LR Question 20 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Critic: Political utility determines the popularity of…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: The society as a body metaphor promotes authoritarian repression. It is more authoritarian than the metaphor of society as a family.
REASONING: Political usefulness determines how popular metaphors are. The metaphor of society as a body is very popular in authoritarian societies. It implies a connection between society working well and having a government as its head.
ANALYSIS: It’s important to note that the conclusion is comparing the society as a body metaphor to other metaphors. That’s all.
It isn’t talking about how common metaphors or, or what metaphors are used elsewhere, etc.
The best way to weaken it is to show that another metaphor is more popular in authoritarian societies. Answer choice A does this.
___________
- CORRECT. If the society as a family metaphor is equally popular then it must be equally useful to authoritarian governments. This contradicts the conclusion that the society as a body metaphor is the most useful metaphor for authoritarians.
- This strengthens the argument slightly by showing that political metaphors are real and common. But it doesn’t tell us anything specific to authoritarian societies.
- We would expect the metaphor to occasionally be used elsewhere. That’s fine as long as it tends to be more common in authoritarian societies.
- So? We’re mainly concerned with whether the body or the family metaphor is more useful to authoritarian governments.
- This slightly strengthens the argument by showing that the metaphor is not so popular in countries that are not authoritarian.
More Resources for Weaken Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Weaken questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers weaken questions.
I got the correct answer by thinking that an authoritarian government doesn’t really care which metaphor it uses. It could be the body one or the family one. Regardless, it is a controlling government that really doesn’t care how it is viewed. So, that is why A works because it showcases that either would work because it doesn’t really matter or have any effect on “promoting greater acceptance to the repression.” I hope that makes sense.
This rests on a few assumptions that aren’t really supported by the stimulus.
First, we’re not strictly talking about governments not caring which metaphor they use. We’re talking about authoritarian societies, and we have to work with the critic’s premises as given.
The first sentence explicitly tells us that political utility determines the popularity of a metaphor. So the argument actually assumes the opposite of “it doesn’t matter which metaphor is used” — it assumes metaphors matter a great deal, because the politically useful ones become pervasive.
The stimulus doesn’t support the idea that neither metaphor has any effect on promoting acceptance of repression. We know the body metaphor is pervasive, and we know pervasive ones are politically useful. So the critic isn’t saying metaphors are irrelevant. They’re saying the body metaphor promotes greater acceptance of repression than alternatives like the family metaphor. That comparative claim is what’s vulnerable.
That’s why A works. It doesn’t show that metaphors don’t matter or that authoritarian societies are indifferent between them. It undermines the argument’s key inference that because the body metaphor is pervasive, it must be more effective at legitimizing repression than the family metaphor. If the family metaphor is just as pervasive, then the evidence no longer supports that comparative conclusion. The body metaphor may still support repression – but the argument has lost its basis for claiming it does so more than other metaphors.
So the weakness exposed by A isn’t that “either metaphor would work because governments don’t care”, it’s that the evidence doesn’t establish that the body metaphor has any special advantage over the family metaphor.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have further comments or disagree.