Heckling: Tool or Torment?

Heckling is a tradition in Parli, but it is more than a cheer or a boo.... it is a TOOL!

When someone says "Hear Hear" or "Well Spoken" this is a clue to the speaker to really drive that point home... and a clue to the other team to try and refute that point... and a clue to the judge that a good point was made.

When someone says, "For shame" or "Poppycock" this is a clue to the speaker that a) their information isn't quite right, or b) someone disagrees with them so they need to try another approach to persuade their audience (remember you're trying to persuade those who DISAGREE with you), or c) you might have made a good point and they don't want the judge to notice it, or d) they're trying to point this out to their team so they will refute it. When this happens, you may either a) try a new approach for your argument, b) ignore them and go on to the next point, or c) make a joke out of it for instance, "You know that reminds me Poppycock is my favorite kind of popcorn- I'll have to eat some after this round."

Remember heckling is a cheer for or against YOUR ARGUMENT, not for or against you!

I've been very pleased this weekend to see many teams respond well to heckling by either adapting to the audience with a joke, OR really taking this opportunity to drive home a point and build it even stronger. This is the true mark of audience adaptation--- relating immediately to the audience's reaction and feeding off of it.

We saw an excellent demonstration of this is the Sr. Final round of January with Anna and Courtnee facing Claire and Katie-- all four debaters really worked off the heckling- using it to build arguments and adapt to the audience. As a result, it was one of the best debates we've seen! Let's look to these four as terrific examples and role models for graciously using heckling as the TOOL it was intended to be. :)