PrepTest 119, Section 4, Question 2
Advertisement: The pride the people at Austin Stables(58 more words not shown)
The advertisement proceeds(1 more words not shown)
- Ademonstrating that Barr(9 more words not shown)
- Busing an analogy(13 more words not shown)
- Cproving that Barr(8 more words not shown)
- Dunderstating the role(11 more words not shown)
- Easserting that Barr(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
I'm buying a car. How proud the company feels isn't the first thing I want to know about it. Does the car work well?
The advertisement tries to get us from pride to a good product by starting with horses. It says Austin Stables' pride explains why the stable produces more winning racehorses than its competitors. Then Barr Motor Company claims to have similar pride and promises similar success with automobiles.
That's a comparison between two businesses: pride produces winners at the stable, so pride should produce winners at the car company. I can follow what the advertisement is doing without accepting that the success will carry over. Raising racehorses and building cars could require quite different things.
What we’re looking for
The question asks how the advertisement proceeds. My prediction is that it argues by analogy: it uses the stable's success to support a claim about the car company because the two share the stated quality of pride.
Working the answers
- A
Where are the repeat customers? The advertisement never discusses whether buyers return to Barr or how its repeat business compares with anyone else's. This would supply a different kind of evidence about the company.
- BCorrect
Austin Stables is the model, and Barr Motor Company is the business being compared with it. Both supposedly have pride in their work. Because that pride is said to explain the stable's superior results, the advertisement predicts superior results for Barr too. That's using an analogy to support Barr's superiority over competing car companies.
- C
The advertisement asserts that Barr has a long tradition of pride; it doesn't offer evidence proving that claim. More importantly, pride is being used as a reason to believe something else: that Barr will produce more winning automobiles. C mistakes a claim used as support for what the advertisement is trying to establish.
- D
The advertisement makes pride responsible for Austin Stables' success. That gives pride a major role. Nothing suggests the advertisement is downplaying that role; if anything, we might question whether it gives pride too much credit.
- E
We aren't comparing the ages of the two traditions. Barr says its pride goes back generations, but doesn't say that its tradition is older than Austin Stables'. The stable serves as a model of success, not as a rival in a contest over who has been proud longer.
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