8/6/2019 Debate Seminar - Prop Arguments

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DEBATE SEMINAR PREPARING AN AFFIRMATIVE CASE.

What is a burden?

A burden is the weight of evidence and analysis someone has to give to prove their

argument. So in a debate, teams are often penalised for not proving their burden. This

effectively means that they did not prove all the links necessary to win their case.

A burden can also change. Arguing a case one way may increase the burden on yourself by

giving yourself a harder argument to prove. For instance, if the debate was we should

legalise marijuana, if you were to argue that we should legalise alldrugs, including

marijuana, all would be giving yourself a harder burden to prove a tougher argument.

Sometimes teams may choose to do this for the sake of consistency this will be discussed

below.

Step 1 What do I have to prove?

It is important to consider what needs to be proved in order to discharge your burden. So takefor example, This House would call this object a Big Red Ball.

Simplistic, maybe, but what is it we have to prove? Most would say, correctly, that we must

prove three things. Firstly, that it is Big. Secondly, that it is Red. Thirdly, that it is a Ball.

Only after you have proven all three of these, can you justify calling it a Big Red Ball. These

are your PRACTICAL arguments.

However, there are more fundamental arguments most novices forget about. In the example

given, for instance, it would be legitimate to ask another question: Does the government have

a role in calling it Big Red Ball? Even if it is a Big Red Ball, whose responsibility is it to call

it so? Will there be bad consequences if we do? These are our PRINCIPLED arguments.

Let us test this out with a classic debate Freedom of Speech.

THW (This House Would) BAN HATE SPEECH.

First we to consider, what is Hate Speech? It is speech that derogatory towards a person for

something physical to them or independent of their personality. So race, religion, etc.

So we have a number of arguments we can run with. First we have practical arguments, such

as:

y Hurts minority groups feelingsy Leads to violencey Leads to worse morals in society

8/6/2019 Debate Seminar - Prop Arguments

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