Permutation is the final transformation a researcher/adjudicator can perform. The reshuffling of arguments generally can be very helpful indeed, but judges need to mindful of ‘even if…’-constructions. If the debaters themselves haven’t clearly stated that they are only conceding an argument for the sake of an ‘even if’-scenario, the adjudicators should wonder whether they actually meant to state that, or whether they have just unwittingly pulled a knife. Turning to the four stages of the ideal model, we find more helpful hints for the beginning adjudicator. As said above, the debaters are mostly performing the third argumentation stage, except for the opening speaker, who also performs part of the second opening stage. As we all know from experience, this brings with it several difficulties for debates as a whole: whereas later speakers can screw up their speech and their team’s chances of winning, the opening speaker actually has the power to screw up the entire debate for everyone by providing incoherent, inconsistent or incomplete definitions of the motion. Adjudicators should take this into account. This is especially important when the debate runs smoothly with no definitional issues. A judge might then be inclined to judge an Opening Government team solely on the basis of their arguments, find them lacking in those arguments and thus give them a fourth. But in doing so, he actually discounts half of the job that Opening Government is supposed to do. If Opening Government succeeded in setting up the debate properly so that everyone can provide good, well-developed arguments against the Opening Government case along the lines of the debate one would ideally expect (that is, if Opening Government managed the transition from the opening stage to the argumentation stage successfully), then actually, Opening Government has done reasonably well, even though their case might have been argued effectively against. The summary speakers have in similar ‘double role’. They should ease the judges from the argumentation stage into the concluding stage. They can and should help the adjudicators in reaching their conclusion by tying all the relevant arguments together and pointing them this way or that way. In the pragma-dialectical sense, the summary speaker can thus be seen as a very partisan adjudicator, closing the argumentation stage and gearing up for the concluding stage, which is exactly why there shouldn’t be any new substantive matter in the summary speeches. The more an adjudicator is guided through his
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