Video transcript
CT - Coaching secondary debating - 03. Definitions in debating

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HUGH BARTLEY: Hi, everyone. My name is Hugh. Today, we're going to be talking about how to define a debate, and if you're the negative team, how to respond to the definition of a debate. So let's jump straight into it. Every debate topic that you'll ever get is going to be about some type of change, some kind of change to the law, a change to government policy, a change in how the media, or religions, or sports teams do things. It's always a change. The affirmative will argue in favour of the change and the negative will argue against the change.

For example, let's say the topic is that we should ban cars in the CBDs, in the central business districts, of major cities. The affirmative has to argue that they would ban the cars. And the negative has to argue that no the cars should be able to drive wherever they want. Affirmative normally has the duty to explain or clarify the change in the topic in greater detail than it is given in the topic. This is their plan, or their model, or their definition, or their setup of the debate, whatever you want to call it. It is not doing a dictionary definition of each word in the debate.

So do not stand up, at first affirmative, if you're debating that topic, and go-- a car is a road vehicle typically with four wheels powered by an internal combustion engine, et cetera, et cetera. That's not what we want in your definition. Instead, the purpose of the definition is to clarify serious ambiguity in the topic as it's given to you. So when you're the affirmative team and you're defining the debate, you should ask yourself three main questions. Firstly, where, secondly, what are the details, and third, when. So let's go back to our example topic then that we should ban cars in the CBDs of major cities.

Let's start with where. The general rule of thumb with where is you want to limit the change only to the biggest possible group inside of Australia. So for this topic, we're probably going to be talking about the major cities in Australia, not cities in other countries like Tokyo, or Nairobi, or Paris. We don't know too much about them, so we're not going to argue about them. The default rule is that we're talking about Australia. We might be talking about the capital cities, like Sydney, and Melbourne, and Perth, those sort of big cities in Australia that have CBDs, that's where we're going to ban cars.

But then the question becomes-- well, where inside the city? I think here CBD is a pretty explanatory term. In Sydney, it's that area between the Harbour and Redfern, the area between Pyrmont and Darlinghurst, where all the tall buildings are, where a lot of people commute in and out to work each day. That's the CBD. You don't even need that much detail. It's pretty clear.

Question two then, what are the details? Well, the general rule when we're setting details in our definition is you just want a small number of sensible rules or details that make the topic work. Don't give us a laundry list of regulations with 500 rules and different things that you can and can't do. So let's talk about banning cars. What sort of cars will be banning? Private cars that you and me drive, include maybe taxis and Ubers, all of the time. 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, those cars will be banned from driving in the CBD.

Would there be an exceptions, though? Possibly. I would say absolutely we would accept things like public transport, so light rail and buses. We might also accept like bicycles, and scooters, emergency vehicles, or other government vehicles, like a Postman Pat where they can delivery. And maybe you might even want to add in that we would accept vehicles that are transporting elderly people or people who are living with disabilities. That's probably a few sensible exceptions.

The tip here is to make sure your answers to the question, what are the details, always fix the problem in the debate. You might also want to add in here additional changes, such as more public transport services, so more frequent buses, more bus lines. You might want to also convert lanes on the road into footpaths or bike lanes. And you might want to say, build more car parks and bike storages at train stations so people can drive to the station and hop on a train into the city.

The next and final question is when, probably we could do this in a month if we really wanted to. The general rule is do it as soon as possible. So as soon as the change can possibly be done, that's when it should be implemented. So those are the answers to our questions. Where, we usually always do the biggest possible group or the biggest possible change inside of Australia, unless the topic is about something international, in which case it'll be pretty obvious. Secondly, the details, not too much, just a few sensible rules. And thirdly, when, as soon as possible. So that's how we define the topic from the affirmative side.