LSAT 110 – Section 2 – Question 20

LSAT 110 - Section 2 - Question 20

June 2001

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT110 S2 Q20	+LR	Strengthen +Streng Conditional Reasoning +CondR Rule-Application +RuleApp Link Assumption +LinkA	A 0% 162 B 9% 158 C 5% 161 D 86% 167 E 1% 148	142 150 158	+Medium	145.606 +SubsectionMedium

Professor Chan: The literature department’s undergraduate courses should cover only true literary works, and not such frivolous material as advertisements.

Professor Wigmore: Advertisements might or might not be true literary works but they do have a powerfully detrimental effect on society—largely because people cannot discern their real messages. The literature department’s courses give students the critical skills to analyze and understand texts. Therefore, it is the literature department’s responsibility to include the study of advertisements in its undergraduate courses.

Summarize Argument

Professor Wigmore concludes the literature department is responsible for covering advertisements in its undergraduate courses. Why? Because those courses give students skills to understand texts, and society is negatively affected by people’s inability to understand the real messages of advertisements.

Notable Assumptions

Professor Wigmore assumes the department has the ability and obligation to reduce the harm caused to society by advertising. She assumes covering advertisements in literature courses would allow enough people to understand the real messages of advertisements that it would reduce the amount by which advertisements harm society. In addition, she assumes literature courses will be more effective at helping students understand advertisements if they cover advertisements directly.

Advertisements ought to be framed in such a way that their real messages are immediately clear.

This normative judgment doesn’t affect Professor Wigmore’s argument. She does not refer to the way advertisements would ideally be framed.

Any text that is subtly constructed and capable of affecting people’s thought and action ought to be considered a form of literature.

This supports calling advertisements literature—but that’s not Professor Wigmore’s point. She argues advertisements should be covered in literature courses, whether they count as literature or not.

All undergraduate students ought to take at least one course that focuses on the development of critical skills.

This doesn’t support the argument. Undergraduate literature courses help students develop critical skills in understanding texts, whether or not they cover advertisements, according to Professor Wigmore.

The literature department’s courses ought to enable students to analyze and understand any text that could have a harmful effect on society.

This makes concrete a key assumption by Professor Wigmore: that the department has an obligation to reduce the harmful effect on society created by people’s inability to understand advertisements.

Any professor teaching an undergraduate course in the literature department ought to be free to choose the material to be covered in that course.

This doesn’t affect Professor Wigmore’s argument. She concludes that undergraduate literature courses should cover advertisements, not that professors should be forced to cover advertisements even if they don’t want to.

LSAT 110 – Section 2 – Question 20

LSAT 110 - Section 2 - Question 20

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Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 110 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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