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 statements BEST explains the limitations of “CONDUIT metaphors” in communication?
Solution
The primary limitation of CONDUIT metaphors pointed out by the author lies in the fact that through the CONDUIT metaphor, "when it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated, that is, 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." Thus, when it truly matters to communicate (meaning), in situations where people do not speak the same language, the CONDUIT metaphor is of no use.
Option A does not capture the limitations of unshared language discussed above. Whether the idea to be communicated is abstract or concrete, the CONDUIT metaphors fail to communicate it in scenarios in which the languages differ. Option B is incorrect because the very idea of communication is not necessarily to 'co-create understanding' but always to communicate one's interpretation/ knowledge to others.
Option C is incorrect; the limitation of the CONDUIT metaphor has little to do with its tendency to simplify ideas and avoid complexity, but rather with its limited capacity to account for the diverse interpretations people hold and the languages they speak.
Option D is correct: using a CONDUIT metaphor, "one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition," and therefore the underlying assumption behind a CONDUIT metaphor is that meaning spans all possible interpretations, i.e., that words (or language expressions in general) have inherent 'fixed' meanings.
Option E is incorrect as neither in the CONDUIT metaphor, nor in any other metaphor in general (that the author would discuss positively) is it the case that the efforts needed to interpret the message are taken into consideration/ ignored. What would be true is that, in CONDUIT metaphors, the meaning is never conveyed to someone who does not share the language, not that, even if the meaning is conveyed, the interpretive effort is ignored. Option D remains the correct answer.
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