Introduction to Debate

Steve, and others in ‘Variation On A Theme’, are engaged in competitive Debate for much of their high school lives. The reader doesn’t need to be an expert to be able to follow the narrative. Most of the conversation will focus on things that happen at Debate tournaments rather actual competitions. However, background is useful as I use a number of abbreviations and acronyms, mostly because that’s what my characters would say.

Here’s a brief synopsis of things that are pertinent to know. Note: there are nuances that I’m omitting to streamline things; if you are or were a competitive debater, extemporaneous speaker, etc, you’ll recognize sections where I’ve simplified so as to not drive the vast majority of readers crazy, or, in some cases, to make a better story.

Note: there are other competitive speech events not covered here or in Book 1. A future version of this will cover them as they enter the story. These include Humorous Interpretation (HI) and Dramatic Interpretation (DI) as well as Duo Interpretation.

Important terms

CX - Cross-examination Debate / Policy Debate

LD - Lincoln-Douglas debate

Extemp - Extemporaneous speaking

Break - Proceeding to the next round of a tournament (particularly between preliminary rounds and elimination round)

PQ - Previously qualified for the State debate tournament (by doing well at a previous tournament)

Speech & Debate Events

CX - Cross-examination Debate / Policy Debate. The term Policy Debate is far more common in 2021; in the 1980’s that term was quite uncommon. One two-person team presents a case (‘affirmative’) that supports the national debate topic, usually some specific area with the broad topic. The other team (‘negative’) tries to shoot down the affirmative team’s case. Teams alternate speaking. Many of the speakers can be ‘cross-examined’ after their speech, meaning one of the other team members goes up and asks direct questions about their case, their evidence, etc. There’s a strict ordering of who speaks when, who cross-examines who, etc, so that all four people have equal time.Scoring: the judge awards ‘speaker points’ to each speaker and chooses a team as the winner. Speaker points are, essentially, a tiebreaker between teams with the same record.
CX teams tote around cases full of ‘cards’ or ‘evidence’. Each card (a physical note card) has a quote from some written source, with a citation for the source (book, journal article, source, etc) and author. Most teams would not only have quotes from experts in the field, but also some quotes used to support the qualifications of the authors of their most important evidence, in case the other team attacks their credentials. You can argue with or without evidence, but evidence almost always wins unless you wind up with someone producing a quote that the judge finds to be unpersuasive (which does happen). Most teams fully write out their affirmative case and present it word-for-word every time. CX evidence tends to be very long-lasting; something researched a year ago will still be useful at the end of a season. However, one tends to find places where additional evidence would be helpful, necessitating many trips to the library. CXers are the most likely to wind up in law libraries, using technical journals, etc.
Speaking style, rhetoric, emotion, etc. are secondary in CX. Some teams simply talk as fast as they can while trying to be understandable. Obviously the best teams will be better presenters, but some rounds will sound like auctions or someone reading the fine print of a contract.

For more information (not that not all of this is entirely relevant to the 1980s, but the majority is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate