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Short Answer Exercise 5
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Analyzing and Understanding Analogies

As a method of development analogy is used to clarify a less familiar idea or experience by comparing it with one that is more familiar. Here are five paragraphs developed by this method. Study each carefully and then answer the questions that follow.



1One way to view Los Angeles is as a machine. All modern cities are machines, but L. A. is more so than the others. It is a humming, smoking, ever-changing contraption, with mechanics incessantly working at it, trying to make improvements and to get the bugs out.
--Christopher Rand, Los Angeles: The Ultimate City

1. What are the terms of the analogy? (What is being compared to what?)
2. What specifically does the analogy suggest about Los Angeles and the way that it functions? (Hint: What does the word "contraption" suggest?)


2[The writer is describing Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, now Côte d'Ivoir.]

A hot wind blows slowly across the land and moisture hangs heavy in the air. The desert has come at last to an end, the sand giving way first to hard red laterite, then to rocky soil and scrub bushes, and finally now to the dark loamy soil of the rain forest.
Here where forest and sea come together teeters Abidjan, a modern city on the edge of a shelf of antiques, a city where cardboard shacks lie in the shadow of skyscrapers, glass and steel, 50 stories tall. In Abidjan the two worlds are poised side by side, like crippled legs of uneven lengths belonging to a lame man. When he walks there is pain and discomfort. He manages to hobble, but not without a great deal of effort.

1. What are the terms of the analogy? (What is being compared to what?)
2. What specifically does the analogy suggest about Abidjan?


3The Emergency Ward of a city hospital often resembles a medieval fair. The scene is full of pageantry, a state of commotion prevails, and the atmosphere is reminiscent of a marketplace: people throng in with complaints as if they were hawking wares. Exposing painful chests or stomachs, or waving injured parts in the air, they clamor for an audience. Hoping to attract notice, they will bargain spiritedly, each one entering into an explanation of why his illness, like a piece of merchandise, is more deserving of attention than the next.
--Stephen Hoffman, "The Emergency Ward," Under the Ether Dome

1. In comparing a city hospital to a medieval fair, what central point is Hoffman making about big city emergency rooms?


4One can infer from the paragraph above that doctors in city hospitals
A)refuse to treat indigents or patients without medical insurance.
B)are poorly trained and not able to perform effectively.
C)are devoted to their patients' well-being.
D)are overworked and overwhelmed by the large number of patients who need their attention.


5[Note: The French Academy rules on matters of the French language, and in recent years has taken a strong stand against such "Franglish" expressions as "le parti," "le weekend," and "le Big Mac."]

The general European view is that English is an illogical, chaotic language, unsuited for clear thinking, and it is easy to understand this view, for no other European language admits of such shoddy treatment. Yet, on the other hand, none other admits of such poetic exquisiteness, and often the apparent chaos is only the untidiness of a workshop in which a great deal of repair and other work is in progress: the benches are crowded, the corners piled with lumber, but the old workman can lay his hands on whatever spare parts or accessories he needs, or at least on the right tools and materials for improvising them. French is a language of fixed models: it has none of this workshop untidiness and few facilities for improvisation. In French, one chooses the finished phrase nearest to one's purpose, and, if there is nothing that can be "made to do," a long time is spent getting the Works--the Academy--to supply or approve a new model. Each method has its own advantages. The English method tends to ambiguity and obscurity of expression in any but the most careful writing; the French to limitation of thought.
--author unknown

The purpose of the first sentence is
A)to state the main idea.
B)to set up a statement that the writer wishes to challenge.
C)to argue for a particular point of view that most readers would probably disagree with.
D)to provide historical background for the remainder of the paragraph.


6The method of development in this paragraph is analogy. Indicate the terms of the analogy. Then explain what the analogy means.
_____________________________ is compared to _____________________________


7Literally, who is the "old workman" referred to in the paragraph?


8According to the writer, what is the primary disadvantage of English?


9And what is the main advantage of English?


10What is the primary characteristic of French?


11What is the main disadvantage of French?


12[This final passage was written during the breakup of the former Soviet Union and its satellite Eastern Bloc nations. Specifically, the writer is describing the situation in Poland at the beginning of the 1990s.]

"An unskilled team of surgeons is performing a complicated procedure" is how Gazeta's senior political columnist, Ernest Skalski, recently described political developments in Poland after last October's parliamentary elections. "They're not doing great, but somehow they're managing. Suddenly, in the middle of the operation, a new team shows up, insisting that it, too, has the right to try its hand. The patient is lying there cut open, his guts all splayed out, the anesthesia is wearing off, and now the two teams take to pushing and struggling among themselves all around the table. Finally, the new guys wrest control and start in, but they presently acknowledge that actually they'll only be submitting their plan of operation in some two months' time."
--Lawrence Weschler, "A Reporter at Large: Poland," The New Yorker

1. Who, literally, are the two teams of surgeons mentioned in the paragraph?
2. What point does the analogy make about the political situation in Poland at the time the writer observed it?





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