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The Punishment Theory: Illegitimate Styles and Theories
as Voting Issues
Doug Sigel, Northwestern University 1984
- Waging War on Poverty |
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A recent trend in contemporary academic debate (especially at the college level) is the proliferation Of "Punishment" arguments.1 Instead of trying to in rounds on superior analysis of policy issues, some teams have sought victory by claiming the undesirable debate practices of their opponents as voting issues. As commonly understood, punishment arguments isolate various practices of one's opponent--i.e. conditional plans/counterplans, incomprehensible delivery, arguments that topicality isn't a voting issue, etc--as so counter to the goals of debate that the judge should "punish" them with a loss. "Run this and you'll pay," the logic of this strategy goes. Some coaches and debaters see this trend toward punishment arguments as healthy, believing that the only way to stop unfair and uneducational debate practices is to make abuses of debate a voting issue. Teams who pervert our conception of good debate should pay for it with a loss; simply dropping abusive arguments from the round lacks any deterrent or moral force. Others reject the entire concept of punishment, believing that it makes in practice for childish debates plagued by ad Holmium argument and devoid of substance. The punishment cure can be worse than the disease when punishment becomes a regular issue in a team's strategic arsenal, assuming a role similar to topicality. Because it offers attractive strategic benefits to debaters, the Punishment concept has seen increasing prominence in many debates. The controversy among those of us in the activity has grown with punishment's increasing use. This article attempts to define the punishment concept through an analysis of the factors causing its development, examine the types of issues subject to and the reasons for punishment arguments, and explore some of the broader implications of the widespread use of these arguments. It is hoped that this rather vaguely defined and misunderstood genre of argument can be placed in the context of other, broader, trends in debate judging in order to aid our understanding and ultimate evaluation of the concept. I: The Punishment Concept's Development
The term "punishment paradigm" was coined in 1981 at a Utah argumentation conference by Northwestern University's director of Forensics, G. Thomas Goodnight, to describe the judging of his college debate coach, Bill English. Goodnight claimed that English had no judging paradigm, he simply saw as his role the punishment of debaters who made arguments he didn't like. And we all have had experiences with punishment oriented judges. They have their own standards for what constitutes legitimate arguments and theoretical practices, which they apply despite anything that actually occurs in any particular round. If a particular approach violate, their standards, they automatically vote against the team advocating it. Erik Walker holds this view with respect to incomprehensible deliver:
While Walker holds a punishment view only with respect to incoherence, it was common in the past for this approach to extend to virtually all aspects of debate judging. We all have been dismayed to receive back a ballot where a judge voted against us based on lack of significance or repugnance of a disadvantage when these issues were not raised or not extended by our opponents. During the late 60s and early 70s it was even possible for some judges to vote against teams running "squirrel" cases on topicality when the negative never challenged it.
In recent years most judges have become tabula rasa. Tabula rasa perspective requires the critic to attempt/s/ to be a "blank slate" and impose no standards on the round based on his/her beliefs about what makes for good debate. The debaters, this perspective claims, should develop the standards to evaluate the significance and importance of arguments. In practice this view does impose minimal burdens on debaters to make arguments--an absurd claim without any reasons wouldn't have any weight even if dropped by the other team. But assuming the teams make reasoned arguments, Walter Ulrich explains that he "attempts to judge all debates tabula rasa; with all arguments theoretical or otherwise being debatable." Melissa Wade notes that her judging perspective is tabula rasa. I am not on any crusades so I will evaluate the round based on whatever 'paradigm/model' I am instructed to use. 4 This "open-minded" judging style has meant the death of the punishment paradigm described by Goodnight. Judges will only reject a position if it is defeated in the round. If topicality is argued as not a voting issue with 20 reasons and the negative drops those reasons, topicality isn't considered a voting issue. When disgruntled coaches complain that debate isn't real world and trains a group of "motor-mouth" sophists, they should look to tabula rasa as the culprit. When judges are willing to tolerate any argument at any speed, the incentive clearly is to speak fast and develop weird innovative arguments. Counterwarrents, hypothesis testing, and other theoretical "advances" have gained acceptance in rounds acceptance in rounds because tabula rasa have prevented judges from screening out Positions that were counter-intuitive. While the death of punishment and the rise of tabula rasa judging may be healthy, there are excesses reduced b-y the current approach to judging debates. Teams who are more articulate at high speeds of delivery can "win" counter-intuitive arguments that would seem absurd in any other setting. Erik Walker admits this problem when he says he "abhor/s/ world government, socialism, referendums, anarchy, rights Malthus, Karcuse, symbolism, and the like, but, inevitably, they are poorly answered, hence I vote on them."3 Cathy Hennen bluntly says "I may not philosophically agree with the theoretical position, but if it is clearly defined and defended, I will vote on it." It often seems that the most successful teams, both in high school and college, make the stupidest arguments at the highest speeds. C) The "new" punishment The excesses produced by tabula rasa have led to the development of the new punishment paradigm--one introduced into the round by the debaters. The harmful by-product of tabula rasa--mindless debate--can be dealt with by making matters of style and theory voting issues. If judges won't intervene to punish teams for mindless debate, debaters can establish the need to vote against these practices in the round. Similarly, topicality was not argued for a long time because judges unilaterally voted against cases that were outside the bounds of the topic. It was only with the rise of tabula rasa that it was necessary to make topicality challenges. Walter Ulrich, who has written widely in favor of tabula rasa judging 7 sees punishment as the answer to its excesses:
Cy Smith agrees:
Punishment, it is argued here, has returned to debate. We have gone full-circ-re from judge imposed punishment to debater initiated punishment. And to reflect the replacement of the old punishment with the new punishment, unless otherwise indicated, this article will use punishment in the second sense of the word. II. Punishment in Practice The goal here is to teach the practical use of punishment arguments. These positions not only redress the competitive disadvantages for a team who is confronted with abusive practices, there is also an opportunity to take advantage of the other team's recklessness. Many rounds can be won by exploiting the opening created by the reckless debate practices of the other team. This writer can recall many rounds in which victory was gained through use of punishment arguments where a focus on the substantive position would have failed. Teams who "cut" their good arguments with trash theory positions or mask them through incoherent delivery will lose rounds on punishment that amore traditional approach to strategy would have allowed them to win. The team who has a killer counterplan to a case can end up losing the round because they choose to "cut" their position with 3 other "timewaster" counterplans. So, it is clear, study and practice of punishment argument is a successful strategy in itself.
Any punishment position can be articulated in a 3 step process. First, identify the issue in question and link it to the other team. If your opponent runs 3 counterplans make sure you make it clear in your cross-ex of him/her that that is what s/he is indeed doing to prevent his/her backing out of the strategy later. Then, tell the judge that your opponent has run conditional counterplans--referring back to both the constructive and cross-ex. Second, explain why the practice in question is illegitimate. In the case of conditional counterplans, there are many fairness and educational reasons why they destroy debate. Be sure to explain the reasons for your position--tag line approaches will fail to be persuasive. Third, explain why the use of the practice in question should be a voting issue. This gives impact to the argument. A punishment position can be easily briefed in the following form: Conditionality of counterplans is a voting Issue A) The negative has run conditional counterplans-is clear both from the constructive speech and the cross-ex. B) Conditionality is illegitimate--explain the numerous grounds for this claim: fairness, education, etc. C) Impact--Voting Issue--explain the reasons why punishment is required. We'll examine those reasons in the next section of this article.
Let us look at some reasons for the claim made under the C subpoint above. Why vote against a team when they lose a theory argument instead of just dropping-out the argument? In the case of incomprehensible delivery, why not just vote on the portions of the speech which can be understood? In short, it is necessary to overcome the belief on the part of many judges that bad arguments don't warrant punishment-just the loss of those arguments. Goodnight expresses the view that "merely because a debater is ineloquent in one part of a speech does not mean that the speech as an entity should be disregarded."10 There are at least 4 reasons that can be isolated for voting on punishment positions irrespective of what occurs in the rest of the round. First, most central to the entire notion of punishment is the deterrent view. Just as we punish criminals to deter crime, we should punish debaters who injure the debate process. A ballot that says "I think you may have won that second DA--but I voted against you based on the illegitimacy of the conditional counterplans you ran" sends a strong message to the teams involved and other participants in the activity that there are high costs of abusive strategies. There does seem to be merit to the negative reinforcement approach to debate. The arguments and styles that are successful are copied; those that aren't are shunned. While the decision in one round can't by itself fundamentally change debate, a general trend can be initiated and/or reinforced by a decision. The experience of this author has been that, at least in college debate, the threat of punishment now hangs over teams using strategies and styles that are generally regarded as illegitimate. Deterrence seems especially applicable to the debate setting because the participants have control over their practices. We all practice judge analysis, trying to adapt to the inevitable likes and dislikes of even the most tabula rasa critic. The feedback a punishment decision provides is direct: everyone is given notice that the winning team will and can win rounds in the face of abusive debating and that the judge involved will vote against such practices. It only takes a few instances of punishment for the entire debate community to start incorporating the risk of punishment in their pre-round planning. A second reason for punishment sees the judge as an educator. Teams damaging the goals of the debate activity should lose because the judge has a duty to improve the debate form--independent of the duty he has to render a decision on the issues surrounding the plan. The medium in debate is the message: to abuse the medium is to destroy the message. A teacher, for example, would not accept a paper with good ideas that are presented in an unscholarly fashion-in disorganized, ungrammatical style replete with spelling errors and devoid of organization. While it stretches the analogy to suggest that judges should be solely concerned with skills, it is reasonable for the judge to punish teams violating the criteria presented in the round to determine the better job of debating. When a judge votes for one team in a debate his ballot has no effect on the course of events being debated. Nobody will get employed this year because an affirmative wins a round. The only effect a decision has is an educational one--it rewards one team and penalizes another team. To ignore arguments over the technique of the debate is to confuse the role a judge plays within the policymaking paradigm with the more fundamental role the judge serves as educator. It seems entirely plausible for a critic to refuse to decide based on evalu-Ation of policy because issues of technique are introduced into the round. There is no reason that a debate must intrinsically be decided based on who advocates the best policy. A third reason that can be introduced in support of punishment is fairness. If it is shown that a given style or theory hurts the debate activity, the abusing team has hurt the educational experience of the abused team. One team invests hundreds of dollars, hundreds of hours, and gives up other educational opportunities only to confront a meaningless experience--we all have had the feeling after some particularly useless debates that maybe we'd be better off not debating. Quite simply, the social contract we all make to try to engage in genuine intellectual discourse is breached by those who employ disruptive tactics in order to win. A ballot on the illegitimacy of such disruptive abuses seems the least that can be expected. Competitive equity Is also restored by voting on punishment. Abusive tactics are employed to gain strategic advantage: conditional counterplans , for example, imply a geometric increase in the burdens placed upon the affirmative. Incoherent delivery is particularly unfair because a debater can never be sure if the bits and pieces of a speech he understood were the same bits and pieces the judge understood. The way to restore competitive equity is to vote against teams guilty of disrupting the natural competitive opportunity that existed in the absence of abusive tactics. To merely drop-out bad debate practices is to encourage their use--teams will run multiple counterplans, counterwarrants and the like and hope to draw lots of attacks on them to waste the maximum time possible, allowing victory on the other issues. It seems particularly unjust for a team to have to answer multiple counterplans, counterwarrants, and the like and to end up losing on topicality. Only by voting to punish teams employing tactics that are shown to be injurious to debate--in terms of education and fairness--can competitive equity be maintained. The final reason that will be isolated here to vote for punishment arguments in the notion of responsibility. It seems fundamental to the idea of advocacy that participants have a commitment to their arguments. With this commitment comes responsibility--if arguments are lost the round is lost. Robin Rowland articulates this view of debate:
With substantive policy argument within a normal judging perspective, responsibility is achieved by introduction of lost positions into the decision making calculus--if a DA is lost it cuts against case side advantages, if inherency is lost the negative wins automatically. With bad debate practices, responsibility is a hollow notion if they don't have an absolute impact in the round. To allow a negative, for example, to run counterwarrants and then drop them when they are indicted is to vitiate the notion of responsibility. The only way to attach costs to practices we determine are illegitimate is to punish teams that use them. These four justifications work within the tabula rasa judging approach. The winner in a debate need not be decided according to any criteria a judge brings into a round--the criteria are suggested by the participants in the debate. Deterrence, education, fairness, and responsibility can be established as goals that should replace policymaking where appropriate. As debaters employ punishment arguments we all may be better served by the improvements that result: improvements in debate practices and in the participants' ability to discuss the reasons why debate is more than a clash on policy.
One fear that has been expressed regarding punishment is the possibility that it will get out of hand-debaters will urge that everything in rounds be subject to punishment. If this tactic becomes overused we may create more problems than we eliminate: rounds full of childish attacks on every aspect of debate practice would be intolerable to judge or listen to. The punishment concept, it seems, has a built in check on overuse and misuse--the reverse voting issue. If a punishment argument is made and lost, then the team initiating the argument should be punished. It makes sense that once the round is moved onto the theory plane, it ought to stay there and be resolved at that level. To indict one theory is to support another; if the indicted theory is defended then the superiority of that theory over its competitor is a voting issue. It seems fair that when a team is put in extreme peril--they can lose solely on the punishment argument made against them-their opponent should be put in the same peril. The reverse voting issue serves to discourage abuse Of the punishment approach. Teams advancing stupid punishment arguments should themselves by punished. Teams making punishment arguments should be held responsible for those arguments--if they lose them they should pay. It is this author's belief that the criticisms that have been lodged against punishment ignore the built-in check provided by the reverse-voting issue. For example, one common attack is that punishment "chills" new theory--teams will be afraid to innovate for fear of being punished. Actually, punishment only "chills" bad theory. New theory--if it truly is an educational advance--would be defensible and could alone be a reason to vote for the team introducing it through the reverse voting issue concept. In fact, since there would be a need to rigorously support any new theory against punishment arguments, new theory would be more carefully articulated and defended. III. The alternative to Punishment--A greater Evil The alternative to punishment is repudiation of the tabula rasa judging perspective. Many judges have grown tired of abusive debate practices and closed off their minds to innovations. They have developed a "philosophy" of judging which approves of some practices and disapproves of others. This closed-minded dogmatism marks a return to the pre-tabula rasa days. Ironically, punishment doesn't go away--it just reappears as judge imposed punishment. It seems undeniable that tabula rasa judging invites the disruption of the debate process. Whatever one's goal is in debating, there are certain styles and theories that are simply disruptive to a meaningful fulfillment of that goal. Especially at the college level, debate is shrinking. Some coaches blame this on the rapid rate of delivery that has become common, some blame it on the over-emphasis on evidence, and others have taken refuge in any number of alternative explanations. The only way that debate can change and improve is through the exposure of the excesses of tabula rasa in actual rounds. The retreat from tabula rasa is the wrong response to the ills of debate. It assumes that debaters are incapable of rationally discussing the goals of debate and advocating positions which serve to deter practices subverting those goals. It places the judge in a privileged position--he has found the "correct" way to debate and will reject other approaches. The arrogance of this approach stuns this author: it repudiates the very assumptions of the activity. Tabula rasa has been so attractive because it is grounded in a belief in our ability to rationally discuss theory--as we do policy. In truth, there is no consensus in the debate community as to the "goal" of debate. Some participants stress the public speaking aspect. Some stress the research skills that are gained. Others are interested in developing creativity. And others see development of a knowledge of argumentation theory as important.12 Given the wide range of values promoted by debates-which often are in conflict--and the degree to which different individuals seek different rewards from the activity, it seems selfish for a judge to develop a set of rigid ideas about what makes for a good debate. Debate has attracted students precisely because there is an opportunity to be creative--to make arguments that are innovative and in some cases counterintuitive. Punishment arguments serve to ensure a rigorous test of these innovations. Tabula rasa unchecked can be dangerous. Punishment positions reintroduce elements of deterrence, education, fairness: and responsibility into debate to combat the excesses of the "blank-slate" approach. A thorough understanding of the roots of punishment and the justifications that exist for it reveal the objections to the concept to be ephemeral. And, even if there are drawbacks to a punishment model they are insignificant compared to the evils of the current "backlash" against tabula rasa that is occurring. That backlash threatens to return us to the days of closed-minded judging.In conclusion, it is hoped that debaters will see the whole issue of punishment in the larger context outlined here. Making style and theory a voting issue is a powerful tool to defeat opponents who disrupt the activity with ill-conceived, unfair tactics. Accordingly, making punishment a purely strategic tool leaves a debater vulnerable to a taste of his own medicine-reverse punishment. Use punishment arguments wisely. . . . NOTES 1. This claim is based on the author's observation of college and high school debate over the past several years and an examination of the 1984 National Debate Tournament judge philosophy book. 2. Erik Walker, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 3. Walter Ulrich, 1983 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 4. Melissa Wade, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 5. Erik Walker, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 6. Cathy Hennen, 1984 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 7. Walter Ulrich, "The Influence of the Judge on the Debate Round," in Arguments in Transition: Proceedings of the Third Summer Conference on Argumentation, edited by David Zarefsky, Malcolm Sillars, and Jack Rhodes, 1983, pp. 938-950. 8. Ulrich, p.941. 9. Cy Smith, 1982 National Debate Tournament Judge Philosophy Booklet. 10. G. Thomas Goodnight, In Defense of Our Nation: A Basic Overview of the Problems Involved in US Defense Policy (Skokie, Illinois: National Textbook Company, 1982), p. 55. 11. Robert Rowland, "Debate Paradigms: A Critical Evaluation," in Dimensions of Argument: Proceedings of the Second Summer Conference on Argumentation, edited by George Aiegel Mueller and Jack Rhodes, 19&1, P. 22. 12. David Zarefsky,
"The Perils of Assessing Paradigms," Journal of the American
Forensic Association, 18 (winterl982), p. 141 - 144. |