#14 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[tonyking]

Hello,
I understand "No value" is a strong claim, and passage B only said it is "notorious". is that the sole reason that B is worse than E? Thank you.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Tony,

I'm assuming by your "no value" reference, you meant to ask whether that is the sole reason answer choice E is better than answer choice C. So I'll address your question as being about answers C and E (if that's wrong, let me know!).

You're correct that answer choice C is too strong for the author of passage B to agree with, but it's also not something that the author of passage A would be likely to agree with. Notice at the end of Passage A, the author isn't entirely rejecting the marking of boundaries between the genres of fiction. Rather, the author wants us to involve the reader (rather than just the characteristics of the book) in this process. Look, for example, at the last sentence of passage A: "what unites works belonging to the same genre is the way those works are read, rather than, say, a set of formal elements found within the works." So our author does believe there are some boundaries between genres (otherwise how could we label certain works as "belonging to the same genre?"). But the author wants us to look at how readers read those works of fiction, rather than just at the formal elements within the works, in order to make our determinations about genre boundaries. So the author of passage A wouldn't be likely to agree that there's "no value" in attempting to demarcate genre boundaries.

I hope this helps!

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
I struggled with this question as I had answer contenders of D and E. I eliminated D because I didn't see support for "Genre stories of literally value being proportional to which they DEFY conventions of genre..." in Passage B. I thought I saw support for this answer in Passage A 2nd paragraph but I had a hard time understanding the context. Did I eliminate D for the right reasons? Or can someone explain what makes answer choice D?

What makes answer choice E a better answer than D?
Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

I don't see why either author would think that defying genre conventions would make a work a better work in its genre - if anything, the opposite seems likely. To work in a genre, a work sort of needs to pay some respect to genre conventions, even if that's just making it easier for the reader himself to read the work as a work of a certain genre.

Both passages are arguing that what makes a work a work of a certain genre is not actually what the work itself does or has, but how a reader approaches it. So the elements answer choice (E) talks about do not define genres, which is why that's correct.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Thanks for clarifying that Robert!

[TheySeeMeRolin]

These explanations have explained why C and D are wrong, but not why E is correct. E seems to be a very generalized, almost random statement. It came off as a really weak answer to me.

C still seems to be the least weak answer to me. They quoted the author of passage A’s “works belonging to the same genre” as evidence that the author must believe in demarcating genres. However, this sentence argues that the way the reader reads the text defines the genre, rather than “a set of formal elements found within the works.” This sounds to me like it wouldn’t be a huge leap to say the author doesn’t believe in the value of demarcating the ‘boundaries of a genre’ (ie. a formal set of elements), in favor of the way the works are read.

[Adam Tyson]

I have to disagree with you about answer C, TheySeeMeRolin - I think it is a HUGE leap to say author A would say there is NO scholarly value in defining genres. "No scholarly value" would mean that there is nothing to be gained - zero - in the attempt. They just don't take a position anywhere near that strong! They think that genre is more about how you read a work, rather than how it is written, but they still might see some value in demarking genres.

And author B is actually okay with demarking the boundaries of genres, but thinks it should be done based on reading protocol, and acknowledges that there will be borderline cases and cases that are more central to a genre. Author B would therefore likely disagree with answer C, so it cannot be a point of agreement between the authors.

But here is the evidence that A would agree with answer E:

Last line: "what unites works belonging to the same genre is the way those works are read, rather than, say, a set of formal elements found within the works."

In other words, if two works with the same formal elements can be read in different ways, they can be in different genres.

And here's evidence that B would also have to agree:

Middle of the first paragraph: "A more fruitful way to characterize the distinction between genres is to view it as a distinction between reading protocols...We are free to read any text by any reading protocol we wish."

So if you can read anything using any protocol, and reading protocol determines genre, then two very similar works COULD be seen as belonging to different genres.

Thus, both authors would have to agree that two similar works could belong to different genres, so long as they could be read in different ways from each other.

Also, notice how much easier it is to support an answer about what could be true (answer E) than one that is so very, very certain (like answer C).

I hope that helps! Thanks for asking! This thread has so far been primarily about the wrong answers, so it's nice to talk about what makes the right one right!