t fit in your clash points, you can rebut them before you move on to
talk about the clashes.