Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
When people who are talking don't share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need patience, a certain flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while deemphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experience. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and skill and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUIT metaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.
Based on the passage, which of the following reasons BEST explains why metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill?
Solution
The passage emphasises the importance of metaphors in communication among individuals who might not share the same language, writing that "Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience." Based on this, let us analyse each option provided.
Option A is incorrect. The passage states only that metaphors are crucial for creating rapport and for communicating the nature of 'unshared experience', not merely for 'lived experience' that causes a gap in communication. An experience that is not a 'lived experience', such as an abstract thought or a fragment of an individual's imagination, can still be communicated through metaphors.
Option B is incorrect. The passage does not suggest that science can communicate complex ideas in 'simple ways' necessarily. Although the aspect of 'relatability' is somewhat implied.
Option C is incorrect; the fact that metaphors play a crucial role in communication does not follow from their capacity to build empathy and social understanding, but rather from their translational purpose of "creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience."
Option D is incorrect; the alignment of one's cultural knowledge or expertise with others as an argument about the importance of metaphors is limited in scope, based on the information provided in the passage.
Option E best follows from the arguments presented in the passage, as it captures the nuances of differences in lived experiences among individuals and how metaphors communicate those experiences to (and from) everyone.
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