Hi everyone. I’m struggling a bit with the “math strategy” when solving this problem. I understand that “but” is a contrast, and thus, the blank is opposite to the idea after “but”.
However, I thought “on the contrary” was another contrast. Since two contrasts make a support, the blank is the same as the idea to the right of “on the contrary”– no changes.
What is the “on the contrary” referring to? What is the “but“ referring to?
They are both contrasting with the conclusions of the early studies. In math strategy terms, they are not working as a double contrast that cancel each other out. Instead, they are redundant negations that operate as a single contrast.
More specifically, the “but” is contrasting the first clause (“Early…communications”), while “on the contrary” is reinforcing that the recent study’s findings are contrary to the early studies’ findings.
We can see more clearly what is happening here if we alter the sentence to specify what the “contrary” is in reference to:
…but one recent study indicates that, contrary to these previous beliefs, mass communications seldom produce….
Even though we retained the “but” and the “contrary”, we can now easily understand that the two words are not presented to cancel each other out. The same concept is happening in the original sentence, but the “previous beliefs” portion is implied instead of explicit.
