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Team Dynamics 5: Rebuttals


This is part of a series on team speaker dynamics. Read the other articles here:

Team Dynamics 1: General Considerations

Team Dynamics 2: Leaders Should Lead

Team Dynamics 3: Opening Speeches

Team Dynamics 4: Member Speeches


Let’s finish our tour of parli speaking styles with the rebuttals.

LOR: The Hammer

The LOR summarizes the round, with an emphasis on strategic victory.

After the MOC, the opposition should now have a solid advantage. The iron is hot, and laid in position. Now, the LO can hammer it into any position they like. This speech offers complete freedom; you’re not constrained by refutation or “covering the flow” the way everyone else in the round is to some degree.

The Lawyer can best take advantage of this. Lawyers are powerful precisely because they have a nondescript starting point. They can shift their speaking style to meet the needs of the speech. This can get pretty advanced, but here are a few scenarios:

The flow is a mess. You’ve lost some of it, but you’re winning on one or two offensive arguments. Shirt north toward pastor and hammer your advantage. 

The judge likes the government better than you. Shift east to teacher and establish the opposition as the team of reason; the team that deserves to win.

The judge is bored and confused, and struggling to stay awake. Shift west to rogue and put on a show that captures the judge’s attention.

The flow is clean and you’ve won most of it. Shift south to counselor, slow down and take your victory lap.

Halfway through the LOR, the judge should feel like the outcome is a foregone conclusion and there’s nothing the PMR can do to fix it. 

PMR: The Medic

The PMR summarizes the round, with an emphasis on persuasive victory. 

Here are some hard truths that inform the final speech:

  • Against an equally-matched opponent, you can never count on a logical advantage. You’ll always feel like you have one, but that’s usually because of cognitive bias.

  • Against an equally-matched opponent, you will lose strategically. You can’t overcome the format advantage of the opposition block. You should still play the strategic game, but understand that you’re on a losing footing every step of the way. You’re simply trying to mitigate the opposition’s strategic advantage.

  • Against an equally matched opponent, you will win persuasively. This is because you speak first (advantage of primacy) and last (advantage of recency). You get to frame the debate and say the last thing the judge hears before making a decision. 

In a tough round, you’re probably going to have to do some quick damage control, then cobble together a few offensive arguments that still have some life in them and make them look as pristine as they did in the PMC. 

The best persona to achieve this is the Pastor. Even with just a few precious minutes, they can reframe the debate with an impassioned plea, reminding the judge of everything she loved about the government position from the beginning. Imagine the PM holding shock paddles over the Advantages and shouting “Clear!” Five minutes later, a miracle: the government case is alive and walking around.


In the final article of this series, we’ll help you make a decision on speaking arrangements. 


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