Matter over Method and Manner

It's Jules from Consensus with another Brief Explainer video. Our Brief Explainers take an element of public speaking and debating and explain it quickly and clearly with tips and takeaways for you and your students. If you'd like something even shorter, try our Brief Explainer podcasts, which are about half as long. And please feel free to email us if you'd like us to answer a public speaking or debating question.

Today's topic is a matter over method and manner in debating. This is one I really want to share with you. It's an absolutely fundamentally important foundation for effective debating. Matter is what really matters.

To make clear what we are talking about. Some quick definitions first. Matter in debating is the ideas that are discussed. In other words, the arguments themselves. Method or methodology involves the structures that are used to organise those arguments and also other elements in the debate, like context, model allocation, and rebuttal. Manner is the way a speaker's voice and language are used to convey the ideas in the debate. Rhetoric is the art of being persuasive; contention in debating is what is being evaluated through the arguments; and assertion is the presentation of an idea without proof that it is real or true.

To cover the topic, we'll be looking at several points:
— The relationship between matter, method and manner and why matter is boss
— How method and manner can add fluid fluency to ideas but are empty on their own.
— How if you concentrate on the ideas in debating method in a manner tend to look after themselves.
— How facts and statistics don't matter unless they're proved through interpretation.
— How understanding and interpreting matter requires a combination of logic and persuasiveness.

So to the key point, first method and manner exist only to convey ideas or matter—they have no intrinsic value in themselves. Therefore, matter is what every debater should spend most of their time thinking about. Matter matters because it's what you're actually discussing rather than valuing what form or style is used in that discussion. And it's the ideas that are in contention.

An analogy can be seen in the way we write the quality of a product over any slick salesmanship that might promote it. So matter is the substance of debating, while method and manner are the means of delivering it.

It's true that in the past all three elements—matter, method and manner—were rated by adjudicators and weighed through a point system. The problem with this system was it encouraged showy presentations that relied on rhetoric rather than logic, and where neat structures became prerequisites or requirements for success. Fortunately, those days are long gone, and now adjudicators are taught to only evaluate the ideas the debaters develop.

They do not score the debate but evaluate and compare how well each team's ideas have been proved and what remains valid after rebuttal. It's true, though, that if you're well organised and a fluent speaker, you're likely to be able to include in your speech more matter that is clearly understandable. It's also likely that effective expressive rhetoric can arrive in a speech and make it more entertaining and a clear structures helping adjudicate a follow a case more easily.

At the same time, it's also true that fluency and structure can merely dress up and disguise empty or poorly justified ideas. It often comes as a shock to articulate well organised teams that they can loose debates against oppositions who don't appear to know what they're doing in terms of structure or polished delivery. Good ideas, though, remain good ideas, as long as they're explained effectively, even if they are superficially disorganised, or delivered in unsophisticated language. At times, polished teams tend to drink their own bathwater and come to think their stylistic competence makes them good debaters. Really, all that counts is explaining your ideas as well.

So concentrating on matter in debates leads to ideas that are clearly understood and from there, method and manner can take care of themselves. Even so, for new debaters, training in methodology gives a framework that reminds them of the various stages they should work through in their thinking tasks.

Because debating is a complex activity that involves careful listening and quick responsiveness, structure can be a very useful guide that helps pin down all the tasks involved. For this reason, teaching method is valuable because it gives speakers a form to work with as they get their head around the complexity of the ideas they're discussing. But that's all it does. The ideas still have to be developed and explained properly.

Teaching manner is a much emptier activity, but when speakers are really getting their head around effective thinking, giving them advice about their delivery can be useful. Usually, though, fluency tends to sort itself out as speakers, speakers become more enabling thinkers.

Now let's look at the best approach to matter. It's important to realise that matter in debating is not just a list of facts and statistics. Claims made on the basis of bad numbers are inherently problematical because an adjudicator has no way of definitively verifying whether they're true or not. The invention or exaggeration of facts and statistics in debates, when students are under pressure to come up with good ideas and establish a case, is not at all unusual. But for these very reasons, reasonable estimates are always preferable to wildly asserted details.

The key point here is that dry details are of little value unless you offer proof through interpreting them and revealing how they show the way people behave. Then factual details can corroborate or match lived experience.

The kinds of policy you meet in debating—they're just not abstract concepts or unquestionable facts and figures. Policies exist only to manage and enable real human interactions. Understanding and interpreting the matter in a debate requires a combination of logic and perceptiveness. It's an imaginative act.

Now, that doesn't mean you literally ask the listener to imagine a particular person’s circumstances. Because it's an act of empathetic identification and envisaging the real world, it's better to create reasonable, believable explanations of what real people more generally are like, how they behave, and why that behaviour is likely. These explanations must be stepped through logically, offering proof and interpreting that proof.

A key simple tip here it's worth repeatedly using the word “because” when you're using arguments, it's a valuable prompt for creating proper, properly linked explanations.

Now, for some common mistakes where the essential importance of matter gets overlooked. Debaters sometimes use fancy phrases that carry no meaning, have no real value, and merely use up time. These include things like “That's why we're proud to propose or oppose” or “Now I'd like to rebut and correct a number of misguided statements from the opposition.” The time used in these empty statements could instead be put to better effect by providing valuable proof and making effective comparisons between the teams cases.

Asserting ideas that aren't explained is another common problem that happens in debating, especially when a point of ethical principle seems obvious to a team. The principle doesn't get explained because it seems self-evident and everyone knows it's true. Almost nothing is true in debating until proved. Exaggeration also often occurs in debates as a default from reasonable explanation. Resorting to exaggeration is a form of shallow and convenient rhetoric that fails to do justice to the ideas in the debates rather than exaggerating the weaknesses and oppositions case, rather than doing that, it's far better to take the best possible version of their argument and then try to prove why it's still wrong, or at least imperfect.

So, guys, to wrap things up. Here are some final thoughts. The key thing to remember is that matter always matters more than method or manner. Content rules over the way it is delivered.

A basic aspect of getting matter right comes from a shared test teaming of its ideas. Everyone should question and probe the team's case for weaknesses. Once a team has a reasonable command of how to construct and test a case, then trying different structures and playing with the matter can follow. Refined structures like thematic rebuttal or integrated rebuttal and argument can be worth developing, but no structure is a simple fix all and some of those structures are quite difficult to master anyway.

Similarly, rhetorical playfulness, irony and even jokes have a fine place in debating, but old meant fundamentally effective argument rather than being a substitute for it.

That's it for today, everyone. Email us if you'd like a question answered, info@consensuseducation.org.au. Happy debating and keep safe by everyone.