June 1991 LSAT Section 4 Question 8

The Baysville Chamber of Commerce recently met to discuss a proposal to beautify the Baysville area's freeways by rel...

DDL on November 25, 2019

Explanation?

Why is the correct answer "C" (the word "our")? It seems to me that the correct answer should be the word "basis". Billboards are an advertising tool; thus it directly relates to the business of the advertising agency. Whereas, the "basis" for the shop owners business is the products or services they are offering. What am I missing?

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SamA on November 25, 2019

Hello @DDL,

Mary Simms and Jack Jordan represent two different interests. Mary is an advertiser, while Jack is a merchant.

Mary claims that billboards are the basis of "our" business. "Our" clearly refers to the outdoor advertisers. However, Jack seems to believe that Mary included him in the "our". In response, he offers the basis of the merchant business, which is an attractive community. This tells me that he understands Mary's use of the word basis.

What he doesn't understand, is that she used "our" to represent only the outdoor advertising company. Mary was not making a claim about the merchant business. Because he misinterpreted "our," he believed that Mary was speaking for him, and responded accordingly.

DDL on December 3, 2019

Ok, Thanks for the response.
However, it seems incoherent for Jack to believe that Mary was speaking for him. They were clearly on opposing sides of the issue. Furthermore, in the debate over the billboards it was more beneficial for Jack to misinterpret the term "basis" in order to strengthen his argument that the billboards will cause his business harm.

BenMingov on December 3, 2019

Hi DDL,

I think if we examine each of the answer choices, it might help for this question.

A) It seems that they would pretty clearly agree on what a "billboard" is.

B) They both use the word "basis" to explain a fundamental need for the groups they are representing. Mary's group (advertising company) needs billboards to earn money. Jack's group (local businesses) need an attractive community.

C) "Our" is used differently. While Mary uses this word to represent the interests of the outdoor advertising company, Jack uses this word to represent the interests of the local businesses. He doesn't seem to get this because he counters her point using "our" without noting that they are discussing the interests of different groups.

D) They are both using the word "ability" in the same context (i.e. ability to earn money)

E) Jack doesn't misinterpret Mary's use of the word "damaged". He correctly understands it and substitutes the word with "hurts" in his response.

Please let us know if this helped. And please feel free to ask any other questions you may have.