Question

Five jumbled up sentences, related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out and key in the number of the sentence as your answer:

• A. Talk was the most common way for enslaved men and women to subvert the rules of their bondage, to gain more agency than they were supposed to have.
• B. Even in conditions of extreme violence and unfreedom, their words remained ubiquitous, ephemeral, irrepressible, and potentially transgressive.
• C. Slaves came from societies in which oaths, orations, and invocations carried great potency, both between people and as a connection to the all-powerful spirit world.
• D. Freedom of speech and the power to silence may have been preeminent markers of white liberty in Colonies, but at the same time, slavery depended on dialogue: slaves could never be completely muted.
• E. Slave-owners obsessed over slave talk, though they could never control it, yet feared its power to bind and inspire—for, as everyone knew, oaths, whispers, and secret conversations bred conspiracy and revolt.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

To identify the outlier sentence, we must find the one that disrupts the logical flow of a paragraph concerning communication among enslaved people as a form of resistance and the slave owners' perception of this communication.

Sentence 1 explains that enslaved individuals used discourse to assert autonomy despite their enslavement.

Sentence 2 characterizes their communication as persistent and potentially seditious, even under oppressive circumstances.

Sentence 4 highlights a paradox: while colonists prized freedom of expression, enslaved persons were never entirely muted.

Sentence 5 notes the anxiety of slave owners concerning the capacity of enslaved people's communication to foment plots and uprisings.

Sentence 3, however, redirects attention to the cultural backgrounds of the enslaved, where spoken words held spiritual significance and power.

Consequently, Sentence 3 deviates from the central theme of communication as resistance among enslaved individuals and the colonial power dynamics of speech, making it the outlier.