Nebel T – I sip it.
Mr. Nebel’s neighborhood, OR Nebel Tea
– I sip it.
By Rebar Niemi
Introduction and answering Mr. Nebel’s preempts
There is a distinction between T on the basis of correctness (semantics, etc.) and T on the basis of better debating (pragmatics). We should sever the link between correctness and better debating fundamentally. Better debating is a contextually defined (and non-static) method of evaluating performances in round. Correctness is an appeal to right answers and wrong persons. Correctness is an appeal to logic that is unbound by its history, creators, or usage – logic that grounds itself in so-called “universality.” Though this may come as a shock, there are non-binary conceptions of truth and falsity. Even more shockingly, there are multiple types and expressions of logic. Throughout this article I will refer to the position that semantics control or come before pragmatic concerns as the position of correctness. This article’s thesis is that students have been increasingly using some of Jake Nebel’s recent spate of articles (Should T be a voting issue?, Specifying just governments, and On the priority of resolutional semantics) to justify a certain type of topicality position. Each of these articles centers the notion of the “competent speaker of english” without ever justifying why we should value that or really what the implications of such a designation are. This is a rebuttal to Mr. Nebel’s overarching position on debate, an indict of the ethics of such a position, and a suggestion that students should dispense with the utilization of this evidence for theoretical debates.
There is an attempt to preempt part of my argument here in Mr. Nebel’s article on resolutional semantics. He does not take seriously the notion that meaning can be oppressive and illusory. I don’t either, because that is a mistaken identification of the argument. I take seriously the argument that meaning can be oppressive and is constructed and contexted. The argument is not that meaning is illusory. The argument is that meanings (bare plural) exist and they require mechanisms to negotiate between them. He then even uses the example of “African American Vernacular English” – his argument here is twofold.
The first is that a specific scenario (aka an instance) of the generic objection to semantics does not disprove that different things mean different things. On the one hand this seems to be exactly what it does – you do not have a consistent general rule if there are exceptions to that rule. On the other hand the dismissal of context and specificity is problematic in itself (a point I will reference throughout this article). On top of that, Mr. Nebel seems to admit that excluding “African American Vernacular English” would be oppressive and wrong, but says that his exclusion of it does not count because clearly resolutions are not written in this dialect. I take this as a concession that Mr. Nebel’s conception of debate is a by-whites-for-whites activity. Perhaps he would agree that more resolutions should be written in other dialects. That is not a claim he makes in his articles.
The second objection happens in the footnotes. It is that “there are few words or phrases in resolutions with completely different referents.” The word “just” is either an adverb or an adjective. The word “ought” is typically thought to have at least two definitions, one indicating duty or correctness, and one indicating probability or logical consequence. Now – are these or are these not “completely different referents?” I admit to being a less than competent english speaker, so it is possible that I am mistaken when I note that a word can have multiple meanings. Further, it is possible that even among only somewhat different referents (to be honest, I am unclear what an incomplete difference versus a complete difference is), there is significant difference in terms of debate. Mr. Nebel frames only all or nothing decisions as having import – now, as when he debated, he does not believe in comparative advantages between worlds.
Non-comparative theory debate is bad theory debate
I would argue that the model of T that is proposed is wrong in some sense. Mr. Nebel breaks T down into the so-called “topicality rule” and then a semantic justification of the resolution’s meaning. I do not dispute that the topicality rule must be justified in some way, and is a potentially separate issue. I do, however think that it is almost always a related issue to the meaning of the resolution. His isolation of semantics begs the question of why one semantic interpretation is better than another. At one point, there is an offhanded comment about how sentences don’t mean what it would be best for them to mean. This is likely true, but entirely beside the point – a T debate is never about what would be best, it is about what would be better among a number of interpretations (typically two in a debate round). It is not a claim indexed to an absolute, it is a relative claim. Of course, such relative claims don’t make sense from the perspective of someone who is already committed to universal logic.
To clarify, I am not against topicality. I enjoy a rousing topicality or topical interpretation debate, but I enjoy a topicality debate that actually generates real impact scenarios in terms of what a norm means in a debate round or in relation to a topic. Formal correctness must have an impact to matter (teaching the “proper” norms of grammar as an educational benefit could be a plausible one, although I would say a problematic one).
In the many correctness T shells I have seen over the years, there is often no impact generated in the debate round beyond being right or wrong on a formal level. T is a voter because otherwise you are incorrect about the topic and your position is non-T. This is circular. Worse, it implies a pragmatic impact but does not justify one. Mr. Nebel is well aware of this problem, and he agrees this circularity is insufficient to justify T. Why then does he engender it?
A better T shell does not appeal to correctness, but instead to what Nebel considers the more base concern of pragmatism – for instance, this interp excludes X aff while including Y aff and that is bad for education/loses us important topical ground based on the lit, or this interp forces neg to defend status quo and nothing else, or this interp is itself founded in a racist/ableist/heteronormative etymology. To clarify, I support students running these types of T arguments where properly impacted to pragmatic concerns about debate. For instance, an obsession with correct white english grammar could be impacted to education because we need to know how to write essays that will get us through college. Obviously this is not a particularly persuasive impact, and is likely outweighed by the issues of linguistic hegemony among other things. So my position on T incentivizes running T with better impact stories, in particular impact stories that talk about how they are better for debates rather than how their opponent is merely incorrect. This probably extends to theory as well.
A second claim against correctness based T arguments is that they are antithetical to the very notion of topicality debates: that there could indeed be multiple correct interpretations of a topic, and we need to weigh between the actual effects of those interpretations. I do not know which dictionaries Mr. Nebel prefers, but in the ones I typically reference there are multiple definitions for words. The correct definition for any one situation is often times a completely subjective undertaking that incorporates judgments of sentence context, subject matter, historical and cultural significance, and aesthetic preference. These are pragmatic and comparative concerns. The claim that semantics comes before pragmatics is a claim that debate should not be comparative. Under the conception of lexical priority, debate is not a performative speech activity. Debate is a slightly fleshier essay contest where you are not graded according to your competition, but according to a rubric that exists outside of your control.
No more neighborhood watches in debate
Though I believe Mr. Nebel to be fundamentally wrong on the debate theoretical level, I have a more serious objection. I will make this claim in the strongest terms I possibly can. Correctness is racism. Correctness is “you must be either a boy or a girl or you are wrong.” Correctness is “the ideal functioning body versus all others.” Correctness is one kind of person having access to The Truth and others lacking it. Correctness is “sit down and shut up.” Correctness is “your kind aren’t welcome here.”
Any debater who runs so called “Nebel T” and any judge who votes for this argument must acknowledge that they are situationally and strategically embracing a perspective from which there is an implicit or explicit metric of what it means to be a competent english speaker. What is the logical conclusion of speaking competent english? The notion that “mongrel” forms of english are inferior, diminished, unpersuasive, and should not have access to the ballot. Quite possibly the notion that those who can’t live up to these standards should not be involved in debate. After all, their dialects are not what resolutions are written in – it is people like Mr. Nebel whose dialect prescribes correct resolutional meaning.
You may say that “competent speakers” was a rhetorical flourish, I am nitpicking, and that Mr. Nebel should certainly be allowed to take back his offensive speech. I will say this: the competent english speaker, aka the correct type of thinking and being, is the fundamental goal and top-level value that Mr. Nebel appeals to throughout his articles. If this is “not what he meant” then he did not mean that debaters should pay any attention to nor follow his logic. Either he defends correctness or he concedes the irrelevance and negative impacts to fairness and education of his position.
Nebel may appeal to pragmatics as a way out of the appeal to correctness, but in fact, his pragmatic claims are a pragmatic justification for correctness. This concedes pragmatics first anyway, and that so to speak, is a flow I can win on. It is my opinion that there is no in or out of round benefit that correctness could provide sufficient to outweigh the toxicity of its implementation and rhetorical methodology.
Conclusion: Your generic is someone else’s oppressor
In one sense we should be thankful that Mr. Nebel has let the cat out of the bag: T arguments from the perspective of correctness have always been the vehicle for racism and exclusion of all sorts. I cannot imagine a construction of competent english or correct grammar that is not racialized, gendered, and further influenced by its origins.
To me it is impossible to endorse the claim to correctness without conceding that one is invested in a justification of domination (of course they won’t call it that) stretching across axes of class, race, gender, flesh, and cultural origin. The one place where Mr. Nebel speaks to this question, he dismisses it by claiming that specific examples are insufficient to deal with the bare plurality of his arguments. Mr. Nebel is kind to differentiate for us that there is “generic” or “competent” english, and that is its own dialect, where as these other dialects or ways of speaking are simply different uncomparable dialects. This truly tests my credulity. Are higher pitched so-called “feminine” voices less competent speakers of english? Are those who have read words in books but never heard them pronounced due to lack of high-grade prep school educations less competent? What about those who speak in accents, vernaculars, or dialects of english? For that matter, what about overlaps and points of connection between those ways of speaking and “generic english?” We can easily assume what Mr. Nebel thinks about speech impediments, or those who are unfamiliar with formal usage of grammar. Perhaps even run on sentences disqualify one from being a competent english speaker? Or an overabundance of rhetorical questions? Does anyone have memorized the full and formal set of rules for speaking competent or proper english? Does anyone actually trust that all those rules aren’t implicitly ideological? It is hard to believe that Mr. Nebel is blind to the values he endorses. Perhaps we should accurately hold him to them.
I am proud to be an incompetent english speaker. No way will I speak correct english for Mr. Nebel, and no way will I designate any student the worse debater for failing to live up to a standard that is entirely dependent on a single way of interpreting how to speak, think, and be in the world.
Mr. Nebel has read too much of his neighbors in analytic philosophy and not enough James, either C.L.R. or William. The only impact to semantic difference is a pragmatic one or it is merely a claim that “the rules are the rules.” Truth has no value if it does not “work” in the world or is actively opposed to what does work. His claim to lexical priority is false generally and specifically in debate. He does not understand how a T debate should work. More disturbingly, he is wholly disconnected from the concrete history of violence that correctness in language embraces and grows out of. In Mr. Nebel’s neighborhood, we had (and have to) kill the indian to save the person. In Mr. Nebel’s neighborhood of debate, all the folks are the same, equally well off, and nobody says y’all.
11 Comments
I think this article relies on a careless reading of Nebel’s articles, which is quite problematic given the seriousness of the accusations leveled towards him (that he is racist, ableist, etc.). You say that “Mr. Nebel seems to admit that excluding “African American Vernacular English” would be oppressive and wrong, but says that his exclusion of it does not count because clearly resolutions are not written in this dialect”.
The relevant section in “Priority of Resolutional Semantics” states “suppose that the affirmative interprets some word or phrase in the resolution in African American Vernacular English, and the negative objects to this interpretation on semantic grounds because it’s “incorrect” English. There is good reason to reject this objection as false and oppressive, because of its assumption that some spoken dialects are objectively wrong, sloppy, or inferior to others.” Elsewhere he writes “Second, some affirmatives read phrases in the resolution in figurative, unconventional ways, and affirm the resolution so interpreted. That may, in my view, be topical: one merely needs evidence that the expressions in the resolution actually have the metaphorical meaning at hand. Such interpretations must be argued and answered on a case-by-case basis.” So the idea that Nebel advocates for using any particular dialect or definition seems to be a pretty blatant strawman.
The claim that Nebel would disapprove of debaters with speech impediments or who use non-standard pronunciations or grammar is even more bizarre. Nebel is making claims about what advocacies debaters should defend, not how they should present arguments.
scrafty, you’re wrong. You quote the relevant section but seem not to have actually interpreted what Mr. Nebel is saying. He is saying that resolutions are written in “ordinary/generic English,” and that is a unique dialect. So “African American Vernacular English” is to him a legitimate dialect, but NOT the dialect of debate. This is very explicit if you read his tortured language close enough. He’s not saying speakers of other dialects are incorrect according to “ordinary/generic English,” he’s saying they don’t count as language to “ordinary/generic English.”
He only gets out of saying they are incorrect because he claims the incomparability of different dialects. The logical conclusion of this is that other dialects simply don’t interact with “debate English” – aka, they could never be relevant to judges UNLESS they are defended as metaphors and this defense happens in “ordinary/generic English.”
Also, you just reassert his claims and don’t actually respond to the specificity of mine.
On your last point I’ll say this. First I have no idea how talking about what arguments they should defend is not talking about how to present arguments. Arguments do not have separable content/form, especially in debate. Second, Mr. Nebel is saying that the advocacies debaters should defend are bracketed by correct interpretation of the topic. Correct interpretation is binary – either you’re wrong or you are right. So expression (i.e., how arguments are presented) is actually the top level concern here, and it is what determines which advocacies debaters may run.
Perhaps we should simply dispense with Mr. Nebel’s position on the grounds that his writing is extremely difficult to interpret. You seem to have no way of stating it in your own words, and yet you also seem to think my interpretation is incorrect. Either you are in need of a closer reading, or Mr. Nebel is wrong and the same words can indeed mean different things (in this case, because of difference in audience/interpretation).
I didn’t present it in my own words because I thought the meaning of the passage was clear, but anyway, Jake is saying here that he thinks that if someone ran T against an aff that interpreted the resolution in AAVE, then that T shell would indeed be racist and it should be rejected for that reason. So he explicitly rejects the notion that AAVE is not “debate English”.
You seem to assume that Nebel’s generic interpretation of the LW topic is “white”, but you give no evidence for this. Is there some dialect of English that would interpret “Just governments ought to X” as “Some governments ought to X”? If there is such a dialect AND Jake knew about it when he wrote the articles in question, then you would have ground to claim that he is privileging white definitions. But you haven’t given us any reason to believe either claim.
As for the distinction between advocacies/arguments, the distinction is pretty important. Even if Jake (or anyone else) wants debaters to interpret the resolution in a specific dialect, this in no way implies an obligation for debaters to debate in that same dialect. Imagine that a debater ran a T shell arguing that the resolution should be interpreted in Standard American English because it’s the most predictable dialect and because the topic committee intended the resolution to be read in SAE (and we should care about framer’s intent for some reason).
Neither standard implies that debaters should use SAE when making arguments. Even if we assume that SAE is the most predictable dialect for interpreting the resolution, that doesn’t mean that arguments made in (say) AAVE are any less predictable. Plus, in general we don’t care whether arguments are predictable, we only care that advocacies are. As for framer’s intent, even if the topic committee intended debaters to interpret the topic in SAE, they don’t necessarily care about what dialect debaters use to argue about the topic.
One point I’m trying to make is that Mr. Nebel cannot coherently hold that claim (excluding AAVE bad) and still defend the lexical priority of semantics over other concerns. If he believes that he is conceding pragmatics first.
Further, that point makes absolutely no sense when taken in context with “I don’t take this objection very seriously,” the end of the paragraph
“But this kind of scenario is much more specific than the generic objection to the semantic approach. The fact that many dialects are legitimate does not deny that words in each dialect mean things.”
and the footnote, which says
“I’m not sure that this scenario is likely to arise, because although African American Vernacular English has a distinctive phonology and grammatical features, there are few words or phrases that appear in resolutions with completely different referents…”
So what he is saying is AAVE is a different dialect than what debate resolutions are written in. And the only scenario in which AAVE would come up is one in which there happens to be overlap between AAVE and “ordinary English.” That means “ordinary English” controls what is topical in the first place. AAVE can only matter in debate when it debates in the terms of “ordinary English.” That is privileging. Extend this to other divergences from “competent English speakers” and you have my argument. Also… somehow this doesn’t count as a general objection to semantics? Aren’t there a whole host of examples we could create of similar structures? Wouldn’t Mr. Nebel be committed to admitting that those other specific objections count too?
Also the idea that AAVE is somehow too specific to count as important is exactly what I’m calling racist. Only general abstracted universalized logic matters to Mr. Nebel.
Tell me, do you have a full accounting of what “ordinary/generic English” is? Because I have no idea what stable and absolute set of rules and words Mr. Nebel is referring to. Bizarrely, I am somewhat capable of interacting with other language users despite the fact that none of us actually knows the language we speak or what portion of it is other dialects/vernaculars, or for that matter hold each other to strict rules of semantics.
Most importantly, I’m not going to justify via semantics that semantics are racist. Semantics are racist because they let racists have excuses to exclude things. I calls em like I sees em. If there is any point of view worth excluding it is Mr. Nebel’s, NOT the point of views of marginalized and oppressed peoples.
Finally, usage proves.
What is Nebel T run against? Arguments about material oppression that of course can’t apply to a bare plural BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BARE PLURAL OPPRESSION. You may say “Nebel T is supposed to exclude plans not arguments about oppression” but since it can be used to exclude arguments about specificity of experience it is. If only some people experience racism, than clearly racism is not included by a bare plural interpretation of the topic.
Bare plurals only exist for people who have such privileged existences that they aren’t confronted with the specificity of their experience on a daily basis.
TURN UP ONE TIME FOR REBAR TURN DOWN ALL TIMES FOR RACISM MAKE DEBATE A PLACE TO DISMANTLE WHITENESS RATHER THAN BREED IT.
IF YOU ARE NOT CURRENTLY USING ALL RESOURCES AT UR DISPOSAL TO MAKE THIS A REALITY GET TF OUT THE WAY
AMEN
-patrick graham
I agree that it’s dubious to deem one vernacular as “correct” among a plurality used in a debate round. (This is a point that I think Nebel does accept too, but I’ll comment about that later.) Nevertheless, Nebel’s core argument operates even admitting that. No vernacular, as far as I can tell, would endorse an inference from “this egg is purple” (perhaps it’s Easter) to “eggs are purple.” Likewise, one subset of adolescents (perhaps homeless youths or adolescents from a particular country) might have a right to autonomous medical choices, but that wouldn’t entail adolescents in general should have a right to autonomous medical choices, which the aff needs to prove to affirm. Perhaps runaway youth are just an exception to a general rule that adolescents should not have this right. (The same goes for the term “medical choices” too.) There must be some mutually agreed upon language for communication to happen. Pointing out someone isn’t consistent with their own vernacular, or perhaps more to the point, standards for logical inferences can’t be categorically oppressive.
“one subset of adolescents…might have a right to autonomous medical choices, but that wouldn’t entail adolescents in general should have a right to autonomous medical choices, which the aff needs to prove to affirm.”
For intellectual honesty’s sake, you should note that you are assuming a very particular definition of what it means to be topical/affirm.
That’s an aside. Regarding the discussion at hand, I think your last sentence could use some explanation/warranting in light of everything Rebar has said.
even tho standards for logical inferences can’t be categorically oppressive they can still be historically oppressive right? like i think rebars arg is that the metaphysical juggling required to justify categorical judgements often results in aposterori physical violence to populations who have modes of being not sanctioned or easily explainable by dominant infrastructures of knowledge/power
-patrick graham
niemi just made southlake carrol tr win 3 bis rounds