This is a major difference between the modern parliamentary debate and the old debate system. What are rebuttals? What do I rebut? When do I rebut? How do I make rebuttals? What are the types of Rebuttals?. These and many more are addressed in this article.
What is a Rebuttal?
Although many debaters, especially beginners, see the debate primarily as an exercise and a competition in construction of arguments, the essence of the debate does not come to realisation until the opposing sides interact in a common area of clash. No matter how excellent or true the opposing cases are, they do not make a debate1.
Rebuttal is an essential component that connects the strategies and content of both teams into a confrontation, and understanding refutation or rebuttal gives the debater an important set of skills not only to be able to interact with the opposing team, but also to be able to test and strengthen one’s own arguments. In this section, I will review what refutation is and how it occurs in a debate, and I will give some basic guidelines for how to attack the arguments of the opposing team.
Rebuttal is the effort to demonstrate the error or inadequacy of the opponent’s case. It is a necessary component for any team to be able to win the debate, regardless of the side they are debating. To refute an argument means to deliver a persuasive and effective justification for why this argument is wrong, either in a broader scope of the world or simply for that particular debate (or sometimes even for that particular case). In a team’s case, various points of refutation as well as refutation strategies will often intertwine, and form a persuasive attempt at proving the side’s case together with the constructive part of the case. In World Schools debate format, refutation is usually associated with all opposition speeches and only 2nd and 3rd of the proposition speech.
However, rebuttal can also be a part of constructive case (in a form of preemptive rebuttal), as well as present in the reply speeches (as indirect rebuttal of the general principles of the opposing case). Therefore, it is important for all speakers in the debate to understand refutation and to be able to construct and deliver points of refutation.
Watch the video below for a sample rebuttal debate between Nigeria vs Malaysia 2023
Check : https://youtu.be/CXV5WZff8rQ?feature=shared
Types of Refutation
There are several types of refutation. Here I will focus on two discrete categories: direct and indirect refutation. I will also briefly explain what preemptive refutation is and how it can be used.
- DIRECT REBUTTAL /REFUTATION
Direct refutation is a clear-cut attack on the opposing team’s argument with the aim of demonstrating a fault in the argument. It can address a mistake in reasoning behind the argument, a faulty example or an insufficient link in the relationship between the argument and the case the team is claiming to prove. In a debate about instituting death penalty for severe crimes, the proposition usually tends to claim that death penalty is an effective way of reducing crime rates for severe crimes because of the deterrent effect. The argument is traditionally substantiated by a piece of evidence that compares crime rates in certain areas with data about the status of death penalty in those same areas.
The direct refutation of such argument could be: “The opposition claims that the institution of death penalty lowers the crime rate for severe criminal acts. The logic behind it is supposedly that people will be deterred by the prospect of such a severe punishment. However, the deterrent factor argument presupposes that people who commit such crimes are capable of rational consideration of the consequences of their actions. This is not true for most horrible crimes, since they are usually committed either in a state of immense emotional distress, or by a mentally unstable person. Therefore, the lowering of the crime rate cannot be attributed to a rational deterrence mechanism that the opposing team is proposing in their argument.” This would be an attack on the reasoning.
The direct counter-argument could be as well: “The evidence in the argument shows only correspondence of two occurrences (lowering of crime rate and institution of death penalty), not correlation, let alone causality. At the time of measurement, many other social factors have changed in cited areas (such as population density, economic status, police control etc.), and the change in crime rate could easily be attributed to any of those factors.” This is an attack on the evidence provided for the claim.
Finally, the speaker could attack the relationship between the argument and the case that the team is arguing for. “Even if death penalty really influences the rate of crime, side proposition still needs to prove why this is the only or the most effective way to do so. Side opposition believes that there are many other ways of achieving the same goal, but many of them do not share the same risk as death penalty.”
- INDIRECT REFUTATION
Indirect refutation is less apparent than direct refutation, but nonetheless of the same importance for the interaction of the teams in a debate. Indirect refutation usually appears as a part of constructive case of a team. Indirect refutation in a debate takes form of competing arguments from different sides on the same issue, which results in a direct clash of the opposing cases. The winning argument is the one which reaches the conclusion with higher probability.
If we go back to the example above, in the debate about death penalty, the proposition could make a constructive argument: “The aim of the criminal justice system is retribution for caused damage and pain. If someone has committed a horrific crime that has caused a vast amount of suffering, they deserve to be punished in the harshest possible way.” On the other hand, opposition could make an argument: “The aim of the criminal justice system is not retribution but rehabilitation. Execution achieves simply that the person is killed, instead of giving them a chance to learn new behavioural patterns and be reintroduced into the society after they have served their time. Therefore, death penalty does not achieve the aim of the criminal justice system.”
The arguments are in a direct clash with one another, even though one does not address the components of the other directly. In the context of the debate, it is useful to try to connect the two arguments by flagging points of clash in the presentation of the argument.
- PREEMPTIVE REFUTATION
As the example in the previous paragraph shows, the two sides of the debate could speak in any order, yet the arguments presented would still be refutations of one another. This is useful in construction the case so that the team anticipates attacks of the opposing team and preemptively provides responses to those possible attacks. Preemptive refutation is usually not a separate argument (though it can be!), but rather an extension of one of constructive arguments of the team.
If we build on the example above, the proposition could expand their argument by saying: “We do understand that for certain crimes justice also bears the aim of rehabilitation. We agree that for lighter crimes, rehabilitation is often times possible, and if it is so, it should be employed. However, we also believe that the people who commit the gravest of crimes, for which the death penalty is reserved, are incapable of rehabilitation, and therefore they can only be affected by the retribution mechanism of the criminal justice system.” Here the reader should note that preemptive refutation is a powerful tool of strengthening the team’s case and opening a ground for deeper analysis of the points during the course of the debate.
However, a team cannot win the debate by simply anticipating the opposing team’s arguments and preparing suitable responses. Often times, arguments we hear differ only slightly from the one’s we expected, but this can make a big difference in the strategic success of the refutations. Therefore, even if teams start the debate with a preconceived notion of the clash that will happen, they should be able and willing to adapt their refutations as the debate progresses.