Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

A Change In Competition: Assessing The Nfa-Ld Community And Its Views On Topical Counterplans, Matthew Whitman

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Intercollegiate academic debate allows students to participate in various contests and competitions to demonstrate expertise in argumentation and public speaking (Freeley & Steinberg 2009). The National Forensic Association's Lincoln-Douglas (NFA-LD) debate is a two-person style of policy-based debate, and it borrows much of its argumentative structure from other team-based debate organizations (Freeley & Steinberg, 2009). Yet it also prohibits other theoretical arguments from being used through its codified rules. This project seeks to examine current NFA-LD community attitudes towards the prohibition of topical counterplans, a theoretical negative argument, in the event.