SectionI Verbal Ability Number of Questions : 40; Maximum Marks for the Sec mn = 120 & Directions for Questions 1 to 2. Each of the four passages given below Is followed by six questions. Choose the best answer to each ‘question. PASSAGE - I Number of Questions : 6 (Q.1-Q.6) | DON'T KNOW ANYONE WHO LIKES CANNED LAUGHTER. In fact, when | surveyed the people who came into my office one day - several students, two telephone repairmen, a number of university professors, and the janitor - the reaction’ was invariably critical. Television, with its incessant system of laugh tracks and technically augmented mirth, received the most heat. The people | questioned hated canned laughter. They called it stupid, phony, and obvious. Although my sample was small, | would bet that it closely reflects the negative feelings of most of the people toward laugh tracks. ‘Why, then, is canned laughter so popular with television executives? They have won their exalted positions and splendid salaries by knowing how to give the public what it wants. Yet they religiously employ the laugh tracks that their audiences find distasteful. And they do so over the objections of many of their most talented artists. It Is not uncommon for acclaimed directors, writers, or actors to demand the elimination of canned responses from the television projects they undertake. These demands are only sometimes successful, and when they are, it Is not without a battle. What could it be about canned laughter that is so attractive to television executives? Why would these shrewd, and tested businessmen champion a practice that their potential watchers find disagreeable and their most creative talents find personally insulting? The answer is at once simple and intriguing: They know what the research says. Experiments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented and to rate the material as funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes. In the light of these data, the actions of television executives make perfect sense. The introduction of laugh tracks into their comic programming will increase the humorous and appreciative responses of an audience, even- and especially- when the material is of poor quality. Is it any surprise, then, that television, glutted as it is with artless situation-comedy attempts, should’ be saturated with canned laughter? Those executives know precisely what they are doing. But with the mystery of the widespread use of laugh tracks solved, we are left with a more perplexing question: Why does canned laughter work on us the way it does? It is no longer the television executives who appear peculiar; they are acting logically and in their own interests. Instead, it is the behavior of the audience, of you and me, which seems strange. Why should we laugh more at comedy material afloat in a sea of mechanically fabricated merriment? And why should we think that comic flotsam funnier? The executives aren't really fooling us. Anyone can recognize dubbed laughter. It is so blatant, so clearly counterfeit, that there could be no confusing it with the real thing. We know full well that the hilarity we hear is irrelevant to the humorous quality of the joke it follows, that itis created not spontaneously by a genuine audience, but artificially by a technician at a control board. Yet, transparent forgery that it, it works on us! To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct, is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining the answer. Page 2 of 20The tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it normally works quite well. As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting an accord with social evidence than contrary to it. Usually, when a lot of people are doing something it is the right thing to do. This feature of the principle of social proof is simultaneously its major strength and its major weakness. Like the other weapons of influence, it provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path, {In the case of canned laughter, the problem comes when we begin responding to'social proof in such a mindless and reflexive fashion that we can be fooled by partial or fake evidence. Our folly is not that we use other’ laughter to help decide what is humorous and when mirth Is appropriate; that is in keeping with the well-founded principle of social proof. The folly Is that we do so in response to patently fraudulent laughter. We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter that we, too, can be made to respond tothe sound and not to the substance ofthe real thing, The television executives are exploiting our preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react automatically on the basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our tapes. (1: nthe atl, the author presents evidence indicating that canned laughter is more effective for poor jokes. This could be because: 1A] Poorjokes need tobe propped up with canned laughter 1B] Poorjokes deserve o be accompanied by phony fase laughter Pr People will tend not to laugh at poorjokes, but canned laughter may stimulate real laughter [D] People will be fooled into thinking that the poor joke is really funny Q2. Television executives continue to employ laugh tracks in programmes because: 1A] They know what the consumer really wants [B] They want to make the programme more entertaining search suggests that canned laughter kindles laughter among the audience [P} Experiments have shown that poorjokes need tobe supplemented wih laugh racks Q3. According to the author, the most perplexing question is: 1A] What is it about canned laughter that is so attractive to television executives? [B] Why would television executives champion a practice that their potential audience finds disagreeable? [C] Why does the common man find canned laughter so unpalatable? 1y does canned laughter work on the audience in the way that it does? (44. A good tile to this passage would be: ne theory of social proof {B] Television executives ae the smartest {[C] Where all think alike, no one thinks very much [D] The principle of compiiznce 5, The principle of social proof is based on {Al the principle of imitation sing others as yardsicks of appropriate behavior IC] the premise that all humans are fools 1D} the propensity of humans to use shortcuts Q6. The tendency of consumers to respond to canned laughter with real laughter is: \ breast ‘example ofthe principle of socal proof {B] an indication of our inability to separate thereal rom the false {C] an example of our involuntary response toa smal [] anexampleoftheabilty of television executives ability tooutsmartthe public Page 3 of 20PASSAGE - II Number of Questions : 6 (Q.7-Q.12) | had said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all that language merely reflects existing Socal conditions, and that we cannot influence Its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions, So far asthe general tone or spirit of a language goes this may be true, but itis not true in deal. Sily words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of @ minority. Two recent examples were: explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were kiled by thejeers of fewouralists. There is «long list of fyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people interest themselves in the job; and it should be possible to laugh the not un-formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Greek and Latin in the average sentence, t9) drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps itis best to start by saying what it does not imply. To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the sett up of a'standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary itis especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. it has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’ . On the other hand its not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words ‘that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do to words is to surrender to them. When you think of 2 concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you Probably hunt about til you find the exact words that seem to fit. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning, Probably its better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose - not simply accept- the phrases that will best cover the meaning and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. The last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and cone need rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. | think the following rules will cover most cases: (i) Neveruse a metaphor, simile or other figuré of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (il) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (ii) Ifitis possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent, (vi) Break any of these rules rather than say anything outright barbarous. These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has Brown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but ‘one could not write the kind of stuff that | quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article 7, From the passage it appears that the author emphasizes upon: [A] use of appropriate grammar and syntax [Bjusing an appropriate prose style {C]doing away with outmoded words Piserapping words that are verbose Page 4 of 20