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2 Mechanics 3 Judging 4 Tournament Organization 5 Resolutions 6 History |
Lincoln-Douglas Debate involves the philosophical analysis and debate of a resolution that has no definite answer. Two debaters, an affirmative (for the resolution) and negative (against the resolution) face each other in each round.
In a Lincoln-Douglas debate the total time is divided equally between the speakers, but unevenly between the speeches in order to compensate for one side having first and last word. A typical NFL-rules LD round follows the following time schedule:
{| border=1
|Affirmative Constructive Speech
|6 minutes
|-
|Cross-Examination of Affirmative by Negative
|3 minutes
|-
|Negative Constructive Speech
|7 minutes
|-
|Cross-Examination of Negative by Affirmative
|3 minutes
|-
|First Affirmative Rebuttal
|4 minutes
|-
|Negative Rebuttal
|6 minutes
|-
|Second Affirmative Rebuttal
|3 minutes
|}
Each debater gets a total of three minutes of prep time, which they can use before any of their rebuttals. It is possible to use prep time before a cross-examination period, but experienced debaters rarely do so, as it can give an appearance of weakness.
Debate rounds are typically judged by an adult, often an assistant coach or parent of a competitor. Some novice-only tournaments employ experienced students as judges.
Judging an LD round can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced judges. Not only are the questions intrinsically complex, but the typical debater uses argumentation and citation from writers of philosophy that the judge may not be familiar with. Additionally, LD topics often involve issues where the judge has a strongly held opinion for or against the resolution. Being neutral and judging on the basis of the quality of the debater and not the nature of the argument can be difficult.
In some regions or circuits tournaments with multiple divisions, inexperienced judges, are most commonly placed in the Novice division, while Junior-Varsity and Varsity divisions enjoy much more experienced judges, most likely coaches of other teams or ex-debator college students. Other regional circuits value the difficulty of debating in front of inexperienced judges, and recruit "lay" judges from the community in order to provide the debaters with the experiance of attempting to explain complex issues to lay people. These judges are typically friends and relatives of the families of the debators of the sponsoring school. Some circuits require all LD judges for rounds above the novice level to meet training requirements.
This distinction is common across all high-school competative speech events, and may be related to the underlying pedagogical theory of offering such competition to the high school student. In some areas, such as in Kansas, High School speech is a for-credit class offered during the day which has a competative element. Inter-school tournaments are held after school and on weekends, but the training for them is curricular. In other areas speech competition may be a school-sponsored team similar to football or basketball which has practice after school rather than being part of the curriculem. In other areas of the country, speech is organized as a club activity rather than as a school sponsored activity. This distiction results in a difference in the schools understanding of the purpose of competative speech. Circuits like Kansas, which see the spectrum of speech events as curricular, set the goal of participation to be an improvement in the communication skills of the student. These circuits place high value on lay judging in all events to provide the student with the requirment to develop analysis and speaking styles which increase communication to the lay person. Other circuits which see the event as essentially competative rather than curricular, with a value similar to the value of other sports, place a higher value on expert judging so that the playing field is fair. This distinction provides endless controversy when students from districts with differing underlying philosphies compete against each other at regional or national tournaments.
In many tournaments, and especially in smaller tournaments, all debaters present have the potential to 'hit', or square off against each other, at the discretion of the tabulation staff. At other tournaments, generally larger tournaments, less experienced debaters may be separated from more experienced debaters, in essence, forming two parallel tournaments. Some very large tournaments may even have three tracks: Novice, Junior-Varsity, and Varsity.
As with Policy Debate, the winner of a debate round earns 6 NFL points, and the loser of the round earns 3 NFL points. Given that Lincoln-Douglas rounds are shorter than Policy rounds (meaning that some tournaments hold more rounds of L-D than of Policy), Lincoln-Douglas is the fastest way to earn NFL points.
Resolutions (topics to be debated) change every two months. Past resolutions include
The Lincoln-Douglas Debate format is named for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858.
Overview
Mechanics
Judging
Tournament Organization
In a typical one-day tournament, each debater will debate four rounds, two rounds advocating the affirmative side, and two rounds advocating the negative. Longer tournaments typically have five preliminary rounds, in which all debaters participate. The top debaters from the first five rounds then advance to a single-elimination tournament to determine the winner of the tournament.Resolutions
History