The Theoretics of Theory

Imagine one Sunday night, you sit down on the couch to watch football, having been exhausted from a day full of finishing procrastinated homework. Just as you get comfortable, one team stops the game in its tracks because they created a new rule at halftime their opponent isn’t following. Alternatively, some chess grandmaster flips over the chessboard and refuses to play because he wants to settle the match over checkers instead. The concept of changing the rules in the middle of a game is laughable in any other activity, except debate. 

I won’t go into a theory deep dive here because there are better resources on our website, but the premise is simple: theory is an argument about the rules of debate. The range of potential arguments is tremendous, from the value of paraphrasing to the ethicality of wearing shoes. Interestingly, these debates come before topical ones because theory controls the way all arguments are read. Essentially, if a theory argument is read in a round, everything else beforehand gets put on hold. This is where controversy arises; if you wanted to have a nice topical debate but I just felt like reading theory, there would be nothing you could do but debate me on it. 

To that end, I could read any argument imaginable. I could give reasons why wearing shoes is morally reprehensible; I could give reasons why debaters must quote a Laufey lyric in every speech, etc. Even deciding a debate round through a game of tic-tac-toe is completely within the bounds of theory. It is the debate equivalent of two sumo wrestlers settling the fight through a game of thumb war. These types of arguments are frivolous and shouldn’t exist in debate. They force you to waste time responding instead of learning about the topic. More importantly, superficial arguments can be incredibly and unjustifiably punishing if you don’t have proper resources. Theory debate has incredibly strict norms that must be followed for a judge to vote for you, so if you do not attend camp because you are an underprivileged school or debater, it is almost impossible to win. The inaccessibility of theory, the highest level of debate, makes the activity drastically harder to get into for many, much less thrive in. Fortunately, as this inequity looms larger than ever, more debaters are trying to address it by providing free resources online for underprivileged debaters to access and use. 

But there are two sides to every coin. Despite the accessibility challenges it presents, theory is a necessary evil that allows for debate’s continuation. Theory allows you to criticize your opponents’ actions, not just their arguments in relation to the topic. If your opponents say something exclusionary with real-life ramifications, theory enables debaters to call that behavior out, keeping the space a safer place. It allows high school students to fix an adult-run institution created decades ago. Take paraphrasing, for example. Almost a decade ago in public forum, paraphrasing was common practice among the best teams in the nation. However, when teams realized the potential pitfalls of paraphrasing, such as misconstruing evidence or encouraging subpar research, teams started to read theory about it. Now, nobody on the national circuit paraphrases their evidence anymore, and it is widely accepted that paraphrasing is bad for debate’s educational benefit. 

Debate is a game like no other, and it also contains flaws like no other. The perils of theory and the potential abuse it can cause are growing and real issues, and probably why no other activities allow for rule changes by players while they’re participating. Yet, despite its flaws, theory continues to be an integral part of continuously improving the benefits of debate and the space itself. Some say theory can only gets you so far, but if we as a community wield this double-edged sword properly, then I would beg to differ.