A colleague of mine posted the following after listening to my most recent podcast:

While there is a difference between debate and dialogue in many cultures, in other cultures it is more blurred.

Three examples will suffice.

The Dutch are extremely confrontive in discussions and wait for once to counter what you are saying. This is the way they communicate. 

When i worked for a huge very well known Dutch company, i dealt with this for years. 

The French also argue endlessly when discussing an issue, often digressing into theoretical discussions about which they get very heated.

Jewish tradition places a very high value on dialogue via debate.. The best example being complementing the person you are discussing something with as a ” bar plugta raoi”, or a formidable worthy disagreer.

I find the purist definition between debate and discussion too sterile and overly patrician.

My response:

How do you define it then? I think of dialogue as exploration of what the other means, which is mist robust when it is mutual, but needn’t be mutual depending on the situation. I think of debate as oppositional thinking (I am countering the other), which can also be useful and can also lead to moments of dialogue (as I have defined it). 

Debate in this model is more of a competition and dialogue more orientated towards learning from the other, and possibly from each other. 

Most people confuse the two and think that if they have a heated debate, they have had dialogue…and most people know how to debate, but dialogue requires a different set of behaviors. 

In a debate one is most likely to leave the conversation dug in to what they already thought, and less likely to learn from the other. If both parties spend their energy sharpening their opinions and trying to convince the other, instead of listening to explore, they will probably part ways with perhaps a winner and loser, and often a stalemate. If all you know is what you already knew, then it is an energetic waste of time, at best leading to a decision based on partial information. Who is the best debater, or holds the most power in the relationship, may be more important than the content. 

A culture of debate then, which is common in the US as well, is a limit on learning, more than an asset. 

All three of your examples sound like debate to me.

Perhaps you mean something else by these terms?