Logical reasoning PrepTest 120 · Section 3 · Question 13

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Legal/diplomatic language is designed to prevent misinterpretation, so it is without literary merit.

Answer Anticipation:
There's a lot of information here that isn't core to the argument, and stripping that language out can make it a lot easier to focus on the logic itself. This will make it easier to find the gap in the reasoning as well as avoid trap answers that deal with the extraneous information.

To strip away extraneous information, it's important to focus on the conclusion first. Here, that conclusion is that legal and diplomatic language is stilted and without artistic merit. Why is that? Because it prevents misinterpretation.

All of the information about the impact of misinterpretation in the legal and diplomatic worlds is out of scope of that conclusion since it doesn't provide a reason to believe that the language from those areas lacks literary merit.

So our argument breaks down to this language being designed to prevent misinterpretation and thus lacking artistic merit. That assumes that a language designed to prevent misinterpretation can't have artistic merit—the argument just straight up jumps between two ideas without establishing that they're related. Let's look for any answer connecting those two ideas and see if it's phrased in a way that makes it necessary for the argument.

Answer Explanation:
This answer connects literary value and misinterpretation/being misunderstood, so we should consider it. If language that has literary value isn't more likely to be misunderstood than language without it, then there's no reason to believe that legal/diplomatic language would lack literary merit just because it's designed to avoid misinterpretation. This answer is therefore required for the argument to hold.

Key Takeaway:
Many Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions include extraneous information to distract you from the key logic. If you focus on the conclusion and what supports it, you can avoid focusing on this extraneous information, which will make it easier to both find the right answer and eliminate answers that are out of scope in that they address the information not tied into the conclusion.

Incorrect. Importance is out of scope, as it isn't inherently related to literary merit or misinterpretation.

Incorrect. While legal and diplomatic language is designed to prevent misinterpretation, that doesn't mean that it's successful in that, or that lawyers and diplomats are effective in using it. As such, this answer is out of scope in focusing on those using the language rather than the language itself.

Incorrect. The argument is over language, not the issues being discussed using that language, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. This answer doesn't tie into literary merit at all, so it fails to address the key term in the conclusion.