Subject, Form and Rule

The Issues
What's in Rhetorical Demand?

• Immigration
• Economy
• War on Terror
• Nuclear Arms
• Taxes
• Global Warming
• Education
• Health Care
• National security
• Homelessness
• Human Rights
• Religion

Audience Adaptation
Speaker, know thine audience.
Age, demographics, values, drivers, context.


The Proposition/The Resolution

• While it may beg the question, it cannot be a question.
• Declarative
• Clear
• Indicative of Direction
• Definitive
• The culmination of your introduction

Types of Propositions

Fact
Argues what does or what does not exist, what has or has not happened, what may or what may not occur.
Proposition: Cell phone "sexting" increases risk of exploitation of minors.

The language is determinate: words like is, has, will, quantifiers like more, fewer, increasing, diminishing.


Value
Deals with questions of what is right/wrong, ethical/unethical, moral/amoral/immoral

• How are the values defined for the issue?
• Whose standard set the evaluation?
• Whose value is better?

Proposition: Sexting is immoral.
The language is evaluative: words like right, wrong, ethical, unethical...

Policy
Deals with what should or shouldn't be done as a matter of social action.

• Problem/solution oriented.
• Question if there is harm that requires a solution (like sexting).
• What are the causes of the harm?
• What's proposed as a workable solution?
• What are inherent effects and side effects of solution?

Proposition: Sexting should not be considered a sexually predatory offense.
The language is declarative, should, must, ought, plan,program, system...


Argumentative Ground

• The structure of the argument that lends itself to the best critical analysis and resolution.
• Thesis, antithesis and synthesis as measures of arguability. (I just made up that word.)
• Narrows the scope while still maintaining substance.
• Qualify, limit the grounds.

Definitions and Shared Meaning

• All need to be on the same page - imperative to define key terms.
• Denotative trumps connotative meaning unless established in ethos.
• Inclusive or exclusive definitions - sometime you can define something easier by what it is not.

Qualifiers

• Allow a degree to which something is true without becoming absolute (I'm convinced there are none) and lets us adopt our opinions to our audience.
• Speak in terms of probability instead of certainty - helps to moderate and preserve attention.
• Avoid terms of extreme.
• Use statistics to qualify, but be sure to synthesize.
• Preserve context, especially cultural, psychological, social and temporal.

Gamemanship
Challenge the status quo.
The affirmative challenges and advocates, the negative defends and opposes.
Each has their advantages:
Aff - The advantage of attack
Neg - The advantage of strategy and neg wins in a tie.
Stay topical.
The burden falls to the aff side to win.
The audience or speaker decides the victory.