Structuring Topicality, Topicality Part 3
C) Standards
The heart of a topicality violation comes down to the standards debate. Here is where you prove that your interpretation is superior to the affirmative team’s definition. After you’ve argued your interpretation and violation, the judge has two different interpretations of a word or phrase in the resolution. Which one should she choose? The criteria, so to speak, are the standards you and the affirmative team argue should guide the judge’s decision. You can think of the standards as a scale with each team arguing their interpretation is better then the other teams. If your standards weigh more heavily to the judge on the scale your interpretation should be picked for the round.
Arguing a standard includes two parts. First, explain what standard you are using and what it means in the context of debate. Second, explain why the standard is relevant in the debate round. As shown in each of the standards below, both components are necessary in order to make a persuasive argument. In essence, impact your standard to be the most important one. The Affirmative should present counterstandards that support their interpretation – why should the judge chose yours? It’s the same debate you are having with the affirmative team’s advantages versus the negative team’s disadvantages. Which impact is more important? Which standard is best?
Some common standards are:
- Ground
- Grammar
- Common usage
- Literature Check
- Dictionary
- -Brightline
- Education
Here you argue that your interpretation best divides the ‘ground’ from which each team has to argue their side from. Giving both sides equal opportunity to argue positions is fundamental to debate. Skewing the ground to the advantage of the affirmative leads to debate losing its purpose. I always think of ground in terms of a basketball court. How big should each team’s side of the court be in a game? Normally, the half court line evenly divides the space on the court between the two teams. Imagine how unfair one team would feel the game is if the home team got 75% of the court. It’s the same thing with a ground standard – how does their interpretation skew the available arguments on the topic so they get more then their fair share.
NOTE: This standard does not necessarily argue that you should have good ground to argue. That’s the job of the topic committee to ensure that both teams have ample opportunity to make solid arguments. The topic may saddle the negative team with bad ground but you still have ground. Avoid making arguments like “well, all the affirmative team’s interp does is leave us with this horrible argument X.” Whether or not the arguments are good/bad on each side of the resolution is a distinct argument from whether or not each team has access to a fair share of arguments. It’s up to you as a debater to make sure your arguments are strong.
A grammar standard argues that the affirmative team’s interpretation is wrong according to the rules of grammar. Some examples are plural vs. singular, a vs. the, etc. One potential problem with using grammar standards is that it might be that it is unclear why resolutions must follow the rules of grammar – are resolutions a sentence? Do resolutions need to be grammatical? You’ll want to argue YES if you argue grammar.
One powerful standard is common usage. Here you argue that your interpretation is what most people would come up with if asked to define the word in question. This is sometimes not as effective in policy debate since you are doing specific research on the topic and are expected to be more well read on the topic. However, since NFA-LD states that it is a communication oriented activity you may gain some traction on the argument that the interpretation of the topic should be what a general audience would think of when hearing the topic.
This is the gold standard in policy debate. You have evidence that you quote that says their case is NOT an example of the resolution. Hard to do but effective if you can find it. One of the easiest topicality violations to use lit check is on the countries in the Greater Horn of Africa. As posted in part 2, the United States Federal Government defines certain countries as part of the Greater Horn of Africa. As such, if their case deals with a country outside that zone you have an excellent definition from within the literature on the topic to use against the affirmative team.
Much like the grammar standard, you can use a dictionary standard if your interpretation would be found in the dictionary whereas there would not for a particular word. As with previous standards, you must also argue why dictionary definitions are superior to use. Usually helpful on the generic words in the resolution. For this year’s topic, on foreign policy, try to find international relations sources. The The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations is one source that would probably carry more weight in a round than Websters. A lot of debaters also successfully use Black’s law dictionary as a more authoritative source.
A Brightline standard argues that your interpretation sets up the clearest distinction between what would and what would not be topical. This is good since it would set up the clearest ground for each team. Unclear distinctions on what a word means can often lead to messy debates and government teams ‘spiking’ out of positions by saying that their definition precludes a position from ‘mattering’ in the debate round. This is often a good approach when the affirmative team is vague or unclear with their definitions. What does substantially mean in the resolution? It can be confusing. Try to hold the affirmative team to a clear definition of HOW MUCH they are doing with their case.
Here you would argue that your interpretation would allow for the most educational debate round. You would then argue that debate’s primary purpose is education and the government’s interpretation denies to both the opposition and the judge educational benefits. Education is usually debated on a breadth versus depth distinction. Does the affirmative team force the negative to research TONS of stuff but only on the surface? That would be a breadth of education on the topic. Or, does the affirmative team’s interpretation force the negative to research a FEW topics but in great depth? One could argue that either approach (breadth or depth of research) is good or bad for education. For a great discussion on education in debate see Mike’s post here.
This is not an exhaustive list of standards, nor will there ever be. Creative standards can be used and as long as one can justify the use of a standard feel free to use it.
One note of caution, in arguing a topicality position you are more or less arguing the affirmative team’s interpretation of a word is unfair to your side. Running a topicality interpretation or standard that advantages the negative to the detriment of the affirmative team hardly makes the debate round better. Thus, you want to make sure your running topicality not to skew the round towards your side but instead to make the debate round more fair.
D) Voter
Finally, now that you’ve shown the judge a different interpretation of a word in the resolution, how the affirmative violates your interpretation, the standards which you think the words should be evaluated, you want to tell the judge why this all matters. This is a critical portion of the topicality position.
I would recommend the following 3 voters for any topicality positions: jurisdiction, fairness and a-priori.
1) Jurisdiction
Your first voter should always be jurisdiction. One reason is that for a lot of judges this is all they need to hear to vote for a topicality position. Any other voters are nice but once you make the jurisdiction ‘voter’ you’ve done enough especially given the fact that the NFA-LD rules specify that topicality IS a vote in pretty clear language (“Topicality is a voting issue.”).
You want to argue here that if the judge believes there is a superior definition of a word (your interpretation – A) in the resolution (based on the standards – C) that the government team does not meet (based on the violation – B), then a vote for the government would not be voting for the “resolution” which is all the judge is empowered to do. As such, the judge is left with presumption to vote negative.
2) Fairness
The second voter should always be fairness as this is the next most likely reason why a lot of judges will vote for topicality positions. As noted earlier, the main reason topicality can be run is because by virtue of being able to set up the debate round, affirmative teams have an interest in maximizing their chances of winning which some teams do by running unfair cases to the negative.
Beyond saying “Waaaah,” however, and just whining they other team is not playing “fairly,” by running a full fledged topicality position, you are demonstrating that a “fairer” alternative exists that would have created a better debate. By running all four parts of the Topicality position you demonstrate to the judge what “would have been more fair” and ask they award the ballot to the opposition to effectively punish the government team for being unfair.
In extremely egregious cases of teams being non-topical a lot of judges will sympathize with negative teams and will vote on fairness issues.
3) A-priori
Under the stock issues paradigm (which is the “official decision-making paradigm of NFA LD” according to the rules) being ‘topical’ is a requirement the affirmative teams hasto uphold. Thus, if the case was not topical, at first glance, the team did not uphold one of its ‘burdens.’ As such, the judge would first evaluate whether or not the team was topical before looking to the rest of case. Instead of seeing whether or not the policy action was net beneficial, the judge has to see whether or not its topical. Thus, you make your topicality position come before the rest of the round.
There are other voters that you can run and as with the standards section and there will never be one definitive set of voters. As long as you can argue your voter is a sufficient justification to award you the ballot based on the topicality position you’re good.
There are quite a few example T positions on the free evidence page here. It’s always good as you are researching to cut topicality cards as you see author’s defining key words in the resolution.
Testing the topicality of an affirmative plan is an important step in the debating process. It is only after we decide WHAT we are debating that we can truly have an educational and important debate. That said, as a negative running topicality is always a choice. If you prefer not to argue over definitions feel free to argue case straight up. However, be ready to have teams run some very interesting cases on you!
This is the third part of a five part series of posts discussing topicality:
1. Introduction to Topicality
2. Structuring Topicality Part 1/2 (interp and violation)
3. Structuring Topicality Part 2/2 (standards & voters)
4. Effects Topicality
5. Extra Topicality
Part 4 will discuss a variation on topicality called effects topicality.
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