The purposeful use of language makes knowing possible. As the Sophists
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Updated on: 08 Sep 2021, 09:39
First, let's look through the paragraph and see where they mention the Sophists:
As the Sophists (and many others subsequently) noted, language necessarily affects the truths that it can say or name. How we write is as important as what we write. From this perspective, rhetoric aims at knowledge, or makes it available. How it is made available will vary according to the apparatus in which it is generated.
It then goes on to talk about one "apparatus" in particular, academic essays, and how the constraints lead to downstream effects in students' writing. A constraint is a limitation or restriction (a stricture if u want to involve GRE vocabulary) and since we are not asked to critique the argument, we can assume the author mentioned the Sophist in order to strengthen his or her argument. Thus, the only reason they would mention it is to support the notion of the limitations of language. How we write constrains the truth that is made available and for students this has specific effects mentioned in the conclusion of the paragraph.
So we were able to find the answer by doing a deep dive into the passage material. But this takes a lot of time and is probably too time consuming to do on the exam. The cool thing though, is that we don't really need to do such a thorough analysis in order to find the right answer and can instead find it through the process of elimination. Let's return to the question:
The author of the passage mentions Sophists primarily in order to
A. illustrate how a certain group’s rhetoric influenced their ability to influence others
There is no mention in the passage about influencing anyone.
B. contrast one group’s ability to ascertain the truth from language to another group’s ability to do the same
They only talk about two groups of people in the paragraph: Sophists and students; and they are not contrasting these two groups (showing how they are different).
C. argue that past intellectuals were more innovative than present thinkers
No mention of this in the paragraph.
D. explain how the Sophists were the first group to understand how language affects truth
This is tricky as it makes sense on the surface, but even if this is true, there is no indication of this in the piece of writing.
E. identify an example of a group that was aware of the limitations of language
It's got to be this!
Originally posted by
r1smith on 08 Sep 2021, 09:08.
Last edited by
r1smith on 08 Sep 2021, 09:39, edited 2 times in total.
25% (02:18) correct
