How to discuss and debate

Aristotle, the Ancient Greek philosopher, was an expert on structuring arguments to win debates.

In the 4th century BC, Aristotle wrote up his ideas in a collection of essays called Rhetoric.

His work discusses how to use language to persuade and influence others.

Key learning points

• How to express your point of view carefully
• How to listen to your opposition respectfully
• How to defeat the opposition and win the debate by being clear on your topic and creating a successful counter argument

When presenting an argument or having a discussion or debate, the way you speak and listen is very important.

Arguing, discussing and debating – what’s the difference?

• An argument is your point of view. The root ‘arg’ means ‘to shine’, so you are shining a light on your opinions.
• A discussion involves the sharing of arguments with others. In Latin the word discussion meant 'to shake apart', so you are untangling different opinions.
• The word debate used to mean to 'contend or fight for'. A debate involves using skill to defeat the arguments of the opposition.

Aristotle’s advice for calm debating:

1. When presenting your own thoughts, stick to the facts and control emotion.
2. When listening to the thoughts of others, listen respectfully and do not dismiss difference as wrong.
3. When sharing your values, avoid alienating other people.

Aristotle’s invention stage is a clever way to prepare your argument where you come up with all the ideas and arguments you can about your topic. Here’s how it works:

1. Be clear on the topic for debate.
   Write a statement to sum up the issue to be debated, for example, ‘School uniform should be banned’.
2. Choose your side.
   Always choose the side you feel most strongly about as it will make your argument more powerful in the debate.
3. Lay out the arguments on both sides.
   Write out the arguments for both sides of the debate. A good way to do this is using a table.

Here’s an example table written in response to the statement, ‘School uniform should be banned’.

Top tips

• Think about other perspectives, for example, teachers, parents, employers to show varied opinions.
• Research the topic to find facts to support each point.

Think of a debate as being a bridge separating you and someone else on the opposite side. The idea of a debate is to get the person on the other side to come over to your side of the bridge.

Finding common ground is essential - your opposition needs to feel that you understand them and agree with some of their principles. This means you can ‘meet in the middle’ and then use your other skills to convince them to join you back over on your side of the bridge.

Showing disagreement is difficult as it can be insulting if done badly. A good way to show disagreement is:

Concede + conjunction + fact

1. Concede one of their points.

then

2. Use a conjunction to introduce a counter argument.

then

3. Provide a fact to back up your counter argument.

For example, you might say:

Pre-empting means ‘to take action to prevent something happening’ and in debate is all about covering the opposition’s points (and undermining them) before they get the opportunity to make them.

By making a table and thinking about both sides of the argument properly, you will already have an idea of the opposition's arguments, that you can pre-empt.

How to structure your pre-emptions

Structure your points in a way that shows you have thought about their point of view already, that you understand it, but you can help them see an alternative way. Be polite and constructive when talking about their arguments.

• Don’t say:
  I know you’re going to say something about numbers and you can stop right there because I’ve already thought about it.

• Do say:
  I understand that you believed that the numbers are important in this argument, however I would like to suggest that…