 Thank you. Anywhere I did. You most certainly did not. Now let's get one thing quite clear. I must definitely have told you. No you didn't. Yes I did. No you didn't. Yes I did. No you didn't. Yes I did. No you did. Yes I did. No you did. No you didn't. No you didn't. It isn't an argument. Yes it is. No it isn't. Just contradiction. No it isn't. It is. It is not. No you just contradicted me. No I never. You did. No no no. You did just then. Lonsons. Oh this is futile. Well came here for a good argument. No you didn't. You came for an argument. An argument isn't just contradiction. Well can be. No it can't. An argument is a connected theory of statements intended to establish a proposition. No it isn't. Yes it is. It isn't just contradiction. Look if I argue with you I must take up a contrary position. Yeah but I didn't just say no it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't. No it isn't. No it isn't. No it isn't. No it isn't. Argument Clinic is a sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. The sketch has been frequently used as an example of how not to argue because as the main character notes it contains little more than ad hominid attacks and contradiction. In debates learning how to respond to your opponent's arguments with more than just contradiction and logical fallacies is key to competitive success. In this video we will look at the language of refutation strategies that are effective when refuting both advantages and disadvantages alike. So today we will start by looking at a few key defensive methods of refutation before finishing with a couple of ways that you can use your answers to win debates. But we cannot control those outcomes with this sort of debate. So let me read you the very first thing I wrote down in prep. I can finally answer the question we get. The ladies and gentlemen best destroys individual autonomy forever. Let's start by looking at some common defensive strategies that work when attacking advantages or disadvantages. First, it is worth mentioning that all of these techniques should be used in the first speech after the arguments they oppose are made. This stems from the principle of refutation practiced in most forms of debate. If your opponent makes an argument and you do not respond to it in the next speech, judges will consider that argument dropped, meaning that you have conceded the point. Using the following strategies will help you ensure that you do not allow contentious points to go conceded. The first language of refutation strategy you can use is known as the non-unique argument. If you may have already guessed, the non-unique argument is one of the easiest ways to respond to the uniqueness points of your opponent. Here you argue that the affirmative or negative debater incorrectly explained the uniqueness of their advantage or disadvantage. For example, imagine responding to an advantage where your opponent has argued that violent crime in the United States is significantly high and has been getting worse over the last several years. You may argue that in response to their uniqueness argument about crime, I would argue that this is non-unique. In reality, statistics published by the FBI and the Brennan Center for Justice show that violent crime is currently at a 40-year low. Proving that a disadvantage or advantage is non-unique interrupts the causal direction of an advantage and can effectively neutralize it. A second way to respond to the uniqueness and link together is by using the uniqueness overwhelms the link argument. This strategy, which is slightly more complicated than the non-unique argument, is accomplished by arguing that the scenario described in the uniqueness is so strong that the passage of the plan won't trigger the impact. If a negative claims that the United States economy is doing exceptionally well on the status quo but your plan would damage the economy leading to a recession, you could respond that the uniqueness overwhelms the link because the economy is so strong that plan could not do enough damage to change its direction. If you win the uniqueness overwhelms the link, you can prevent your opponent from claiming access to the impact of their advantage or disadvantage. To address the link directly, you can also use a no-link argument. In this method of refutation, you can assert that your opponent has incorrectly assessed the link of their advantage or disadvantage. For example, if a negative team runs a disadvantage that claims your plan will cause an important new law that currently has vice-partisan support to fail, you can simply construct a series of responses indicating that the claim is untrue. If their link argument is that your plan angers Republicans and makes them pull out of all of their legislation, you might respond with no link. Republicans are unconcerned with our plan. Similarly to links, you can also refute the internal link summon advantage or disadvantage using a no internal link argument. Maybe it's the same. However, here you would need to respond directly to one of the internal link arguments. Keep in mind that sometimes your opponents may have a plethora of internal link arguments. Be specific about which one you are responding to. Taking out even one link or internal link can break the causal argument chain and can prevent an opponent from accessing their impacts. At the impact level, you can also claim that there is no impact to your opponent's advantage or disadvantage. For example, consider a scenario where the affirmative has argued that the plan is the only hope to avert a fast approaching global thermonuclear war. You could argue that many things prevent nuclear war from ever actually happening, specifically mutually assured destruction. If the impact is not likely to ever occur, then you can argue that there is no impact. That is, if the harm the plan claims to avert won't happen, there is not really a need to enact the plan. Finally, you can argue that the impact is inevitable. In this instance, you would argue that the impact on an advantage or disadvantage would happen regardless if the plan passes or not. Consider a global warming advantage where the affirmative asserts that their plan would slow the progression of climate change. You could argue that we are past the brink on global warming and planet changing climate impacts would happen even if climate emissions were immediately reduced to zero. And thus, the impact would happen regardless of the plan's passage. This neutralizes the net benefits of plan. You can also make this argument against the impacts of a disadvantage, which would take out the net detriments claimed by that argument. Now that we've taken a look at the most common defensive messages of refuting an opponent's advantages and disadvantages, let's look at some of the ways you can generate some offense while in refutation mode. Well, defensive arguments are a useful way to neutralize your opponent's offense. They rarely result in a win while negating and you can't win a debate when on the affirmative without some offense. For this reason, looking for ways to generate a little extra offense can be a great way to get a strategic edge. Let's look at a couple of ways you might accomplish this. First, the link or internal link turn. Turns can be used to convert advantages into disadvantages when argued by the negative or to turn disadvantages into additional advantages when argued by the affirmative. When on the affirmative, you would accomplish this by arguing that your case can do something to solve either the link or internal link to their disadvantage. For example, if the negative ran a disadvantage that claimed that your plan would prevent Congress from passing an education spending bill, you can make an argument that your case actually increases the likelihood that Congress would pass an education spending bill. Say for example, if you made the argument that Republicans really like your plan, you could intuit that your plan increases the likelihood of other bipartisan bills passing. When the negative turns the link or internal link of an advantage, they are seeking to convince the judges that the affirmative plan actually exacerbates the problem the affirmative was trying to solve for. Say for example, the affirmative argued in their advantage that increasing the minimum wage would lead to better child nutrition based on the logic that more income would allow parents to buy more expensive and healthier foods. You can make an internal link turn that passing the wage increase would in turn lead farmers to panic about said wage increases and to over correct by dramatically increasing the costs of foods. This would result in worse nutrition as the cost increases would make healthy foods even more unattainable than they were prior to the plan. When you turn on an advantage can be a very damaging to the affirmative team as they simultaneously lose access to their impacts and have a net detriment of their plan articulated. The final way you might generate offense while refuting is to run an impact turn. An impact turn is used to argue that the negative consequences of passing or not passing plan are actually positive. For example, if the negative team says passing a plan to tax CO2 emissions would collapse the fossil fuel industry, you might argue that collapsing the fossil fuel industry is good because it makes room for more sustainable renewable energy solutions. Be careful when running impact turns. While in the mindset of winning the game it can be easy to lose track of the moral high ground. I once watched the debate round where the negative team impact turned an advantage about saving the lives of HIV patients. They argued that the plan would cause overpopulation so for the sake of the planet it was better to let millions of people die. The affirmative ended up winning that round not on net benefits but by arguing that the negative team should lose for advocating for genocide. The debate is a game but it's important to think about the power that our words have. Today we look to the language of refutation. We covered the best ways to defensively and offensively respond to argument. Well, Monty Python's argument clinic may still be a funny way to explore argumentation but it's not like you can make an opponent's argument go away by crushing them with a giant foot. This video series is written and produced by me, Ryan Guy, with the help of a wide variety of scholarly research and open educational resources. For more information on the references and materials you use, see the description page on YouTube. This video is published under a Creative Commons license. Please feel free to share, use, and remix its content.