Three discourses of American debate (with a glimpse toward a fourth)

ABSTRACT Many have attempted to tell the story of debate education in America in a variety of ways. These accounts do more than provide the story, they create the reasons and the nature of debate. In this paper, I consider debate as a discourse that is productive of particular results in both students and understanding of debate by the way we frame and discuss debate education. To do this I rely on Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses in his twenty-third seminar. Through this analysis I find three traditions of teaching debate in America and a suggestion of what a fourth, revolutionary debate pedagogy might look like, one that would meet the results of what most debate teachers and coaches claim they want.