TOPICALITY DALLAS URBAN DEBATE ALLIANCE DEBATE CENTER SMU

WHAT IS TOPICALITY? It’s asking and answering this question; Does the Affirmative team prove that “The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth's mesosphere?”

WHY SHOULD I CARE? 1. It’s a rule of the game 2. Understanding it will win debates; failing to understand it could lose them. 3. It teaches valuable skills

WHERE DO I START?? Topicality begins with an “interpretation.” An “interpretation” defines a word in the resolution and states what that word or phrase allows the Affirmative to do. Ex: “Development means Research and Development, not military development.”

…AND THEN WHAT? After you’ve “interpreted” a word, you explain why the Affirmative doesn’t meet that interpretation. This is called the “violation.” Ex: Violation – You’re military development, not research and development

WHO CARES? Why does it matter if the Affirmative “violates your interpretation?” To explain the impact to this argument, you provide the judge “standards” for evaluating the debate. What are good “standards” to use? Start with this question: What makes a debate a good debate?

STANDARD 1: LIMITS The first thing a good topicality interpretation provides is a fair limit on the number of things to talk about. What would happen if debate were unlimited?

STANDARD 2: EDUCATION The most important reason to debate is to learn. If debate is unlimited, it becomes uneducational. Why does education matter?

STANDARD 3: GROUND Debate resolutions are chosen because they give each team a relatively equal argument to make. We don’t debate topics with unfair ground distribution, like “it’s good to shoot people for fun” Why happens if ground is distributed unequally?

STANDARD 4: FAIRNESS Continuing the same theme – debate topics aren’t chosen because they’re most interesting, but because they’re most fair. If debate isn’t fair for both sides, it’s the equivalent of an unfair advantage. Like a basketball team entering with the score up 10-0 before the game starts.

STANDARD 5: PREDICTABILITY Research is important. Defining words in the resolution helps you “predict” what to research. Predictable research is good because it establishes more in-depth ground and education, etc. It sets up an “Even if…” assessment

AM I DONE?? Almost! Once you’ve interpreted the word, described the violation and laid out your standards, you have one more step… The “voting issue.”

…VOTING ISSUE? Voting issues are the reason the judge should care about your standards. Here are some common voting issues:

VOTING ISSUE 1: JURISDICTION “Jurisdiction” comes from the law – it’s what a judge has power to change. For instance – COPS example – Georgia v Texas police Judges example – criminal v civil law

VOTING ISSUE 2: COMPETING INTERPRETATIONS “Competing interpretations” means what it sounds like: to determine whether an affirmative is topical, a judge should weigh the benefits of one interpretation versus other interpretations If the Negative reads the best interpretation of the resolution available, they should win

EXAMPLE 1: MILITARY DEVELOPMENT Interpretation: “Development is limited to research and development and activities to increase exploration” Violation: The affirmative doesn’t increase development because they aren’t R&D That matters: Limits – space weapons is a HUGE topic – it would be undebateable because of a lack of predictability.

EXAMPLE 2: AGENT SPECIFICATION Jumps straight to the violation – the plan says “United States federal government” but doesn’t say WHO in the USFG The plan becomes a conditional moving target Destroys all of our strategies It’s not what you do, but what you justify

ANSWERING TOPICALITY – “WE MEET” When answering topicality, you can make a variety of arguments. The first is the simplest: “we meet.” In this circumstance, you argue that the Negative’s interpretation is correct, but that the Affirmative doesn’t violate it. Ex: We agree that space weapons aren’t topical, but SPS isn’t a space weapon.

ANSWERING TOPICALITY – COUNTER-DEFINING Counter-defining is when you provide your own interpretation of a word Ex: “Militarization is the development of space” or “All technology is dual-use”

ANSWERING TOPICALITY – OUR INTERPRETATION IS BETTTER BECAUSE… Why is your view of the resolution good? Trick question: you already know the answer! These are just the “standards” from before, but flipped. Ex: “Our interpretation of space development allows us to discuss space weapons, an educational, predictable, fair research area”

ANSWERING TOPICALITY – BE REASONABLE… Topicality is a big deal. Some say it’s like an accusation of cheating, or foul play. Continuing that line of reasoning, many affirmatives caution judges to “be reasonable” about their interpretation. Ex: It would be UNREASONABLE to exclude space weapons from our topical discussions

ANSWERING TOPICALITY – CORE FILES SOLVE This argument is intuitive. Everyone shares the same research. How hard is it to predict?

ANSWERING AGENT SPECIFICATION We meet – we do the resolution Infinitely regressive Cross-examination checks Agent CPs are bad and there’s no abuse