Soc 220--Debate Concepts
In this class, we will analyze controversial issues according to several concepts. These concepts
can be applied to almost any issue or debate, so learning them is incredibly useful. You can read
any text or listen to any speech and apply these concepts to gain a greater understanding of what
is going on. Though the concepts below might seem intuitive at first, in sociology, many of the
concepts have specialized meanings. These sociological concepts are more precise, and learning
the more precise meanings will pay off, because the concepts become more powerful and more
useful when applied in this way.
For the first debate project, we will employ four concepts.
1. Interests
 This is a quintessential example of a term with a loose meaning in everyday life, but with
a very specific and powerful meaning in sociology.
 Interests are logically prior to the debate.
 Fundamentally, talking about interests answers the questions, “Why are these people
participating in the debate? What is at stake? What do they have to gain or lose?”
 There are two components to talking about interests: they answer the questions “who”
and “what.” Who are the interest groups, and what are the interests that these people
have?
 Interests have a lot to do with a person’s “social location” and people in different
locations have different interests. For example, unemployed people have a financial
interest in there being unemployment insurance or other benefits, while employers have
an interest in not having to pay too much for unemployment insurance. Students have an
interest in getting into the school they want and not having to pay too much tuition while
non-student taxpayers have an interest in not paying too much to support public
universities. Native Americans have an interest in not being stereotyped by sports teams
mascots while others may have an interest in being able to keep a mascot that is
traditional to them.
 There are lots of different kinds of interests, and people most often have mixed interests,
that is, some ways in which a policy benefits them and others in which it hurts them.
 Interests are to some extent subjective. That is, people may have different perceptions of
what their interests are. This can be a big theoretical debate.
2. Factual Claims
 First of two components of the arguments used by each side in a debate.
 Factual claims take the form of contestable, falsifiable empirical statements. When
someone makes a factual claim, one could imagine what it would take to determine
whether the statement is true or false.
 Factual claims don’t just take the form of numbers or statistics (though these are easy to
identify as factual claims); they can be any statement, whether or not the side provides
evidence for it, that someone could empirically study and find an answer to.
 Examples of factual claims include assertions about whether Whites or minorities are
more discriminated against in employment (research can determine which is true),

assertions about racial/ethnic patterns in drug use, assertions about what happened in the
past.
Oftentimes, factual claims are what are thought of when you imagine how a debate is
going to be settled. The side with the “correct” argument wins. Or so we think…
3. Value Claims
 Second of two components of the arguments used by each side in a debate.
 As a concept, value claims are the opposite of factual claims, in a sense. These are not
things that could be empirically studied or measured. They are subjective beliefs about
what is important, what people should do, what society should be like, etc.
 Examples of values: social/economic equality is good, it is good for everyone to speak
the same language. There are some values almost everyone shares, at least at a general
level (justice, compassion), but people disagree about how to accomplish those values.
There are other values that not everyone shares.
 Values often come from people's religious, political, or philosophical beliefs and are
usually very important to people. Part of understanding a debate is understanding what
core belief systems people think are at stake, and people will invoke these values when
they justify their positions on policies. Often (not always) the way values are talked
about will be very different from within a belief system than from outside. If you are not
familiar with a belief system, people's arguments may seem confusing or alien to you.
 You will probably find in almost all debates that the values held by each side influence
what factual claims each side makes. In fact, sometimes the two sides of a debate make
such different value claims that they each point to an entirely different set of factual
claims to support their argument; the debate isn’t about disputing facts, it’s about having
fundamentally different beliefs that lead them to give weight to different facts.
4. Rhetoric
 This is not the argument itself, but the vehicle of the argument (just as words are the
vehicles that convey ideas).
 Rhetoric is the strategic use of language. Rhetoric is language that is not necessarily
intended to be factually accurate but is intended to give that side a leg up in the debate. It
is language that is used only in order to win the argument.
 When analyzing rhetoric, there are three components.
1. What is the word or phrase?
2. What is its definition? What does it mean in this context?
3. What effect does the use of this word or phrase have on the outcome of the debate?
What is the intention of the people who use that word or phrase? What difference
does it make that they use that word or phrase as opposed to a different one?
 Example: “reverse discrimination”
 In some debates, rhetoric is incredibly important, and in others, it is not. Whether rhetoric
is identifiable has a lot to do with who is speaking/writing and in what context. Academic
articles in scholarly journals use a minimal amount of rhetoric, while editorials in
newspapers are usually heavily laced with rhetoric.
For the term paper, we will add two concepts—power and resources—to our list. More on that
later.