Q13 - Writer: In the diplomat's or writer's world

[aileenann]

This is an assumption question, so we'll need to think particularly about how the writer moves from the premises to the conclusion, which in particular requires identifying the conclusion explicitly.

Effectively the author of this argument concludes that diplomatic/legal language is stilted because it's so important to avoid misunderstandings in these domains. So even without looking at the answers, I think there's got to be an assumption that connected stilted language with clarity and complete lack of ambiguity. I'll still keep my eyes peeled for other assumptions though - it's not possible to anticipate every possible version of a correct answer, after all.

(A) looks good - it's similar to what I had anticipated above, though a little more toned day, basically saying that stilted language/non-literary language is clearer than literary language. Let's keep it but check out the others.
(B) is out of scope - we don't care about importance per se - nothing the author writes suggests that works of literary merit are not important.
(C) looks alright - but do we really need this? This almost seems circular in assuming what is effectively the conclusion. I might have kept this if I hadn't already seen (A) - as it is, let's get rid of it.
(D) is out of scope - we don't care what is of interest to anyone in this question.
(E) is overly general and out of scope - cautiousness might be linked to non-literary quality writing, but this in turn requires an assumption in addition to the one in the answer choice - so it's out.

Our answer is (A). Make sure to look back at this one if it gave you trouble. It's important to understand why (C) is not the answer.

[nflamel69]

My reason for some of these answers are sort of different from yours, but can you take a look and tell me if my reasonings are good enough?

the assumption needs to link something of literary merit and the degree of understanding.
A. seems good
B. wrong because it says the importance and documents, we need language and understanding
C. wrong because it mentions the comparison between these professionals rather than their language.
D. wrong because the issues doesn't link the gap
E. this is too broad, and completely irrelevant.

[austindyoung]

I thought that (A) was simply the contrapositive of the assumption that we needed here.

P: Prevents misinterpretation
C: ~Literary merit

We need a conditional statement to connect these two. In the argument we effectively have:

A
---
B

We need: A--->B OR ~B--->~A --This is what the argument is assuming

If we insert either of these into the argument: We get, "If A then B. I have A, therefore I have B."

Or: "If prevents misinterpration then no literary merit"
Contrapositively: "If literary merit, then misinterpration"

I know I took some liberties with the language, but it gets at the core and mathces (A).

[ohthatpatrick]

I would agree with all three posters so far, and it's interesting to see how three different people can get to the correct answer with slightly different modes of thinking.

Moreover, the last two responses highlighted a difference between working from Wrong to Right (i.e. getting to the correct answer by locating the broken language in the other answers) and working from Right to Wrong (i.e. knowing what you want/need out of the answer before you look at the choices and then finding an answer that gives you that).

Many questions force you to work mostly by elimination, but some Nec Assump lend themselves well to predicting an answer ahead of time (whereas almost all Suff Assump questions lend themselves to predicting a correct answer).

[Dtodaizzle]

Is this answer choice A an example of both a sufficient and necessary assumption?

[ohthatpatrick]

Let's test (A) to see if it's sufficient: with (A), can we prove this statement?

"Legal and diplomatic language is stilted and utterly without literary merit"

In order to prove that claim we'll need to define
'Legal and diplomatic language'
and 'stilted and utterly without literary merit'.

'Legal and diplomatic language' is defined as "by design prevents misinterpretation".

A sufficient assumption would say
"If language is designed to prevent misinterpretation, then it is stilted and utterly without literary merit."
contrapositive would say (ignoring the "stilted" part, for clarity)
"If language does have literary merit, then it is not designed to prevent misinterpretation."

(A) is on the road to capturing something like that, but it doesn't give you the language-lock, 100% guarantee that you need for a Sufficient Assumption.