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.
Which of the following statements BEST conveys the premise of the passage?
Solution
The most appropriate way to answer the question on the perceived premise of the passage would be to analyse the ideas presented in each of the options one by one and then select the one that best captures the discussion.
Option A writes, "Large-scale communication systems, built on the CONDUIT metaphor, fuel misunderstanding and fracture social order." This cannot be the premise of the passage, as it is merely a limited account of the examples of the CONDUIT metaphor discussed in the last paragraph and of the discussions surrounding the CONDUIT metaphor.
Option B, assuming that the overview refers to the perspective a person has of effective communication, is not implied in the passage. The passage only addresses the communicative aspect, not whether the information conveyed through metaphors is subjective or objective. Another way to understand the meaning of 'overview' in this context is to say that it focuses primarily on conveying summaries rather than entire ideas, a point not hinted at in the passage.
Option C is a sound notion, based on the discussion in the passage. The very idea that we need metaphors to communicate unshared experiences, and that CONDUIT metaphors can turn from pathetic to evil "when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale", because in CONDUIT metaphors, one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, which not everyone shares. All these ideas support the conclusion that, for a genuine understanding of human interactions, we should acknowledge the limits of our own worldview.
Option D somewhat exaggerates the differences between people with shared and unshared language by claiming that it is rare for humans to achieve effortless understanding ('rare convenience'), which is not implied in the passage. All that the passage talks about is that "with enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and skill and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding."
Option E, although a good statement, fails to capture why metaphors are discussed in the passage (especially why CONDUIT metaphors are discussed in the passage) and is incorrect.
The correct answer is option D.
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