Q8

[mesch04]

I'm struggling to see why C) is the correct answer and B) is wrong. Might anyone be able to clarify?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting, mesch04!

To answer this question, first we should clarify what the passage's claims about Spanish poetry actually are!

The passage is primarily about the myriad differences between Spanish and Latin American poetry.

P1 suggests that Latin American poetry is more open to outside influences, other languages, and has less "linguistic unity."
P2 suggests that Latin American poetry is more "critical and irreverent" toward language, using language in more innovative and challenging ways than Spanish poetry.
P3 suggests that Latin American poetry has a much more "enthusiastic response to the modern world", in contrast to the "cultural conservatism" of Spanish poetry.

For this question, we could weaken any of these three primary claims about Spanish poetry (as it compares to Latin American poetry). (D) attacks the comparison raised in P2, that Latin American poetry is more "critical and irreverent" toward language than Spanish poetry is. The author supports this claim by providing an example of two literary movements that "used language in innovative and challenging ways": these were embraced by the Latin American poets, while the Spanish poets did not.

The implication here is that these examples of modernism and the avant-garde accurately reflect the general attitudes of the Latin American and Spanish poets, respectively. But what if there were some OTHER literary movement that also "used language in innovative and challenging ways", and the Spanish poets embraced THAT movement?

If that were true, then it would be a lot more difficult to conclude that the Latin American poets were more "critical and irreverent" toward language than Spanish poets were - we'd have some examples of BOTH sides using language in awesome new ways. This would totally weaken the claim in P2!

(B) attempts to attack a different claim - the one from P1. P1 suggests that Spanish poetry has more "linguistic unity" than does Latin American poetry. We learn that Castilian Spanish was transplanted to the Americas "when it was already a relatively standardized idiom." Some literary critics use this fact to argue that Latin American and Spanish poets share the same linguistic unity. The author, though, goes on to argue that despite that initial linguistic unity, that Latin American poetry later on picked up influences from other languages.

(B) introduces the idea that perhaps Castilian Spanish had NOT been standardized when it was transplanted to the Americas. If this were true, presumably both Spanish and Latin American poetry would have been affected by it. It's possible that they might have evolved a bit away from one another as dialects. However, even if that were true, that would not change the reality that Latin American poetry is influenced by a variety of other languages spoken in the Americas. Spanish poetry might then have had a tiny bit more fluctuation within the evolution of the Spanish, but it would still not be open to other languages and influences.

As a structural notice, notice that the author does not use the Castilian Spanish standardization as support directly for his own point about the poetry differences. Instead, it is the misguided literary critics that attempt to rely on that standardization for THEIR claim that this shows similar linguistic unity! If we undermine that evidence, it would undermine the critics' claims, not the authors!

Let's take a brief look at the remaining incorrect answer choices:
(A) We already know that Spanish linguistic constructs have a big influence. Increasing that influence doesn't undermine any of the three claims, and the Latin American poets would still be influenced by other languages, literature, etc, in addition to Spanish.

(D) It doesn't matter what influenced Castilian Spanish, and this answer doesn't tell us when this influence occurred. This does not suggest that current Spanish poetry is still open to outside influences.

(E) So, now we know the Spanish poets rejected modernism from other languages as well as from Latin American poets. Does this change anything? The claim in P2 is that Spanish poets reject "using language in innovative ways", and this would seem to provide further support for that claim, not undermine it.


Please let me know if that helps clear this question up a bit!