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1.3 Contemporary Developments in Argumentation, Debate, and Persuasion
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As the various cultures of the world have become more accessible to one another through the Internet, increased opportunities for global travel, and more complex international relationships among economies and governments, the need for intercultural understanding and exchange has amplified. Negotiations among individuals and groups of various philosophical or cultural positions can stall when inherent values compete. The study and practice of debate has spread throughout the world as a viable means for investigating, airing, comparing, contrasting, and engaging those differences, differences that otherwise might lead to violence. Debate has shown itself to be a reasoned, thoughtful, and intelligent means for working through contentious issues by thoroughly examining the complex facets of those issues and, in some cases, calling in third party adjudicators to render decisions.
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Much of the world debate community still draws from a fundamentally Greco-Roman core of debate features that calls for claims, arguments, reasoning, and evidence. Authors of this text, while working to include various cultural traditions, largely rely on the Western body of study called “argumentation” to explain issues such as reasoning fallacies, case construction, and audience analysis, for example. The authors recognize that these predominant themes emerge from the Greco-Roman core and continue to work toward inclusive ways to infuse global debate with multicultural means of making meaning, persuading, promoting understanding among debaters, and finding good ways to reconcile difficult global issues.
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In addition, the authors recognize that differences other than national culture also can privilege or disadvantage certain groups of readers. In the research section of this textbook, for example, attention is given to research done on the Internet where debaters engage such useful sources as Lexus-Nexus or Google Scholar. Such suggestions, obviously, ignore the real circumstance that the large majority of people in the world do not have access to such luxuries as the Internet. Underlying assumptions in these discussions in this textbook, then, presume that the case for one group is the case for all groups. Because of these varying perspectives and value systems, providing educational information in a way that does not privilege one group over another or one philosophy over another can, at times, present antithetical challenges. Regardless of these challenges, authors of this text and other scholars continue to seek inclusive ways to accomplish the goal of human beings making excellent global decisions in nonviolent ways. The authors acknowledge that providing instruction to all cultures, all socio-economic classes, and all political credos demands ongoing, dynamic reconstruction of curriculum toward inclusion of all voices. Revised editions of this textbook will continually address this changing status.
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Toward that end of evolutionary change, a view of contemporary rhetorical developments from the prospective of Chinese rhetoric is critical to students using this textbook so those students may better understand how to read and interpret the information presented. Since any culture’s rhetoric, with the aim of being persuasive, is never developed in a vacuum, that rhetoric has been heavily influenced by that culture’s political mechanisms, philosophical traditions and cultural contexts. Just as seminal works in the Greco-Roman tradition have shaped rhetoric in the West, seminal works in China have been influential on rhetoric in China. Since this textbook approaches argumentation and debate fundamentally from a Greco-Roman core, students who use this textbook benefit from following Chinese perspective on that approach.
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Because Confucianism and Taoism are mainstream philosophies loyal to hierarchies and traditions in China’s long history, contemporary rhetoric in China, which often shares the fabric of Chinese philosophies, developed on a disparate track from Western rhetoric. Some comparative studies have been conducted on Chinese oratory (Oliver, 1971), but more often than not, because of the “dichotomies of antonymic concepts such as originality versus conventionality, rationality versus assertive discourse, cogency versus repetitive indirection,” Chinese rhetoric has been “consistently associated with the negative terms” (Liu, 1996: 318-335). More recent scholarship suggests using less ethnocentric assessment tools for analysis results in more generative, forward-thinking, and useful understandings of these dichotomies of thought.
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Recent years have witnessed abundant comparative studies claiming more commonalities than discrepancies between Chinese and Western persuasive techniques, commonalities remarkably produced in the contexts of radically different languages. One author uses these studies to argue that rhetoric may represent an inherent commonality among human beings: “It would appear that universal rhetorical elements exist and that these elements connect humans of different cultures, building a bridge across the communication gaps between them” (Lu, 1998: 30). Toward that same conclusion, philosopher Richard J. Bernstein writes that “[incommensurable] languages and traditions are not to be thought of as self-contained windowless monads that share nothing in common… There are always points of overlap and crisscrossing even if there is not perfect commensuration” (Lu, 1998: 85-103). These scholars suggest these points of shared experiences provide starting points for developing mutually acceptable means for nonviolent decision-making processes.
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However, while appreciating the commonalities among these rhetorical features, the authors acknowledge the lack of propriety and fairness in a process of canonizing one rhetorical culture, imposing its framework to analyze another, namely using the Greco-Roman system to parse Chinese discourses. Students reading this textbook—students both from China and from the United States—can remember that the tools designed from and used for analysis of Western persuasive strategies can assess Chinese passages only as those passages do or do not comply with the philosophies inherent in the design of the tools. An important argument can be made that such an application of Greco-Roman argumentation may not necessarily be applicable to Chinese passages.
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To more clearly illuminate the problem of assessing one culture’s production with the tools of another culture, one can simply ask this question: What if Chinese persuasive strategies were used to assess Western ones? A similar disconnect might occur. The very presentation of different rhetorical styles inherently calls up the different bases of cultural values used to shape those styles. Recognition and understanding of those basic differences provide a beginning from which a debater may develop the art of global debate toward discovering ways for human beings to move forward through intelligent, thoughtful, and ethical interchange among cultures.
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Regarding the differences between Chinese and Greco-Roman rhetoric, metaphor, analogies, and appeals to authoritative testimonies are far more prevalent in Chinese persuasive discourse than are deductive and inductive methods of reasoning used in Western argumentation; to establish the latter as the orthodox system is to eclipse the unique and intrinsic nature of the former. Just as scholarship has emerged from Greco-Roman scholars studying their own rhetorical practices, so have research projects studied the virtues of Chinese rhetoric in its own terms and structures. For instance, Qu (2009: 61-71) uses Qi to describe the inexplicable intricacies in Chinese discourse, intricacies that constitute a key concept that “dominates and orchestrates the rhetorical practice”. In another example, Mao (2007: 216-237) explored the “yin-yang” concept that was “rhetorically important in ancient China”.
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One key with regard to multicultural diversities and commonalities in persuasive discourses, then, is to create an amalgam of systems where, for example, the culturally specific virtues of multiple cultures, such as the virtues of Chinese persuasive discourses, are honored. Both Chinese students and Western students can gain value by learning about Western argumentation and Chinese rhetorical culture. If a student from either culture wishes to communicate effectively across cultural borders, then each culture has much to learn from the other. Bonds between nations already have tightened cultures and societies into one global community where treaties govern currency exchange and international business, environment protection, the World Wide Web, etc. Effective, ethical debate provides a means to use persuasive dialogues to seek out conflict resolution measures rather than resorting to violence as peoples work toward agreements regarding various, critical, global decisions to be made. These dialogues can facilitate cross-cultural and transnational communication within the present, unprecedented, globally integrated situation, promoting a better understanding of and respect for each other’s rhetorical cultures.
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This understanding is especially important for the younger generation in China and the United States. If China’s voice is to be heard and to be better understood by the Western world and if the voice of the Western world is to be better understood by China, Chinese practices and Western practices by the younger generations need to engage ethical and effective argumentation strategies, negotiating a global system that better incorporates multiple voices. Such actions would comply with the words of Chinese Rhetorician Liu Yameng (1999: 297-315), who sought “to justify my positions in your terms”. That multiplicity of knowing might help surmount obstacles resulting from cultural differences but also may operate as models for others seeking better communication and more effective decision-making between people of different cultures.
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1.4 Developments in Educational Debate
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The term, “educational debate,” refers to the process of teaching students to debate. At present, the teaching of educational debates takes approximately the same form worldwide: students learn from instruction on college campuses and also participate in intercollegiate debate tournaments usually held on some weekends at different colleges. The instruction presents information and trains students in debating and argumentation skills. The debate tournaments provide opportunities for students to practice those skills.
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Both the instruction and the debate formats have undergone significant modification in the last century, spawning multiple formats to represent the varied ways people feel most able to present their positions in fair and productive arenas. British Parliamentary debate, Canadian Parliamentary debate, Worlds-Style debate, Australasian debate, Cross-Examination debate, Public Forum debate, and Lincoln-Douglas debate are a few examples that demonstrate not only different arrangements of teams and speakers but also of differences in whether or not a speaker can be directly questioned by another speaker, whether a speaker presents more than one speech in the debate, and whether the debate is heard by a single or multiple adjudicators.
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In addition, variations among debaters and debate styles have grown. Some debate tournaments feature styles where speakers provide a tightly condensed stream of evidence, speaking in a rapid fashion for the duration of their allotted time. Some tournaments feature styles where a speaker’s character, wit, and emotional presentation play a more prominent role. Some debates call for two individuals to face each other, some for two teams, and some for four teams. Some of the more narrative-based cultures, for example, have widened the scope of presentational styles to emphasize description, metaphor, or analogy. In short, the conceptualization of what originally was the Greco-Roman debate style has been evolving during the last century as other styles of oral presentation have entered the global conversation.
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Debate tournaments in educational debate might be thought of as laboratories: places where students can experiment with their speaking styles, their argument choices, their reasoning designs, and their ethical codes. Tournaments generally include several teams from several universities who debate in a one-, two- or three-day event. Since a student might attend as many as five, six, or more tournaments a year, he or she will have ample time between tournaments to review their performances, research and plan for future debates, learn new skills, and talk with other debaters, instructors, coaches, and adjudicators about their experiences. With each tournament, then, a student can try out new ways to implement their own debate strategies. Over the duration of their college experience, debate students improve their abilities to adhere to ethical means of speaking with others, research and discuss important global topics, speak intelligently and persuasively to an audience, think quickly and effectively in question-answer sessions, design creative ways to address difficult problems, address multi-faceted problems from numerous different starting points, and respond productively to criticism.
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Although the histories of educational debate in the United States and in China differ, the present-day intercollegiate practices provide training for students from both countries to prepare them to participate in international debates all over the world. The recent proliferation of international tournaments for college-aged debaters provides students with significant opportunities to learn about global issues from individuals who, like themselves, have experienced some of the issues first hand. Educational debate in both the United States and China prepare students for “real life” argument situations, whether they be career situations such as lawyers or barristers, community situations such as serving on the city council, or individual situations such as helping the family to decide whether they should move to a new locale. The histories of educational debate in each country demonstrate their respective roads to a shared educational practice.
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1.4.1 Educational Debate in the United States
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Debate became popular in the United States and other Western societies in the first decade of the 19th century. In the United Kingdom, for instance, debate was sponsored at St. Andrews(Scotland), Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. Intercollegiate debating became a popular activity in United States in the middle of the 20th century and was supported by colleges and universities including Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, Willamette University, and others. These debate societies had a hand in the formation of the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking(now called the National Communication Association). The goal of these colleges and universities was to promote debate as a method of teaching public speaking (Wallace, 1954: 496).
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Today, debate is quite popular in Western, as well as Eastern colleges and universities, particularly in the association called the “World Universities Debating Council (WUDC).” The first WUDC tournament was held at Fordham University in New York City and subsequently has rotated through various nations including Ireland, Australia, Scotland, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Greece, Botswana, Germany and India.
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In the United States, competitive debate is sponsored by at least five organizations: the American Forensic Association, the Cross Examination Debate Association, the National Parliamentary Debate Association, the American Parliamentary Debate Association, and the U. S. Universities Debate Association. Each of these associations sponsors intercollegiate debate tournaments as well as hosts a national championship for its association.
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1.4.2 Educational Debate in China
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