Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Faculty of Education and Psychology

Summary of the Doctoral (PhD) Dissertation

The World Universities Debating Championship Format: A Move-Based and Contextual Analysis

by

Gergely J Tamási

Supervisor: Dr Krisztina Károly, PhD habil.

2012

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Faculty of Education and Psychology

PhD School of Education (Director: Dr Éva Szabolcs, PhD habil.)

PhD Programme in Language Pedagogy (Director: Dr Péter Medgyes, DSc)

The World Universities Debating Championship Format: A Move-Based and Contextual Analysis

by

Gergely J Tamási

Supervisor: Dr Krisztina Károly, PhD habil.

Members of the Defence Committee:

Dr Kristóf Nyíri, CSc (Chair)

Dr Dorottya Holló, PhD habil. (Referee)

Dr Ágnes Magnuczné Godó, PhD (Referee)

Dr Éva Illés, PhD (Secretary)

Dr Péter Medgyes, DSc (Member)

Dr Enikő Németh T., CSc (Member)

Dr Pál Heltai, CSc (Member)

2012

1

Introduction

Argumentation has been widely regarded as an “essential ‘tool’ for life in western,

democratic societies” (Combs, 2004, p. 55). Discussion and debate are present everywhere

from the society at large, where the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary are all based

on argumentation, to the more closed academic circles, where scholars are expected to

acquire and demonstrate skills in critical thinking, reasoning, and debate (cf., Popper, 1945,

on critical rationalism). Because of this dependence on argumentation, curricula in tertiary

education, mostly in the West, have featured explicit instruction in argumentation or

argumentation-based genres albeit this instruction has predominantly targeted the written

form of argumentation.

Although the presence of instruction in written argumentation has already enabled

practitioners to hone their students’ skills in critical thinking and related skills, oral

argumentation has also been called for in the classroom, both in secondary and tertiary

education (Farrow, 2006). On the one hand, in tertiary education, the lack of oral

argumentation is perturbing. Kim (2006) conducted research on East Asian students studying

in tertiary education in the United States and argues that English for Academic Purposes

(EAP) courses should include more oral work that simulate task types (e.g., debates) from

content courses the students encounter. Gring (2006) argues that speeches all inherently

feature argumentation. On the other hand, what applies more to English as a foreign language

(EFL) classrooms, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages (Council of Europe, 2001), is that students already at the Threshold (B1) level

should be able to “briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions, plans, and actions” (p.

59), while by the time they reach the Vantage (B2) level, they must be able to “develop an

argument systematically with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant

2

supporting details” (p. 59). Consequently, in Hungary, the Vantage-level Matura examination

in modern foreign languages, inspired by the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages (Council of Europe, 2001), now incorporates a compulsory “For and Against”

(i.e., debate) task, as a result of which there has been a revived interest on the part of EFL

(and other modern foreign language) instructors to introduce debating into their classrooms

(Tamási, 2008a).

The aim my research is to establish a grounded theory regarding the way in which

academic debaters participating in the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC)

construct their opening speeches. There are three terms that are in need of a definition here:

grounded theory, academic debate, and the WUDC format of academic debate1. Firstly,

grounded theory research is “a method of conducting qualitative research that focuses on

creating conceptual frameworks … through building inductive [italics added] analysis from

the data” (Charmaz, 2007, p. 608). What lies at the heart of this method is the conviction that

“concepts and theories are constructed by researchers out of stories that are constructed by

research participants who are trying to explain and make sense out of their experiences and/or

lives, both to the researcher and themselves” (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p. 10).

Secondly, Freeley and Steinberg (2005) define academic debate as the following:

Academic debate is conducted on propositions in which the advocates

have an academic interest, and the debate typically is presented before

a judge or an audience without direct power to render a decision on the

proposition. In fact, in academic debate the judge is instructed to

disregard the merits of the proposition and to render a decision on the

1 The label used for the sub-genre by the parent discourse community is British Parliamentary Debate (BPD) format; however, for the sake of clarity and in order to prevent confusion with applied debate taking place in the British Houses of Parliament, the format in the present dissertation will be referred to as the WUDC format, although the format itself is employed in most of the debate tournaments organized for students of tertiary education in the world.

3

merits of the debate [italics added]. The purpose of the debate is to

provide educational opportunities for the participants. (p. 15)

Freeley and Steinberg contrast academic debate with applied debate (i.e., debates where the

audience has “the power to render a binding decision on the proposition”, p. 15, such as

presidential, judicial, television, etc. debates); however, their definition might still encompass

any type of debate that takes place in academic life, be them vivos, conference presentations,

or panel discussions. It is important to note, although, that the present dissertation does not

purport to investigate such a variety of genres, nor does it claim that the findigs will be

applicable to such diverse genres. Instead, it proposes to investigate a given format of

academic (educational) debate.

Thirdly, the WUDC format is a format of academic debate which features four teams

of two speakers (two teams on the proposition side and two teams on the opposition side),

with the first speaker of the proposition team beginning the debate and the second speaker of

the second opposition team ending it. Each speaker delivers one 7-minute speech, the first

and last minute of which is protected, that is, it may not be interrupted by members of the

teams on the other side. During the intermediary 5 minutes, on the other hand, the speaker

holding the floor may accept points of information, that is, “a brief statement or question to

an argument claim, example, or other point that is being made by the speaker” (Meany &

Shuster, 2002, p. 206). At the WUDC, teams usually receive the propositions to be debated

15 minutes before the round commences, and speakers do not have any preparation time

between the subsequent speeches. To paraphrase the aim of the research, with these

definitions in mind, I have attempted to carry out an inductive, qualitative investigation on

the way in which WUDC participants explain the reasons behind their methods of speech

construction (cf., Charmaz, 2007; Corbin & Strauss, 2008), in an academic debate format that

calls for (a) superior argumentation skills because the debates are judged based on the quality

4

of arguments advanced as opposed to the judges’ perception of the truth value of the

proposition (Freeley & Steinberg, 2005) and (b) a significant amount of spontaneity because

it places time pressure on the participants (Meany & Shuster, 2002).

Researching academic debate and, more specifically, the WUDC format, is important

because (a) forensics is underresearched as a field (Croucher, 2006; Herbeck, 1990), (b) the

WUDC format is one of the most widespread formats of academic debate in the world, (c) the

results would also be transferable to other formats, and (d) the research would also be

relevant for oral argumentation pedagogy. Firstly, there is a research void in forensics. As

Croucher (2006) argues, research on academic debate (and forensics in general) has focused

predominantly on practical essays on teaching debate and running forensics programmes,

with some papers examining the future of and ethics behind forensics, yet there are very few

studies that expand the field of communication theory itself (see also Herbeck, 1990).

Secondly, when choosing a format to research, the WUDC format is probably the most

widely utilized format of academic debate in the world. Apart from the WUDC itself, “the

premier debating event in the world” (Cirlin, 2002, p. 82), the European Universities

Debating Championships (EUDC) and thereby the majority of the other national and

international debating events forerunning the WUDC and the EUDC have adopted this

format as the standard. Thirdly, not only would the results of the analysis be relevant for

debaters following this particular format of debating, but the outcomes of the research could

also be transferred to other formats. Because of the similarities in terms of speakers’ roles

and responsibilities, the results will also be applicable to secondary school debate formats,

such as the World Schools debate format or the Karl Popper debate format (cf., Driscoll &

Zompetti, 2003). Lastly, in Hungary the study would have practical implications for those

involved in argumentation pedagogy, which has lost touch with international trends for the

past decade (for more details on this, see Tamási, 2008b). With only manuals of

5

argumentation to rely on, it is important to grasp the opportunity to research debate with a

view to outlining good practices and possibly shedding practices that have been passed over

on the international scene. However, the outcomes of the research could also inform

international argumentation pedagogy, where Dean (1990) calls for “pedagogical articles

written with a clear purpose … and which are supported by existing communication research

and theory” (p. 35). Therefore, researching academic debate is beneficial for a number of

reasons.

Not only is it important to conduct research on academic debate, but it is also

necessary to specifically study the generic characteristics of academic debate as a genre.

Firstly, the study extends the scope of inquiry in the field of spoken genre analysis to include

another genre in addition to academic lectures (e.g., Camiciottoli, 2004; Jung, 2006; Lee,

2009; Morell, 2004; Thompson, 2003), classroom discourse (e.g., Csomay, 2005), academic

presentations (e.g., Morita, 2002), dissertation defences (e.g., Recski, 2005), and conference

presentations (e.g., Edwards, McMasters, Acland, Papp, & Garrison, 1997; Webber, 2005),

that is, the spoken academic genres that have been predominantly subjects to detailed inquiry

previously. More importantly for the EFL/EAP classroom, however, genre-based instruction

(and approaches building upon genre analysis, e.g., Crossley, 2007) has yielded mostly

positive results. Especially, the North American school of genre studies (e.g., see Freedman

& Medway, 1994), has been instrumental in translating findings from (rhetorical) genre

research into concrete classroom implications. For example, Faigley and Hansen (1985),

albeit for writing, argue that if teachers are serious about providing adequate instruction for

their students, instruction must be preceded by the rhetorical analysis of the genre texts. Hyon

(2001) also conducted a follow-up interview study with eight participants on an EAP reading

course which featured genre-based instruction. Her results indicate that explicit genre-based

instruction may facilitate aspects of L2 reading and writing; therefore, it is hoped that EFL

6

teachers may utilize the findings of the study in their daily teaching activities to help students

plan and construct, and thus be more successful with, their individual long turns and

ultimately develop their overall discourse competence (cf., Canale, 1983). Thirdly,

researching academic debate provides a unique opportunity for the field of genre analysis, as

the acquisition of the generic competence in this case is not bound up with the acquisition of

professional expertise, as it is the case in other professional contexts (Bhatia, 2004). Thus,

researching academic debate allows the genre analyst to focus purely on the acquisition of

generic knowledge, without interference from professional expertise. Therefore, a genre

analytical approach seems to be particularly suited to the analysis of academic debate and,

more specifically, the WUDC academic debate format.

Lastly, out of the numerous methods that could be used to perform a genre analysis, it

needs to be clarified why the grounded theory method is the most appropriate for the

investigation. As it has been pointed out by Bhatia (2004), the evolution of genre theory can

be characterized as a move from the focus on (a) the “textualization of lexico-grammar” (p.

4), through the focus on (b) the “organization of discourse” (p. 4), ultimately to the focus on

(c) the “contextualization of discourse” (p. 4), that is, a “quest for thicker descriptions [italics

added] of language use …, where an attempt is made to offer a grounded [italics added]

description of language use” (p. 22). Although expert feedback has long been an

indispensable part of genre analysis (Bhatia, 1993), as Bhatia (2008) argues, rarely have

studies working within the field taken the context of discourse into account; therefore, she

calls for a more extensive use of ethnographic methods in the analysis of genre. Because the

grounded theory method emphasises the importance of (a) placing the experience in the

larger context and (b) “describing the process … of action” (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p. 17),

it is particularly suited for the purposes of the investigation required.

7

Research question

In order to fill the research niches outlined above, in my dissertation I aimed to

answer the following research question:

• How do expert debaters at the World Universities Debating Championship

(WUDC) construct their opening speeches in terms of rhetorical (move)

structure as a manifestation of context?

At first sight, this research question may seem rather broad; however, as Corbin and

Strauss (2008) argue, (a) in order to provide the researcher “with sufficient flexibility and

freedom to explore the topic in some depth” (p. 25) and (b) because concepts in qualitative

studies are researched because there is an insufficient amount of information at our disposal,

it is necessarily so. The research question above, on the other hand, does outline the

population/event to be researched as well as the focus of the study; therefore, it should be

sufficient as a point of departure in the construction of a grounded theory.

The choice of focusing on a part-genre of academic debates, on the other hand, is not

without precedent; other studies that have set out to investigate a given genre have also

focused on the introductory sections of those respective genres. Swales (1990), for example,

has focused on the introductions of research articles; moreover, in the field of spoken genre

analysis, the studies conducted on academic lectures have also focused on the introductions

to these lectures exclusively (Aguilar, 2004; Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2005;

Thompson, 1994). Moreover, this choice to focus on the opening speeches has been

motivated by the nature of the investigation conducted. Because one of the aims has been to

compare actual practice with textbook descriptions of academic debate, only the part-genre

that is actually covered in the academic literature could be analysed.

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Data collection

Bhatia (1993, 2004) outlined seven steps that are involved in the systematic

description of a genre that has not yet been subjected to analysis. First, the genre text should

be placed in a situational context. Second, the literature available should be extensively

researched. This involves reviewing (a) the linguistic analyses that have already been

conducted on the given genre, (b) manuals and handbooks that are relevant for the discourse

community investigated, and (c) discussions focusing on the discourse community

investigated. Third, the situational/contextual analysis should be refined. This step will

include the precise definition of “the speaker …, the audience, their relationships and their

goals” (Bhatia, 2004, p. 164). Fourth, an appropriate corpus needs to be chosen. The

appropriateness of the corpus is evaluated based on the (a) comparability of the texts and (b)

the size of the corpus as determined by the aim of the study. On the one hand, Bhatia (2004)

emphasizes the importance of the precise definition of the genre text, which will be the

criterion based on which texts will be included in or excluded from the corpus. On the other

hand, he also stresses that the depth of the analysis proposed will also determine the optimal

size of the corpus: if the aim is to establish generalizations, then a few surface features will

probably be tested on large corpora; however, if the aim is to provide an exploratory

investigation, then a few randomly chosen texts should suffice. Fifth, the “textual,

intertextual and interdiscursive perspective” (p. 165) should be investigated. This step

basically refers to the choice of the level of analysis the researcher wishes to perform, be it at

the level of (a) lexico-grammar, (b) text patterning, (c) cognitive or discourse structuring, or

(d) intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Sixth, an ethnographic analysis should be conducted.

The aim of the analysis, among others, is to shed light on the physical circumstances that

affect the genre. Last, the institutional context should be studied. To satisfy these

requirements, the proposed study will make use of three kinds of data: (a) manuals and

9

guidebooks published by the discourse community (i.e., handbooks on debating), (b) analysis

of video recordings of actual debate performances, and (c) interviews with expert debaters.

Firstly, handbooks on debating (Driscoll & Zompetti, 2003; Freeley & Steinberg,

2005; Meany & Shuster, 2002; Wood & Goodnight, 1995; Ziegelmueller & Kay, 1997) and

discussions on academic debate (Allen & Dowdy, 1984; Amsden, 2003; Birkholt & Diers,

2004; Gordley, 2003; McGee, et al., 2002; Morris, 2005) have been reviewed in the

dissertation. According to Bhatia (2004), this type of literature, apart from contextualizing the

research, may provide useful insights in (a) refining the contextual analysis, (b) ethnographic

analysis, and studying the institutional context. Moreover, Corbin and Strauss (2008) also

strongly advocate the use of both technical and non-technical literature in grounding theories.

In the analysis of the experience of Vietnam veterans, for example, extensive use was made

of both kinds of literature (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).

Secondly, a small corpus of actual first proposition speeches was compiled. The

corpus contains N = 10 transcribed speeches recorded at the WUDC in the past 3 years,

which ensures the comparability of the performances and thereby cater for the transferability

of the results. The speeches chosen have been delivered by the debaters who have advanced

to the elimination rounds at the WUDC and who thus have been among the best debaters in

the world in the given year; therefore, the speeches in the corpus may be regarded as the

state-of-the-art in speech construction today. In line with the rules of the WUDC format, the

speeches were between 7:00 minutes and 7:20 minutes in length. Because my aim with the

corpus was to explore discourse structuring (cf., Bhatia, 2004), “a few randomly chosen

texts” (Bhatia, 2004, p. 165) were sufficient for this purpose. Once again, using observation

in grounded theories has been strongly advocated by Corbin and Strauss (2008). As they

claim, “observations put the researcher where the action is, in a place where they can see

what is going on” (p. 30).

10

Thirdly, interviews with participants of former WUDC-style events have been

conducted. The expert interviews may provide useful data for (a) the contextual analysis, (b)

the ethnographic analysis, and (c) studying the institutional context (Bhatia, 2004). Because

interviews have been carried out to support data collection in these three fields and because

grounded theory methods are characterized by theoretical sampling (see below), the interview

protocols have been developed and refined in parallel with the analysis of the first two data

sources (i.e., the literature and the recorded debates).

The four participants for the interviews were expert debaters, with extensive practice

in the WUDC format. All four participants have been involved in debating in excess of five

years during their secondary school studies and/or as regular attendees of a university debate

club in Budapest, Hungary, and apart from being familiar with the WUDC format, they also

had exposure to other formats of academic debate (primarily, the Karl Popper debate format).

Move analysis of the Prime Minster speech

In the following, the moves that have thus been created through a cyclical, inductive

procedure will be introduced, along with the steps that comprise the individual moves as well

as the sub-steps (when applicable) that may realize the individual steps. Throughout the

analysis, continuous reference will be made to the handbooks and manuals that are used by

the parent discourse community in order that a comprehensive picture of individual moves

and steps may be gained as regard their functions and the ways in which they are constrained

in the format (Bhatia, 1993, 2004).

The grounded theory, that is, the move-step structure I am proposing comprises three

moves and a number of steps that constitute these individual moves. The three moves that

have been identified are the following: (a) Setting the scene (Move 1), (b) Justifying the plan

(Move 2), and (c) Closing the scene (Move 3). In the following section, the steps that

11

comprise these moves will be reviewed. (The full move structure of the speech, along with

definitions and examples, is included in Appendix 1.)

The first move, that is, “Setting the scene,” comprises six steps. Firstly, upon being

offered the floor, the Prime Minster speaker may attract the attention of the audience and the

adjudicators present (Step 1). During the speech, the Prime Minister may point out a harm

that necessitates a certain kind of action to be taken (Step 2), possibly making reference to its

significance (Step 3); however, if even they decide to structure their speech without reference

to an explicit harm, it is their obligation to present an interpretation to the motion (Step 4) as

well as establish a framework for the debate (Step 5). Prime Minister speakers, generally,

close their introduction by previewing the arguments that they and (potentially) their partner,

that is, the Deputy Prime Minister may present (Step 6).

The second move that has been identified in the data I have termed “Justifying the

plan.” While presenting the arguments prepared during preparation time, the Prime Minister

will necessarily provide constructive arguments in order to prove the motion as interpreted by

the Opening Government team (Step 1). Secondly, the Prime Minister speaker may, already

in the opening speech of the debate round, respond to any potential attacks they envisage

against their arguments (Step 2).

The last move that emerged from the data is “Closing the scene” (Move 3). In this

move, Prime Minister speakers have firstly summarized the arguments that they have

presented in Move 2, “Justifying the Plan” and subsequently, either implicitly or explicitly,

they have restated the motion. These two functions of the last move will be referred to as

Step 1 and Step 2, respectively.

12

Findings and conclusion

The grounded theory that has been established based on the analysis of speeches that

were delivered at the WUDC and a series of interviews with expert debaters outlines a three-

part structure consisting of “Setting the Scene,” “Justifying the Plan,” and “Closing the

Scene.” These moves are, in turn, realized by a number of optional and obligatory steps. An

important finding of the study has been that while the stock issues that are traditionally used

in analysing persuasive discourse (Nadeau, 1958) are convenient and well-established labels

for certain steps and sub-steps, in reality they display a larger range of variation, both in

terms of their order and in terms of their embeddedness, than it would otherwise be assumed

based on the handbooks and manuals that have been published on academic debates (Freeley

& Steinberg, 2005; Meany & Shuster, 2002; Rybacki & Rybacki, 2000; Ziegelmueller &

Kay, 1997). This finding lends further support to genre theories, which postulate that expert

members of discourse communities tend to bend the generic rules to their benefit.

As Corbin and Strauss (2008) argue, apart from the scientific aspects of quality in

qualitative research (viz., credibility and trustworthiness), the creative aspects, that is,

originality and usefulness are also important. The research findings may be argued to be

novel with respect to and contribute to the development of three (sub-)fields: (a)

argumentation studies, (b) the theory of genre analysis, and (c) the methodology of genre

analysis. These three contributions will be detailed in the following.

Firstly, the findings are important for the field of argumentation studies. On the one

hand, the work that has been published on academic debates has focused mostly on best

practices, empirical studies on aspects other than argumentation, and theoretical research

(Klumpp, 1990). Best practices articles have been criticized on grounds that they lack

academic rigour (Porter, 1990), the empirical studies conducted have mostly ignored the

argumentation component of academic debates (Herbeck, 1990), and the theoretical studies

13

lack empirical grounding. On the other hand, despite the potential for linking argumentation

and linguistic research (van Rees, 2007) linguistic analyses of argumentation have mostly

focused on written argumentation, and despite its significance in tertiary education, linguistic

analyses of spoken argumentation have been largely neglected. Therefore, by carrying out a

study (a) that is located on the border between argumentation and linguistics, (b) that is based

on an empirical investigation, and (c) that is conducted with scientific rigour serves as an

important contribution to the field of argumentation.

Secondly, the results of the research bear special importance for the field of genre

analysis. Firstly, there is an apparent lack of studies that have investigated genres, in general,

and spoken genres, more specifically. Although there has been an increased research interest

in the description of genres, there is still an apparent research niche for the description of

spoken genres (Biber & Barbieri, 2007; Limberg, 2007; Zareva, 2011). Secondly, the

majority of the studies that have been conducted on a spoken genre have remained in the

textual space (Bhatia, 2004); therefore, there is a need for studies that are conducted in the

socio-cognitive space (Bhatia, 2004), preferably, taking the context of the genre into account

(Bhatia, 2008). Thirdly, in contrast with other spoken academic genres, such as academic

lectures (Camiciottoli, 2004), classroom talk (Csomay, 2006), or conference talks (Wulff,

Swales, & Keller, 2009), academic debate has been a neglected subject of study. Therefore,

owing to the fact that (a) it has analysed a spoken genre (b) within the socio-cognitive space,

with a focus on context, (c) especially because this given genre had not been previously been

subject to genre analysis, the study has made an important contribution to the field.

Thirdly, the study contributes to the methodology of genre analysis. While

ethnographic methods have traditionally been employed in genre research (Bhatia, 1993,

2004), the grounded theory method has not previously been used to investigate generic

features, yet Bhatia (2004) explicitly calls for “thicker descriptions of language use …, where

14

an attempt is made to offer a grounded description of language use” (p. 80). The utility of the

grounded theory method for genre analysis is especially apparent as it (a) emphasises the

larger context and (b) the process of action (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).

The study is not without limitations, however. Ideally, interview data should have

been collected from the debaters who delivered the given speeches at the WUDC in the

recordings, which would have enabled comparisons of beliefs with actual practice.

Unfortunately, due to issues of access this was not feasible. Therefore, the beliefs that are

reported by the participants of the interview study may or may not manifest in actual

performance; conversely, if the interviewees were asked to deliver an opening speech, they

would unconsciously employ other steps, in addition to the ones they reported on, in arguing

for the motion.

More importantly, however, Due to the small sample size, both for the speeches and

for the interviewees, the results are necessarily not generalizable either over the whole

population of speeches or over the whole population of debaters. On the other hand, due to

the inductive and qualitative nature of the investigation, generalizability is not to be expected

(Davies, 1992). Although the theory on the structure of Prime Minister speeches is grounded

in both interview and corpus data, it is to be further tested empirically on larger corpora of

actual performances.

Apart from further empirical testing on larger populations, the rhetorical structure

outlined above may also be utilized in contrastive investigations. As it was argued previously,

contrastive rhetoric has its origins in the British ESP school (Paltridge, 1997); therefore, the

grounded theory established based on the present study seems especially suitable for the

investigation of how debaters from other cultural backgrounds structure their speeches or

whether international competitions in debate have a unifying influence over the speech

structure.

15

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Appendix 1. The rhetorical structure of Prime Minister speeches

Move 1. Setting the scene

This move type serves the general function of opening the debate and the speech. It is realized through one or more of the following steps:

• Step 1. Attracting the audience’s attention

In this step, the debater attracts the audience’s attention, either by thanking the speaker for acknowledging them or by surprising them, referring to their credentials, etc.

Example: Ladies and gentlemen, it is somewhat ironic to stand before you in an all-male debate on an issue that is commonly seen as a concern to women only. [Debate07]

• Step 2. Pointing out the harm

In this step, the debater argues that a problem exists within the status quo, which absent a significant change in policy action is likely to continue.

Example: Robert Mugabe has systematically oppressed the people of Zimbabwe for a decade. [Debate10]

• Step 3. Pointing out the significance of the harm

In this step, the debater argues that the problem identified is either qualitatively or quantitatively significant.

Example: Right now 9 million people and increasing every day are living below the poverty line. [Debate10]

• Step 4. Offering interpretation to the motion

In this step, the debater presents the policy plan they wish to advocate during the course of the debate and any additional definitions that they deem necessary.

Example: As a consequence, what we are going to say is that normatively, democratic states should not limit the content that the media show. [Debate03]

• Step 5. Establishing framework for debate

In this step, the debater introduces the decision-making criteria into the debate by pointing out either the most important value that the Government upholds or a set of issues that they feel the debate should address.

Example: At Monash, we will prove two key things to you: firstly, that nationalism and the nation state have more benefits than harms, and secondly, we are going to show you that nationalism is superior to alternative conceptions of collective identity, such as class, such as religion, such as sexuality, if that does exist. [Debate01]

• Step 6. Previewing arguments

In this step, the debater provides a preview of the arguments that will be presented by the Prime Minister and, potentially, by the Deputy Prime Minister.

Example: As a consequence, I have three constructive arguments. … First, … Secondly, … third, … [Debate03]

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Move 2. Justifying the plan

This move type serves the general function of providing justification for the plan, through a number of different arguments. It is realized through one or more of the following steps:

• Step 1. Providing constructive arguments

In this step, the debater provides justification for the motion, without reference to attacks that may be raised against their case. As such, this justification will be realized through the combination of harm, inherency, solvency, advantage, and theoretical justification sub-steps.

Example: We believe the mental harm is also significant. Because we believe that the harm and the trauma of women knowing that they have taken the life of a child that they have carried within themselves is one they are ill equipped to deal with later on. We believe people move towards choosing abortion because it seems like the easy option, it seems like the cleanest option, it seems like the best way to put an end to a messy incident they got involved with and that is why the pressure is on you to choose that abortion as long as it is an option. But we think that the harms and the long-term trauma that come from that is something you cannot understand at the time because you have not taken a life until you have done it. [Debate07]

• Step 2. Refuting a possible attack on the Government case

In this step, the debater provides justification for the motion through responding to an attack that may be raised against their case. As such, this step usually comprises (a) a potential negative attack on the case and (b) a response to the attack.

Example: Third, however, we do not think that it will hamper our ability to fight combats in the future first up because countries would actually have to get more international support before they go into conflicts because their citizens do not want them to go into conflict. Necessarily, we think, this leads to a just and better conflict. [Debate03]

Move 3. Closing the scene

This move type serves the general function of closing the speech. It is realized through one or more of the following steps:

• Step 1. Highlighting the most important aspects of the case

In this step, the debater provides a summary of the most important issues that they have previously mentioned in Move 2.

Example: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the solution that can work because the armed conflict will be over quickly, we have a clear opposition, and post-development will happen in an effective way. More than that, it is something that we have to do, for the people of Zimbabwe and the people of Africa. [Debate10]

• Step 2. Restating the motion

In this step, the debater either implicitly or explicitly restates the motion in front of the house. Most often, an implicit restatement is used.

Example: For all these reasons, we are very proud to propose. [Debate03]