Coachean Debate Dictionary, Installment 5

Signposting: 1. Clearly stating in a round the argument to which you are responding, so that the opponents and judges will know what you are talking about. (NOTE: Novice only. After that, it's every man for himself.)

Road map: 1. Overview before a speech explaining where the speech will go and in what order. Usually more confusing than the actual speech, and seldom an accurate prediction of what will be talked about. 2. A good way to figure out what you're going to talk about next without running down the clock of either prep or speaking time.

Card: 1. A piece of evidence. (Source: Originally all evidence was written on index cards, hence this usage. Anyone who can remember when all evidence was written on index cards should be an automatic strike for all varsity debaters.)

Warrant: 1. Good reason for doing something, i.e., the motivation behind an argument. (Mythical.) 2. What your arguments have that your opponents' arguments don't have, and vice versa.

Assertion: 1. 99% of what you hear in any debate round.

a priori argument: 1. An argument that bears no relationship to the concept of a priori argument, but is rather something you expect the judge to accept without your having to prove it. Let's face it: Kant only came up with two a priori concepts; if yours isn't one of them, well, I knew Immanuel Kant and you? You are no Immanuel Kant!

Social contract: 1. Concept in political philosophy regarding rights, society and the individual that applies only to novice debaters; anyone in their second or later year of debate arguing the social contract receives an automatic forfeit.

Justice: 1. Value in an LD round where the debater couldn't come up with anything better.

Values debate: 1. What LD no longer is.

Wording committee: 1. Confused collection of NFL members chosen at random for their inability to manipulate the English language (LD). 2. A random NFL staffer tossing a dart at a copy of today's newspaper (PF).

Institute: 1. Debate summer camp. 2. The road to perdition. 3. Money for nothing (when applied to college student instructors).

Evidence: 1. Proof that what a debater is saying is correct. 2. Measurement tool (PF); the team with the most evidence, regardless of whether or not it is introduced in a round, wins. Simply putting a substantial accordion folder on a desktop is good enough in most situations. 3. What LD didn't have back when it was good.

Drop / pick up: 1. A loss (drop) or win (pick-up) in a round. (Usage: The judge dropped his ass faster than a tasteless joke that shouldn't be printed here.)

Dropped argument: 1. An argument that is never mentioned again in a round. If a debater drops an argument, it was of no consequence and does not play into the reason for decision; if an opponent drops an argument, it is the only crucial argument that was made in the round and should be the only reason for decision.

Judge panel: 1. A group of judges, usually 3, adjudicating a single elimination round, chosen by tab so that no two have even remotely the same paradigm.

Runners: 1. Slow moving novices charged with racing ballots to the tab room. Recognizable by the wings on their sandals and the cobwebs on the rest of them.

Major domo: 1. Team member assigned to work with the tab staff, a tournament job that most students would drop in a second if they could, say, milk a swimming pool full of cobras for the day instead, if, indeed, they could tell the difference between the tab staff and a swimming pool full of cobras.