Q18

[khaleesiwantstodolaw]

I eliminated C, D, and E right off the bat for this question. However, I picked B as the correct answer. Can someone please help me figure out why B is wrong and A correct?

[tommywallach]

Hey Khaleesi,

So, there is good news about these one-word questions. Usually, they revolve purely around the correct definitions of the words, as opposed to any kind of super-trickiness.

The question asks us which word is relevant to the author's concern about authenticity.

The word ostensible literally means "stating or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so". So, by definition, this word has to do with whether something is true (i.e. authentic).

As for the word integrity, let's look at that sentence:

"Blassingame has taken pains to show that editors of several of the more famous antebellum slave narratives were "noted for their integrity" and thus were unlikely to distort the facts given them by slave narrators."

In this case, the word integrity does not express concern over authenticity; in fact, if anything, it would support the idea that authenticity wasn't an issue (because the editor wasn't distorting the facts).

Hope that helps!

-t

[josh.randall52]

With these questions, do we have to pick the word choice simply because of what the word means? Or do we have to consider how it was used in that line reference?

[tommywallach]

Both, but there are very few questions of this type (if any) that revolve around two legit definitions of a word, only one of which was used in the passage, if that makes sense.

-t

[LolaC289]

Hey Khaleesi,

So, there is good news about these one-word questions. Usually, they revolve purely around the correct definitions of the words, as opposed to any kind of super-trickiness.

The question asks us which word is relevant to the author's concern about authenticity.

The word ostensible literally means "stating or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so". So, by definition, this word has to do with whether something is true (i.e. authentic).

As for the word integrity, let's look at that sentence:

"Blassingame has taken pains to show that editors of several of the more famous antebellum slave narratives were "noted for their integrity" and thus were unlikely to distort the facts given them by slave narrators."

In this case, the word integrity does not express concern over authenticity; in fact, if anything, it would support the idea that authenticity wasn't an issue (because the editor wasn't distorting the facts).

Hope that helps!

-t

But line 21-23 says "it's not moral integrity that is at issue but ...... the linguistic, structural, and tonal integrity of the narratives they produced." So obviously integrity is in the author's concern as well. What makes (A) better?