Communication

Keeping debate communicative is a great and recurring concern. A study investigated whether debate format may influence debaters ' communicative behavior, by comparing behavior in Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Lincoln-Douglas debate (LD) and in CEDA Team debate. Videotapes of the two first affirmative speeches of each, at the semi-final level at the same tournament, were transcribed and examined for quantity of evidence, pieces of evidence per minute, use of complete citations, and speaking rate.. Results showed tear: (1) the Team debater used 21 pieces of evidence, and the LD debater used 17, suggesting that both used their skills not to design a rhetorical masterpiece but to cram as much evidence as possible into their product; and (2) none of the four debaters qualified their evidence, with 94.3 % of the evidence having no probative value or impact because its credibility could not b