Speech And Debate Kills Me

Cassandra/17/Informative Speaking/Dramatic Interpretation/Policy

[marxsgrandson-deactivated202503]

Things that competing in high school speech and debate taught me:

- how to pull all nighters

- how to speak at 400 words per minute

-how to make and tie my own bow ties

- how to ruin expensive suits

-how to use a ton of academic jargon which is entirely debate specific and if you use it outside of debate spaces, no one will understand you.

- how bullshit many an essay and presentation.

[screwthepurplegiraffe]

[speech-and-damemes]

When you didn’t break but you’re being a good team mate

[speech-and-damemes]

Speech events as John Mulaney quotes:

Drama:

POI:

Humor:

Duo:

[d-b8]

“what did you do this weekend?”

“oh i was at a debate tournament”

“what side were you on?”

[debate-bitch]

I won a policy round while running nothing but T and Plan Vagueness. I hate myself

[hungoverjudge]

How to make your 2NR better

This is a more novice-level post, but I think there is something here for more advanced debaters as well.

What’s the point of the 2NR?

The 2NR is weird. I’ll just get it out of the way. It’s pure argument, but you can’t make new arguments. You have to leave the judge with a clear reason to vote for you, but your opponent gets the final say, and can spin and minimize your arguments. It’s hard to do it well.

If I had to summarize the point of the 2NR, it would be “critical evaluation”. The 1AR has made arguments against your case, and extended its own. The job of the 2NR is just not to ADDRESS those arguments but to ASSESS them. Are they actually responsive? Do they add up to enough to win?

How to make the 2NR a better speech

1. Be proactive, not reactive

Everyone knows the 1AR is hard. This means that a common 2NR strategy is to point to everything the 1AR didn’t cover well enough, and extend that. The problem is that strategy rings hollow because you can always make that claim. Are you convinced by this: “Sure, you might have thought their 1AR was good, but I didn’t think it was good enough. Therefore I win”.

As a judge, I feel better voting for someone because they’ve showed that they deserve to win, not that their opponent deserves to lose. You get the second move. You can plan your case and off case in response to the affirmative. This means you get to present the strongest potential advocacy. Give that advocacy its proper weight. A 2NR should feel like a clean story that existed from the moment you started reading your case, not “these leftovers are enough to get me there first”.

This is very hard to do. You can’t always do it. But if you’re on the lookout for opportunities to deploy this strategy, you’ll see them pop up more and more.

2. Address and Assess

Here’s a conundrum:

Sometimes it’s a strong strategy to use an argument where you discredit any merit in your opponent’s side.

Sometimes it’s a strong strategy to acknowledge strengths in your opponent’s side, but to show how they’re not relevant/outweighed.

One approach is not universally better than the other.

So, how DO you respond in the 2NR? Personally, I feel that acknowledging where your opponent has made a clean extension in the 1AR is a fair thing to do, and it gives you an opportunity to outweigh them at a higher level of abstraction (ie, the value/criterion).

That said, point out responses that aren’t on point, that are contradictory, or where you can get turns, and feel free to dismiss them.

3. Don’t say more than you need to

Explaining why your opponent’s responses don’t add up to a victory for them, articulating a small number of points that you’re winning, and that these points are important within the evaluative framework that has won the round will often take you the whole 6 minutes.

(Special note for novices: Novices, for your first few tournaments, try to use all 6 minutes. Don’t belabor the same points over and over, but be thorough and assess every argument on the flow)

However, if you can explain everything you need to in less than 6 minutes, do it.

Time how long it takes you to explain and extend two arguments, then explain how they link to your value and criterion. Even novices should be able to do this in under a minute with practice by the end of the season.

If your opponent dropped key arguments, and didn’t extend (this will happen sometimes, novices) this is technically all you need to say to win. Saying this confidently can win you rounds just because it shows that you have understanding of what’s really at stake.

And higher-level debaters, if you can show a clean, nice way to victory, just do that. Yes, you can hedge your bets with an “and even if you don’t buy that…” leading to a secondary reason. But gosh, on those rare occasions where there’s a clean and powerful way to win that went unaddressed, a short 2NR is such a power move. (this can backfire though. But when it works, good golly does it work)

[academic-em]

What I imagine Lincoln Douglas debate is like

[speechanddebatememes]

Me, trying to keep up my argument in round when it has no solid foundation

[speechanddebatememes]

Spreading according to the speech events

[debate-bitch]

Klaus Baudelaire is an LD debate kid, don’t tell me otherwise

[speechanddebatememes]

when you get back to school after missing days for a tournament and suddenly you have 28 assignments 4 tests and 9 major projects you missed and need to make up in 0.4 days

[pointsofinformation]

concept:

fair unbiased judges

[debate-bitch]

My policy partner and I went 3-1 and one of the hardest tournaments and didn’t break to quarters. I’m pretty fucking salty

[debate-bitch]

Did you know that some judges consider tears a prop??? One time I got disqualified in a DI because I cried. I'm still pissed about that.

I’m sorry you got disqualified for that, it truly sucks.

But yeah, I was aware that tears do count as a prop. I also recently found out that some consider hair as a prop and that’s weird to me. Rules are weird.

[debate-bitch]

I’ve got the worst ballot to ever exist. My judge decided that instead of leaving comments he would just put numbers above every one of the prompt questions and then tally them up. Leaving me with a ballot that has only a scoring system I can’t understand.

[speechanddebatememes]

Speech VS Debate Judges

Debate: I went with the Con because they succinctly stated their contentions and gave enough elaboration for me to believe in the backbone of their side. The South Korea point was a unique argument that really gave leverage over the Pro.

Speech: ay lmao the pearls on ur necklace are a milimeter too wide, finna drop you the 6.