Analysing the Tactics Used in Debates

There are a series of interesting posts over at Jean Goodwin's blog that looks at the process of debate and the tactics used therein, using the debate between Marc Morano and Mark Maslin as an exemplar.

The tactics discussed are:

1. Civility - How do the speakers interact? Do they interact directly with each other or via the interviewer (in this case). Do the speakers maintain the appearance of civility all the way through? How do they address each other? Does this change during the debate? How do the speakers characterise each other? Are the speakers having fun? Are they irritated? Are the speakers engaging each other or are they dismissive?
2. Hedging & Asserting - Hedging is using words or phrases to limit the amount of imposition on the other party. Whilst debate is, by its nature, about disgreement, hedging backs away from open disagreement by using phrases like "I think" or "I believe" out of a desire to avoid a confrontation. Asserting sets up a confrontational position and hedging generally weakens such a position.
3. What's the issue? - What are the speaker's arguing about? Why are they arguing about this issue? Have they been influenced or coerced into the debate? Has the motivating issue changed from the original issue? Did one of the speaker's manage to shift the issue from the originating issue to something else that is easier to win?
4. Bringing the arguments home - Assess the arguments made during the debate. Have the speakers managed to persuasively link their supporting data to their conclusions? Are all the steps in the argument explicit or are there gaps? Are these gaps because there is no evidence? or are they rhetorical? or both?    
5. The adverse witness - Do both speakers quote the same data or sources? Are these used to draw different conclusions? Do the speakers try to use their opponents quoted data or sources against them?
6. The appeal to authority, by the numbers - Sometimes we have to trust what the experts say? Are we being asked to look at the evidence and draw our own conclusions or are we being asked to trust the experts who have already done this for us. Goodwin makes an interesting point about the role of appeals to authority in the modern world:
   

   Appropriate appeals to authority were taken off the list of fallacies long ago. For good reason: we couldn’t survive without others’ expertise. We’re everywhere dependent on knowledges divided up into disciplines far more minutely than the work in Adam Smith’s old pin factory. In some cases our very lives may hang on the specialized knowledge that went into the design of a car’s floor mat or a factory’s system for washing spinach–although we’re only likely to remember it when the design goes bad.

7. Scientific Consensus - How do consensus claims work? Goodwin refers to one of her own projects which investigates this question. An interesting aspect is depicted called "rising above" which can turn the audience if they perceive that you are being condescending or arrogant. This is of course a risk if you are presenting yourself as the expert or amongst the experts as it could lead your opponent, or the audience, to perceive that you believe them to somehow be beneath you or not sufficiently educated to understand for themselves.

8. Repeating oneself all over again (Argument Craftsmanship) - Is the speaker taking a general idea, that has been expressed many times before, and adapting it to the current situation? Has the idea been formulated and refined in such a way as to provide a logically strong position, but no stronger? In this case, Goodwin suggests the use of topoi in the form of small but forceful chunks of domain knowledge that you can organise and assert as required to support your position or attack your opponents position.    

9. Take advantage of your opponents' commitments - Do the speakers each build their case based on the commitments incurred by their opponent? This approach was introduced in the adverse witness post where it was noted that in order to debate where there are numerous constrictions, e.g. issue complexity, limited audience knowledge, limited debate time, using shared concessions is a good way to make progress. Essentially, one of the most basic and powerful tactics for winning a debate is being able to take the things that your opponent has said and turn them around, use them against your opponent.

All in all a good analysis of the debate from a rhetorical perspective. Analysing those aspects of the debate that can be separated from the specific things that were said and the specific effect that they had on speakers and audience, and can be more generally identified as tactics for winning the debate.