THE ART OF RHETORIC USING STYLISTIC DEVICES IN WORLD UNIVERSITIES DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIP: A Study of Pragmatics

Abstract

Debating is recognized as a way of doing persuasion in speech that deals with four points of debate pillars, for instance: assertion, reasoning, evidence, and link back. There are two formats on parliamentary debating competitions; Asian and British. The format of worlds is British Parliamentary debate, which consists of eight debaters divided into four teams, two on the pro-position and other two on the opposition, and allows debaters 15 minutes of preparation and doing the case building before engaging in the round (Harvey-Smith, 2011; Johnson, 2009; Lising, 2010). Over past few years, every country’s debater champions have been gathered and involved in a high level of debate atmosphere to compete each other as their country’s representatives to have worlds’ champion title. In conjunction to the glance of forewords, researcher will analyze annual world most prestigious debating championship, WUDC 2016, which took place in Thessaloniki, Greece. The study will use descriptive qualitative method. The source of this research is taken from video streaming on Youtube that shows ESL grand final round between University of Indonesia team A (Indonesia) as Prime Minister (PM) and RWTH Aachen team A (Germany) as leader of opposition (LO). This approach is intended to answer: (1) What stylistic devices appear in World Universities Debating Championship 2016? (2) What kinds of illocutionary act appear and how its perlocutionary impacts the opponent side’s respond that results in rebuttal? This analysis is based on Aristotle (1991) and Searle (1979) which result is expected to reveal the technique of how debaters unconsciously deliver their persuasive speech in front of adjudicator core.