Not taken seriously? – when debates are staged within the classroom. The classroom debate is considered a democratic tool and, as such, surrounded by high hopes. In parallel, it seems to be a complex task for teachers to arrange classroom debates that meet their inten- tions. This article takes an interest in matches and mismatches between teachers’ intentions and the students’ reactions, with a particular focus on reactions that include irony and similar aspects, an aspect only tangentially treated in previous research. Given this, the aim is to illustrate, analyse and understand a variation of debate realisations. The empirical mate- rial consists of tape recordings from four different arrangements and from three secondary schools. The analytical procedure relied on critical classroom discourse analysis (CCDA). In addition, three dimensions of a debate; the relational, the textual and the intellectual, were used to highlight didactical aspects in particular. The different debate realisa- tions are discussed in relation to sociological aspects and the results give an understanding for the circumstance that classroom debates are not realised isolated from the surrounding world.