Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT134 S4 P2 Q10 Explanation

Mexican American Proverb Use

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsInferenceSociety

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Passage

Mexican Americans share with speakers of Spanish throughout the world a rich and varied repertoire of proverbs as well as a vital tradition of proverb use. The term “proverb” refers to a self-contained saying that can be understood independent of a specific verbal context and that has as its main purpose the to the common proverb tradition of Europe and have exact equivalents in English-language proverbial speech.

Each use of a proverb is an individual act whose meaning varies depending on the individual speaker and the particular social context in which the use occurs. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that proverb use is also shaped by the larger community with which the individual interacts. The fact that proverbs dealing with older children especially, parents need to appeal to traditional wisdom to bolster their authority.

Another dimension of proverb use within Mexican American communities is that proverbs often serve to foster a consciousness of ethnicity, that is, of membership in a particular ethnic group possessing features that distinguish it from other groups within a multiethnic environment. Even those Mexican American proverbs that do not have an explicitly enhancing Mexican American young people’s familiarity with their heritage, thereby strengthening their ties to Mexican tradition.

What this question is testing

Inference

Your task

Find what must be true based on what the passage or stimulus states.

Common trap

Answers that are plausible or likely but not actually guaranteed by the text.

Winning move

Keep only the choice the statements fully support — eliminate anything that requires an extra assumption.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
10.

The passage most strongly suggests which one of the following about the

Answer choices

  1. Too Strong: seldom intended1% picked this

    Proverb use is seldom intended to reinforce

    Can we support the idea that "most uses of proverbs are not intended to reinforce community norms"? No, we have no support for that. We might even have counter support since we were told that proverb use is shaped by the larger community.

  2. Correct81% picked this

    The way in which a proverb is used depends, at least in part, on the community in

    Why this is right

    We would prioritize researching support for an answer like this, since it's so weakly worded. It's just saying that proverb use depends at least in part on something. We can support this with that region of text we found at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph: Since we know that the meaning of each use of a proverb depends in part on the social context in which the use occurs (and that proverb use is shaped by the larger community with which the individual interacts), we know that proverb use depends at least in part on the community in which it's used.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  3. Too Strong: the most frequent6% picked this

    The most frequent use of proverbs in Mexican American communities is for the purpose of

    The closest text support we have here is that "Adolescents of Mexican descent report the frequent use of proverbs by their parents as a teaching tool, ranging from the inculcation of table manners to the regulation of peer-group relationships". We would have no way, from that sentence, of knowing whether table manners was a more frequent use of proverb use than regulating peer-group relationships, or vice versa. And we'd have no way of saying either of those uses or proverbs is more common than any other use of proverbs".

  4. Out of Scope: teach languages2% picked this

    Proverbs are often used to help teach young

    We know that proverbs are often used to teach young people, but we've only heard that it's used to teach things like table manners or responsible behavior with friends. We can't find support that it's used to teach a language.

  5. Too Strong: usually multi-purpose10% picked this

    When a proverb is used as an educational tool, it is usually intended to serve

    As with (C), our closest support is this sentence in the 2nd paragraph: "Adolescents of Mexican descent report the frequent use of proverbs by their parents as a teaching tool, ranging from the inculcation of table manners to the regulation of peer-group relationships". That sentence indicates more than one purpose of using proverbs as a teaching tool, but it never says or implies that proverbs are intended to serve more than one purpose at the same time. It sounds more like "sometimes a proverb is used as an education tool to instill good table manners / other times it's used as a tool to teach children to hang out with good people".

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