Which one of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?

hales September 12, 2019

I also struggled on this one, I went back & forth between a & c.

shunhe January 10, 2020

Hi @Gabriela-Martinez and @hales,

Thanks for the question, this passage is a tough one for sure! This question is a main idea question, so let’s get a bird’s eye overview of the passage first and try to piece together what it’s trying to tell us. The first paragraph talks about how using old words for new things inevitably will remind us of the old meanings. Let’s take “Uber” as an example. The people who made Uber named it that because of the meanings that the word “Uber” is associated with—it can mean excellent, or outstanding (coming from the German word über, like the übermensch in Nietzsche). Thus, you associate the company with excellence. The first paragraph then introduces deconstruction/poststructuralism at the end.

The second paragraph begins to go into the words that deconstructionists use. For example, they use “signifier” and “signified” instead of “word” and “thing,” and the second paragraph analyzes the meanings those words bring with them. The third paragraph does the same analysis, but on the word “deconstruction” itself. It traces the word “deconstruction” to building trades, and argues that the use of this word “deconstruction” to refer to what it is that poststructuralists do has certain overtones because of the roots of the word “deconstruction.” Deconstructing is more machine-like, for example. The passage mentions other words that deconstructionists could have used to refer to their activities, such as “criticism,” and analyzes the implications of choosing the word deconstruction over those other words. In other words, the passage seems to be interested in investigating the terminology of deconstructionists and gleaning insights about deconstructionists themselves based on the words they choose to use. This is what (A) tells us, and so (A) is the correct answer.

(B) is incorrect because the main idea of the passage is definitely not about how the terms signifier and signified anticipated the appearance of deconstruction. First off, those words only appeared in the second paragraph as an example. Second off, the deconstruction movement is what coined the terms signifier and signified, not the other way around.

(C) is incorrect because the passage doesn’t tell us that deconstructionists themselves are concerned about innovations in language and the relations between old and new meanings of terms. Rather, the author is using the relations between old and new meanings of terms to analyze deconstruction.

(D) is wrong because we aren’t told that deconstructionists maintain that critics must actively dismantle works, even if that dismantling works is something the author claims that deconstructionists themselves do. Thus, this can’t be the main point of the passage.

(E) is wrong because the passage doesn’t discuss progress in the field of literary theory, and so this can’t be the main idea of the passage either. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions if you have them.