The Japanese haiku is defined as a poem of three lines with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the ...

Naz May 21, 2015

The conclusion is: English poets have little respect for foreign traditions, even those from which some of their own poetry derives."

Why? Because English poets tend to ignore the Japanese rules that define a haiku, disregarding syllable count and generally calling any three-line English poem with a "haiku feel" a haiku.

The flaw here is that there is a huge jump from not abiding by strict rules to concluding that this shows disrespect for foreign traditions. It could merely mean that English poets take more creative freedom and use less constructs for their poetry, while still having great respect for foreign traditions. Furthermore, the argument is concluding that English poets have little respect for foreign traditions in general, not just foreign literary traditions. This is much too broad in scope. Thus, answer choice (B) is correct: draws a conclusion that is broader in scope than is warranted by the evidence advanced.

The argument does not have Ad Hominem attack. We are not attacking the person making the argument as opposed to the argument itself.

Answer choice (A) is incorrect because the argument is not confusing objective fact with subjective feeling. It is drawing a conclusion that English poets have little respect for foreign traditions (something that could be proven as a fact, if it were true, i.e. it is not necessarily subjective feeling) from an objective fact: that English poets generally disregard the syllable count rule of the Japanese haiku. So answer choice (A) is not correct.

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Samantha-Alexis May 29, 2019

I understand why answer (B) is right, but why is answer (E) wrong?

Ravi May 29, 2019

@Samantha-Alexis,

Great question. Let's take a look at (E).

(E) says, "fails to acknowledge that ignoring something implies a
negative judgment about that thing"

This is a tricky answer choice, as we know from the stimulus that the
argument doesn't acknowledge a very important assumption (ignoring a
poem's/haiku's rules implies that the poets who are doing this don't
have respect for the culture that the rules originated from). (E) does
not capture this assumption, as it suggests that in ignoring the
rules, the poets are making negative judgments about the rules.
However, the argument is saying that it's the culture, not the rules
themselves, that the poets don't have respect for, so (E) is
descriptively inaccurate in telling us the flaw of the argument.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

UMAR-JAMIL September 27, 2020

Can someone explain why D is incorrect. After further reading I see why B is correct but I initially thought this argument commits the flaw of oversimplified cause (where multiple reasons are responsible for a given event but only one is selected as being the only reason). The author mistakenly assumes that failing to abide by the rules of haiku poetry, one is disrespectful to a foreign tradition, however that could be only one of many reasons why English poets fail to abide by the rules. A second possibility is that English poets may just try to be more creative with haiku poetry.

Victoria October 2, 2020

Hi @UMAR-JAMIL,

Happy to help!

Answer choice (D) suggests that the author's flaw is that the fail to recognize that the case of English poets ignoring the conventions of haiku is not unique.

In the stimulus, the author does suggest that the case it cites is not unique i.e. they make a broad generalization about English poets based on their treatment of the haiku.

However, this is not the flaw. The author is not overlooking other possible reasons why English poets ignore the rules; they draw too broad a conclusion about English poets based solely on the fact that they don't follow the rules. Maybe English poets disrespect the haiku, but that does not mean that they disrespect foreign traditions more generally.

The flaw of oversimplified cause would be more likely if the argument were written as follows:

"English poets generally ignore the rules for haiku. This demonstrates that English poets don't respect the haiku."

Here, the flaw is that the author only presents us with one possible explanation for why English poets don't follow the rules without providing any additional evidence to support this.

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

AneeshU July 28, 2022

Hi, could someone please explain this part of Melody's answer above?

"...English poets have little respect for foreign traditions (something that could be proven as a fact, if it were true, i.e. it is not necessarily subjective feeling)..."

I'm not quite convinced that 'English poets not having respect for foreign traditions' is an objective fact. In fact, isn't the fact that I can dispute this enough to make it subjective? It's possible that, given the same facts, person A might feel that the fact is true and person B might feel that the fact is false, right?

Emil-Kunkin August 7, 2022

Hi Aneeshu,

I don't think that statement is saying that it is an objective fact. Rather, it is saying this is a statement that could theoretically be proven to be true if one could systematically examine every English poet and their attitudes.

That is, she is not saying this is a fact, but she is saying that this is a statement that could be proven true or false.