#7 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[gweatherall]

Hello! I have a question about #7. I actually changed my original answer of D to A, because I felt there was more textual evidence for A. (Lines 33-50 seem to support answer A.) How do we know to reject A in favor of D?

Thanks!

[AthenaDalton]

Hi gweatherall,

Are you referring to lines 54-57 ("Wheatley's poetry contributed little to the development of a distinctive African American literary language")?

I think this advocates an idea that's distinct from what's discussed in answer choice (A) -- that poetry should "affect the manner in which slaves and freed Black people speak English."

The author seems to think that influential poetry would have influenced the African American literary language, which is a distinct idea from the language actually spoken by her African-American peers in day-to-day life. If anything, her essay seems to argue that the spoken English of Wheatley's African-American peers should have had a greater influence on her poems, and not the other way around.

Answer choice (D) hits on this exact distinction -- that Wheatley's poetry should have done more to combine English literary tradition with African oral traditions.

I hope this makes sense. Good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[gweatherall]

Thanks, Athena! Actually, I got hung up on the line in the paragraph below that (34-37): "...led Wheatley to develop a notion of poetry as a closed system, derived from imitation of earlier written works. No place existed for the rough-and-ready Americanized English she heard in the streets, for the English spoken by Black people, or for Africanisms."...

The rest of that paragraph seemed to suggest (to me at least) that the author would have liked it if Wheatley utilized more existing Black American speech patterns in her poetry.

The above being said, I can see why lines 26-29 speak to D being correct- but I would have a hard time rejecting A.

OMG WAIT- I just realized what's wrong. I read A to mean her poetry "affected the manner in which slaves and freed Black people spoke English" in that her poetry TOOK ON that manner- not that it influenced the speech in some way. Gahhhhh. Hang on- that seems kind of unfair. Should I assume that the LSAT will always the word "affected" in the second manner, and not the first?

Thanks again!
Grace

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Grace,

Good catch!

Yes, the word "affect" will be used to mean "influence" on the LSAT -- so if a poem is "affected" by a local dialect, you can read this to mean the poem was "influenced" by the local dialect.

Good luck!

Athena

[gweatherall]

Phew- thanks, Athena! Yikes- well, I guess it's a good thing I made this mistake on the homework, then!

[cgleeson]

Hi,
I was holding onto B and D....favoring D. However, I needed to figure out how to get rid of B. D is mentioned in line 36-39, so that alone sold me but I kept thinking about B. Is there a way to avoid wasting time deliberating this?
Thank you in advance

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi cgleeson,

Generally, you should eliminate losers, and compare answer choices that are left. In this case, if you felt confident about answer choice (D) after reading all five answer choices, particularly if you have textual support for the answer choice, you should go with that, and not worry about how to eliminate answer choice (B).

However, it's valuable in your review of a test to look at why answer choices are incorrect. For answer choice (B) the author doesn't expect Wheatley to have defined African American artistic expression. She was herself a poet, but she wasn't an analyst or scholar. Answer choice (B) describes how someone else would analyze Wheatley's work, not how she herself would create the poetry.

Hope that helps!