Musings from a wall

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

That’s the germane part for today’s sermon, but the whole Humpty Dumpty chapter is an exercise in logic and linguistics that all debaters should know by heart. (“MUST a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. “Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh. And there’s plenty more where that came from.)

I am taken by a number of issues that attract debaters to the Dark Side for one reason or another. One issue is the “unique” argument.

The largest number of debaters, by definition, deal in stock arguments on a resolution. This is not because a small number of issues are stocked and sold by some virtual WalMart of debate ideas, but because most people facing a batch of words tend to interpret them the same way, and to respond to them the same way, and those responses, which are the vastest in number, become the stock arguments. That is why I say most debaters traffic in stock arguments by definition, because “stock arguments” is defined as whatever most debaters are running. Stock arguments are not intrinsically bad, dull, banal, or any other pejorative you wish to apply, any more than the impulse to stop at a red light, which is a rather stock response to seeing a red light when you’re driving your Edsel down the Lincoln Highway, is somehow bad or dull or banal. It’s just the most common reaction.

One could say that, because resolutions repeat, if not literally but at least in essence, there are arguments tucked away on certain topics that are always pulled out of the drawer again, and that these too are stock but in a different definition of the word. That is, we’ve argued about sovereignty in the past, and Jan-Feb will no doubt have many arguments about sovereignty again, and many times we will be arguing the same material albeit to a different end. I won’t disagree with that, but I will point out that every argument perceived of as stock today was at some point an original argument. That we remember the last time we had that same argument and pull out our trusty and true responses from the last time does not negate the idea that stock arguments are the general response because they are what people generally do respond.

Still, not everyone responds to topics the same way, and not everyone runs stock arguments. Some topics are rich in potential arguments, and some debaters go deep, finding unusual approaches that nevertheless are squarely within the bounds of the resolution. By this I do not mean that they torture some paragraph they’ve lifted out of Derrida or the like into something that apparently applies to the subject at hand, but that they’ve studied the material of the resolution, they’ve read books and articles on the subject, and gone beyond just a simple understanding of the topic to a more expert understanding, generating a more expert case as a result. The rounds I’ve seen at TOC over the years, where there is a lot at stake, and where debaters have had plenty of time to analyze the resolution, are where you are most likely to see this sort of case. Curiously, TOC is also where you are most likely to see fairly straightforward, traditional—stock if you will—arguments. Orthodoxy has its place. Come to think of it, though, doing a lot of research and learning a lot and expounding what you have learned is as orthodox as the application of simple solutions to the Gordian knot. Sometimes doing a lot of research and learning brings one back to the beginning. It depends on the person, and it depends on the subject.

Anyhow, so far, so good. But there is another breed of case altogether that is problematic. In an effort to create a unique case, presumably on the misguided belief that orthodoxy and stock cases are anathema, one goes off on a tangent that is, in a word, nuts. I know I could come up with a better word than that, but you get my point. And this particular tangent (and there are other tangents, i.e., other ways of creating cases that are equal parts unique and bad) requires the redefinition of common words. And that is never a good idea.

In language, there are all sorts of words that are arbitrary. Most nouns, for instance. If I call the thing I drink my coffee out of a cup or a tasse, it doesn’t really matter much, although I’ll be more likely understood with the latter in Quebec than in Edmonton. The word cup is entirely an arbitrary sound (or, when written, collection of letters) that we agree will refer to things that are cup-like. If I were to refer to my cat as my cup, or my cup as my cat, I would not make a lot of sense to a lot of people, because we associate catness with one group of objects and cupness with another group of objects. My clarity as a communicator depends on my ability to use words in such a way that my auditors understand what I want them to understand. I need to select my words carefully, based on a shared understanding of meaning. I cannot, as Humpty Dumpty asserts, have a word mean what I want it to mean, if it already has a pre-existing meaning. I am not the master of the meanings of words. The meanings of the words are already set. I am a master of words only if I am a master of their already inherent meanings, which, as I say, are initially arbitrary. It is usage that removes the arbitrariness from the equation.

(Semioticians should feel comfortable with the above analysis. One could point out that usage is not static, of course. The word momentarily used to mean “for a moment” and now, because of what copyeditors might have called misusage, it means “in a moment.” Language is a fluid business, but not with every single word. Some words are more fluid than others. But that is not our main issue here.)

So, getting back to the nut case I was talking about, run perhaps by a nutcase (and how’s that for clever manipulation of language?), the uniqueness here depends on taking a common word or phrase that is normally used in debate such-and-such a way, and using it in some other way altogether. Sometimes this includes using a word or phrase that has centuries of accepted philosophic meaning in some way that is counter to that accepted meaning. It is a postmodern critical trick to turn words upside down, although not a particularly good trick, but at least the professional critics who do this are aware of what they are attempting to do. But how am I to respond to a definition of, say, morality, that specifically states that morality is not an attempt to determine what we ought to do, or of justice, stating that it is not the attempt to adjudicate conflicting claims in a manner accepted by all? Values are slippery enough concepts already, but they do come with almost instinctive understandings on our part (or perhaps real instinctive understandings, if some of the experimental philosophy these days is to be believed). Any educated adult, never having heard of LD debate, still has an intuitive understanding of morality and justice and all the other big-ticket value items. So if we set out to redefine these values right off the top, don’t we immediately confuse the people we are attempting to communicate with?

And, trust me, debaters do argue these counterintuitive definitions. They take what we all agree are meanings, throw out those meanings, put in new meanings, and ask us to forget the old meanings. But the problem is more than just substituting one word for another. Or, actually, it’s the opposite problem. They’re keeping the word and changing the meaning. If I start calling circles magubus, they are still round objects where the circumference is pi*r*squared 2 * pi * r. But if I start saying that circles are not round, then I’m getting into some seriously muddled linguistic if not metaphysical territory. Circles are defined by their roundness, no matter what we call them. At the point where we deny their roundness, they are no longer circles. The claim that they are circles despite their lack of roundness has little traction in the mind of the auditor. It goes beyond wordplay into nonsense. Nuttiness. And yet, there are nut cases out there. Morality, justice and other values, stripped of their meanings, are their non-round circles.

Why are these cases being run? My guess is that the debaters are simply too clever by half. As was Humpty-D. They really do believe that they are the masters of words, and they are encouraged in this by some modern critical writing (in theory), not to mention judges who are willing to accept any damned nonsense in a round (in practice). And there is no question that these nut cases are being run by superior debaters, who can sell the proverbial matches to the devil, and their skill as arguers overcomes their misguided belief in their skill at cognitive creation.

Is this any way to win a debate round? Probably not. It may succeed based on the natural skills of the debater (lots of nonsense will), but wouldn’t that debater be better off with the starting point of meanings everyone already agreed to? I’m not saying that you should run stock arguments, only that you should run normative language. Anything else is just too confusing.