Debating Glossary

Glossary

Below are a list of terms you may hear thrown around during an internals session, on our Facebook page or really anytime during a debating social. By no means are these words essential to know, but can be useful jargon to sound like you know what you're talking about (when really none of us do).

• Australs: The Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships — see here.

• Adj: short for Adjudicator, someone who judges the debate and gives the result.

• Aff/Neg: short for Affirmative/Negative (teams) in a 3v3 debate.

• BP: British Parliamentary style of debating, seen in Semester 2.

• Breaking/broke: To reach a finals round of a tournament. eg. "Omg becky, we totally just broke at Australs"

• Comparative: A word that doesnt really mean that much, but debaters use it all the time to mean the "counterfactual" or "alternative" proposed by the other team.

• Contingent (n): The group of people we send to a tournament (eg. "the UNSW contingent is looking mighty fine today")

• Debsoc: The affectionately shortened name of the UNSW Debating Society.

• Donut: Coming last in a British Parliamentary debate. BP debates have four teams, where the team that comes fourth receives 0 points, 0 resembling a donut.

• Easters: The Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships held around Easter — the de facto Australian national debating tournament, mostly aimed at novices — see here.

• Gov/Opp: The two sides in a BP debate, government and opposition.

• Half, opening/closing: Opening half is the first two teams in a BP debate, closing the latter two.

• Internals: A weekly event hosted by the society, where there is usually a little seminar on debating followed by debates for all who have registered on the night.

• Novice: A word with many definitions. Technically refers to a debater who has not yet attended Australs/Worlds as a debater, or not yet attended Easters twice. More generally speaking it can refer to anyone who is relatively new to debating (not derogatory).

• Motions: Synonym for topics; eg. "The motion of this debate is that we should..."

• Majors: Major tournaments; ie. Easters/Australs/AusBP/AWGMDC/Worlds

• Minis: Smaller tournaments run by societies that usually have less than 100 people in attendance, run frequently throughout the year.

• Topic selection: Where you are presented with three topics in 3v3 debating, and you select your preference & veto topics in order to narrow it down to one topic.

• THBT: "This House Believes That" — often said at the start of a topic in BP debating, eg. "This house believes that McDonalds is better than KFC"

• THW: "This House Would" — often said at the start of a topic in BP debating, when the topic requires you to do something, eg. "This house would abolish the death penalty"

• Service Points: A point system where you achieve points by debating with novices, adjudicating debates or helping our society at our events, in which you need points to be able to receive a subsidy to attend a tournament.

• Subsidy: Either an Arc @ UNSW subsidy or Society Subsidy, whereby Arc or our society pays you to attend a tournament, after you help us out by accruing service points.

• AWGMDC: The Australasian Women & Gender Minorities Debating Championship usually held in September. This tournament is only open to debaters who are non cis male. See here.

• WUDC/Worlds: The Worlds Universities Debating Championship. See here.

• 3v3: A style of debating done in NSW High Schools and Semester 1 of university debating, whereby two teams of 3 members debate (affirmative/negative teams).