Meaning or Purpose of Words and Phrases in Context
What you must be able to do
Two related tasks: define a word or phrase as the passage uses it, and explain why the author included a particular phrase or detail. Context overrides dictionary priority, and function often matters more than definition.
Concepts to master
- Substitution test. Insert your paraphrase into the original sentence. If the sentence still reads naturally and makes the same point, you have it.
- Signal words. But, however, yet, indeed, admittedly, even so mark the author's stance. A phrase following admittedly is a concession the author will qualify, not endorse.
- Quotation marks and scare quotes. Words in quotes may signal distance, contested usage, or a term borrowed from a school of thought.
- Purpose questions. "In order to" answers describe a rhetorical job - to concede a point, to introduce a counterexample, to define a term, to signal a shift in scope - not a restatement of content.
Traps
Choosing the most familiar meaning of a word, taking a technical term's meaning from another field, and answering purpose questions with a summary of the sentence's content instead of its function.
Rule of thumb and worked example
Read one sentence before and one after the target phrase; the contrast is usually what fixes the meaning.
Example: "The results are suggestive." The everyday sense (provocative, intriguing) is the trap. Here the following sentence says the findings "point toward, but do not establish," a link - so suggestive means hinting at a conclusion without proving it. An answer saying "the findings are provocative" misses the epistemic role entirely.