Topicality

OVERVIEW

Topicality is an argument that contests whether or not the affirmative has met its burden in defending the resolution. While theory interpretations describe norms that would be good for debate, and then prove why a debater has violated those norms, topicality interpretations begin with the foundational assumption that it is good for the affirmative to defend the resolution, and then go on to describe what the best interpretation of the resolution is and why the affirmative has not defended that interpretation.

INTERPRETATIONS

While all topicality shells technically amount to this argument:

"Interpretation: affirmatives must defend the resolution. Violation: The affirmative did not defend the resolution."

A topicality argument like this would not be particularly useful because the affirmative likely agrees with you that it should defend the resolution, but disagrees with your claim that it has not defended the resolution. Because of this, it is important that topicality arguments make clear what their criteria for "topical affirmatives" are, and why the affirmative has not met that criteria. An example on the resolution "States ought to increase production of chocolate" might be:

"Interpretation: States is a plural noun. Therefore, the affirmative must defend that multiple states ought to increase production of chocolate. Violation: The affirmative has only defended increasing chocolate production in Germany."

PRECISION PART 1: DEFINITIONS

Since topicality arguments attempt to identify the best (i.e. the most fair and educational) interpretation of the resolution, they usually require defining words in the resolution. In the chocolate example from the previous section, a definition of the word "states" that says states is a plural noun that must refer to multiple things would most likely be read in the 1NC.

Definitions are important because they help prove that a given topicality interpretation is a precise and accurate reading of the resolution. Without definitions, topicality interpretations become arbitrary and place unfair burdens on the affirmative by expecting them to interpret the resolution in a way that is not represented in the topic literature.

PRECISION PART 2: PRAGMATICS VS SEMANTICS

While the grammatical accuracy of a given topicality interpretation is one way to determine its merit, another way is to analyze the types of debate that interpretation would produce, and determine if those debates would be fair or educational. These two types of arguments generally make up the standards of a topicality interpretation or counterinterpretation, and are referred to as semantic and pragmatic offense.

"Semantics" and "Precision" are often used interchangeably to refer to arguments that seek to prove or disprove that a given topicality interpretation aligns with the grammatical meaning of the resolution in the English language. Precision can also be used to refer to whether a topicality interpretation aligns with the resolution's most common meaning in the eyes of qualified experts and the topical literature.

"Pragmatics" and "Debateability" are often used interchangeably to refer to arguments that seek to prove or disprove that a given topicality interpretation will create fair and education debates. Common examples of standards that incorporate these arguments include

- Neg Ground (the idea that a topicality interpretation is bad because it restricts the negative's access to prep that can answer affirmatives the interpretation would make topical).

- Limits (the idea that a topicality interpretation is bad because it drastically expands the number of possible topical affirmatives, placing and unfair prep burden on the negative)

- Topic Literature (the idea that a topicality interpretation is bad because it excludes core parts of scholarly literature written in the context of the topic)

PARADIGM ISSUES

COMMON TOPICALITY SHELLS

EXTRA TOPICALITY

EFFECTS TOPICALITY