The author's attitude toward Pocock is best revealed by which of the following pairs of words?

Gabriela_Martinez June 13, 2019

I second the request below.

Victoria June 15, 2019

Hi @Steph and @Gabriela_Martinez,

Let's start by going through the passage.

The first paragraph introduces J.G.A. Pocock's investigations and claims that they have all revolved around the assumption that we can only understand a work of political thought if we understand the linguistic constraints that the author was subject to, i.e. the vocabulary of the time. Pocock's assumption is based on the argument that these vocabularies are essential because they prescribed the subject matter as well as the author's conceptualization of it. Therefore, the modern commentator must identify the linguistic constraints imposed on the author. The author of the passage says that, prior to the work of Pocock, historians "naively" thought that if an analytic philosopher closely read a political text, even with no knowledge of the vocabularies of the time, this was sufficient to establish its meaning.

The second paragraph tells us that Pocock focused his investigations largely on the language of "civic humanism." This led Pocock to argue that 18th century English political thought should be interpreted as a conflict between different versions of the "virtue" that is central to this "civic humanism." On the one hand, there was public spirit and self-sufficiency; on the other hand, there was commerce and economic progress.

In the third paragraph, the author claims that, through this work, Pocock has disassociated himself from other historians. The author also tells us that, while Pocock's ideas are "fertile" when applied to England, they become more controversial when applied to the U.S. However, the author argues, this is alright as it is simply important to recognize that texts are mixtures of vocabularies and that we should applaud Pocock, despite his flaws, as he has done the most to make us aware of the importance of these linguistic constraints.

The question stem asks us to pick the pair of words which best reveals the author's attitude toward Pocock.

Firstly, what is the author's attitude toward Pocock? We can infer that the author holds Pocock in high regard as they believe that linguistic constraints - first identified by Pocock - are important and are willing to overlook Pocock's overexaggerations and analytic flaws.

Now let's go through the answer choices.

A is correct in identifying the word "fruitful" as indicating the author's attitude toward Pocock. The author believes that Pocock's underlying assumption is "fruitful." However, the word "cant" is used in the passage to refer to the way another historian described 18th century English political language. The author does include this example to illustrate that they believe Pocock is superior to this historian, however, they do not use the word "cant" to do so. Rather, the word is simply used to illustrate the point of view of the other historian.

B is incorrect because neither of the words reveals the author's attitudes. "Sharp" is used to describe the contrast between Pocock's ideas and those of 1950s historians. This simply indicates that Pocock's views were quite different; it does not provide us with any information on how the author feels about these views. The word "elitist" is used to refer to Jefferson's interpretation of the language used by the English Tories, thereby not even addressing Pocock.

C is incorrect because the words "naively" and "controversial" are used to refer to other historians' opinions and their views on Pocock's work. In this way, the author is describing how others view Pocock. While the word "naively" is condescending, the word "controversial" does not provide us with any insight into which side of the controversy the author falls on, making C another incorrect answer.

E is incorrect as both of these words are largely irrelevant in the passage. "Simply" is used to refer to Jefferson's supposed echoing of the Tory opposition in England and could be taken out of the passage without changing much. "Importance" is used when the author makes their broader conclusion about how we should celebrate Pocock for his work, but it is used to refer to the importance of different vocabularies and, in doing so, simply tells us that these differences are largely irrelevant.

D is the correct answer because "applaud" is used to indicate how the author believes we should think of Pocock, i.e. that we should applaud him. "Fertile" is used to describe the success of Pocock's ideas when applied to England. We know from our high-level evaluation of the passage that the author supports Pocock's assumptions despite their overexaggerations and thinks he should be celebrated. Therefore, D is the correct answer choice.

Hope this is helpful! Please let us know if you have any further questions.