Despite its longevity as an educational activity, little empirical evidence exists to support the notion that academic debate is of value to participants. Numerous contemporary texts have proposed and advanced the claim that debating enhances the critical thinking skills of participants. Several of these texts find this claim so apparent that it…

Scholars can learn much from analyzing discourse within a statewide political debate. A study used W. R. Fisher's theory of narrative rationality to analyze the first intra-party debate (April 16, 1990) between Republican candidates for Governor of Arkansas, Sheffield Nelson and Tommy Robinson, to ascertain the narrative rationality employed by…

Style is a crucial component of success in competitive forensics, whether debate or individual events, and one of the greatest benefits students get from participating in such events is the opportunity to develop a sense of style. In keeping with the classical canons of rhetoric, style (as it relates to forensics) can be limited to a consideration…

The American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) provides a good example of the parliamentary style of debate. The APDA and the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) can be compared by considering several factors: (1) geographic participation; (2) sponsorship; (3) procedural differences; (4) resolutions; and (5) decision rendering. The…

"Argumentation" as an academic course should not be limited to or regarded as primarily a study of advocacy. Most of the current texts in the field of argumentation are directed toward skill in oral advocacy or persuasion. This emphasis works to the disadvantage of the student. Students should be able to use the principles learned in…

This paper considers discourse models of knowledge and use and social problem solving that revive the tradition of dialectical reasoning (the broader term) or rhetoric, i.e., the art of using language, in speaking or writing, to convince others that something is true, right, or better. Discourse models of knowledge use allow taking the…

Designed to serve as a framework from which high school debate students, coaches, and judges can evaluate the issues, arguments, and evidence present in sustaining and reforming the U.S. justice system, this booklet provides debaters with guidelines for research on the 1983-84 debate resolutions selected by the National University Continuing…

Summarizes conference recommendations to speech communication educators regarding future goals, roles, research, theory, status and rewards of the field. (MH)

Discusses implications of debate judges' bias in theoretical argumentation. (CH)

A critic summarizes his varying reactions to a debate in live, televised, tape recorded, and printed formats. (PF)

The idea for the organization that later became the American Forensic Association (AFA) was conceived at a meeting of debate coaches at a tournament at the State University of Iowa in the fall of 1948. This group felt that something should be done to meet the growing needs and interests of high school and college debate coaches. The group…

Towson State University (TSU) conducted a public debate series within the Maryland State Penitentiary, that state's maximum security lockup. Following delays due to an escape and subsequent lockdown that preceded the first scheduled debates, the prison program began in 1983 with TSU students debating the right to privacy. The continuing prison…

In competitive debate, a view of meaning as something that a team has a right to pre-select is inconsistent with Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of meaning as use. The "language-linked value objection" rejects conventional value objection of identifying the negative consequences of taking a stance in the hypothetical world of the…

A participant in forensic tournament competition presents her perspective as well as overall student reaction to the function of "warm bodies," competitors who are entered in a tournament by the coach or tournament director only to meet qualifying requirements. Overall, participants in an informal survey believed that the warm body…

In many college and high school forensics tournaments, the topic agenda is derived from "Newsweek,""Time," and "U.S. News and World Report." This use of three profit-oriented, widely circulated magazines as the agenda setting basis of extemporaneous speaking competition is philosophically and substantively damaging.…