Perceptual Dominance

Lets talk about Cross ex. More cross examinations are more suicidal than homicaidal. 1. The mistaking assumption of what it is and 2. Poor execution. Today we learn how to set up a personal in cx. CX is an art form. We need to do their things. Worst case scenario, you make a damming concession and you look perceptually weak. There are a lot of biases that affects decisions. Debate is a commutative activity. The judge will unconsciously vote for the smarter person. General Goals for CX 1. Clarification. If we dont get the implications to the arguments. And the info getting from CX is a lot better than the info in other args. Judge Clarification. The judge might be lost, so clarify your arguments so you are on the same page. CX is speech time up for grabs. Open-ended arguments allow you further explain arguments to explain ideas. 2. Make weighing arguments, but dont make impacts to what outweighs. One hard and fast rule of CX is that the opponent isnt going to say what you want them to say in CX like Yeah, I dont have a link to this argument. Focus on little concessions, instead of the larger one. Ask hypotheticals that arent specific to the impacts of an argument. If you ask in the abstract then the impact wont be as smooth. 3. Build your arguments. The first thing you want to do is to redirect the debate to where you want to go with it. The persuasive and dominant debaters will generate a lot of things off of it. If you can find your opponents weakest argument and ask questions on that then he will look pretty bad, which is good for you.

The arguments that you want to go for in the 2AR and 2NR should be initiated in CX. By the time you give your speech, the judge would be more willing to go for you. 4. Decision calculus. Its a way to weigh the entire round rather than just individual arguments. A lot of time debaters will win random impacts in the round without weighing. You only have yourself to blame when the judges vote on a random argument. Set up the priorities, and dont wait to the end, because you wont have time to make arguments in the round. 5. Establish a persona. One common mistake that debaters make is that they think that the only arguments that matter are the ones that are on the flow, rather than perceptual. Debaters think that logos, or logic, represents 100% of the debate, but there are two other branches of arguments: emotional and ethical, which arent dependent on logic. When you give a speech you arent being compared to the other person, but in CX this does happen. Make sure that you come off as the smarter better debater.

General CX Techniques 1. Ask very specific questions. The more specific then the harder it is for them to make an answer in their favor. 2. Asking why about a thing a lot makes you look a lot better, but dont take it too far because it gets annoying. An open-ended question is something that the answer can be very long. Here you are asking the debater a question that you dont know the answer to. For example: What sort of impacts link back to the standard? or what is your value. A close-ended question have a restriction on what you can answer. Does this link to your standard? Cross ex is all about controlling how the case is going, and open ended questions allows them to talk about their case a lot. Close-ended questions make this very hard. People will also try to confuse you with close ended question. Against confusing postions, have them answer hypotheticals, and is this impact relevant under the standard or is the holocaust bad under this framework. Another thing to do is to figure out what you want to ask before you go. Do this on the flow during their reading of the AC and use stuff like a question mark or box the stuff that confuses you. A lot of debaters make the mistake of not knowing what they want ask about in CX.

No when to say when and when to stop. Sometimes people will not cooperate with you, so against this you have to just stop, or ask the question in a different way. Then you probably can make an argument in the next speech as to how they are being evasive. Gestures Always stand in CX. Physical gestures dont look good when you are sitting down. Dont make yourself look smaller, that makes you look insignificant. This is especially true if you are a girl, so try to take up some space. Dont get to close to the other person or too far away. A good common position is to have your hands on your hips.