EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 18 of 120

Correct — B, (b) 'incendiary speeches'. The phrase printed in italics in this stem is 'speeches that tended to provoke and ignite passions', and the Directions governing items 16 to 20 ask for the option that best describes it. 'Incendiary' has a literal sense and a figurative one, and both are built from the same Latin verb 'incendere', to set fire to: an incendiary device is one designed to start a fire, and an incendiary speech is one designed, or at least apt, to inflame feeling and stir up conflict. The italicised phrase names exactly that effect, and it does so in the same metaphor — 'ignite passions' is a fire expression, and the option is the fire word. That correspondence is not decoration; in this set the phrase very often contains a figure of speech whose root the correct option shares, and noticing it is the quickest route to the answer. The surrounding sentence fixes the criterion too. The organisers 'refused to allow him to speak', which is an action taken against a consequence — they were not worried that the speeches would be untrue, or disrespectful, or beside the point, but that they would set the audience alight. An option describing the quality of the speeches cannot answer a phrase that describes their effect, and only (b) describes an effect.

• (a)irreverent speeches — Names disrespect towards what is normally treated as serious or sacred. Irreverence offends its audience; it does not necessarily inflame them, and it can just as easily amuse. Nothing in the sentence concerns religion, authority or reverence of any kind — the italicised phrase is about provoking and igniting passions, which is a statement about the heat generated rather than about any lack of respect. The option is offered because both words are pejorative descriptions of a speaker, and shared disapproval is not shared meaning.
• (c)unsubstantiated speeches — Attacks the evidence behind the speeches rather than their effect. A speech can be scrupulously documented and still inflame a crowd, and it can be entirely unsupported and leave everyone unmoved; the two properties are independent. The sentence gives no hint that anyone doubted the speaker's facts, and the organisers' response — refusing him the platform — is a precaution against consequences, not a comment on his sourcing. This is the standard trap of describing a different property of the same object.
• (d)irrelevant speeches — Says the speeches were beside the point, which would make them tiresome, not dangerous. No organiser bars a speaker for irrelevance, and the sentence explains the refusal by what the speeches 'tended to' do to the audience. The option also sits oddly with 'provoke and ignite passions', since a speech that has that effect is by definition connecting with its listeners rather than missing them. Like (a) and (c), it is a criticism of the speeches on an axis the italicised phrase never mentions.

The four options in this item are four different complaints about a speech, and the item is decided by working out which complaint the italicised phrase is making. Irreverence is a complaint about respect. Being unsubstantiated is a complaint about evidence. Irrelevance is a complaint about pertinence. Only 'incendiary' is a statement about what the speech does to the people who hear it, and the phrase — 'tended to provoke and ignite passions' — is a statement of effect from beginning to end. Sorting options by the property they attack is the general technique for this set, and it is quicker than weighing near-synonyms against one another. The word itself is worth knowing in both directions. From Latin 'incendere', to set fire to, English gets 'incendiary', 'incendiarism' and, through the past participle 'incensus', the verb 'to incense', meaning to enrage. Its neighbours differ usefully: 'inflammatory' is the everyday equivalent, 'rabble-rousing' stresses the appeal to a crowd's emotions, 'provocative' is the broadest and mildest, and 'seditious' is not a synonym at all but a legal category, describing speech that incites disaffection against lawful authority.

This is the third item of the APFC paper's italicised-phrase set, and it is among the more approachable because the sentence hands the candidate a metaphor. Where a phrase says 'ignite passions', the answer is very likely to be a word from the same figure, and 'incendiary' is that word. The set as a whole is testing whether a candidate can move in one step from a described effect to the single word that names it — a skill that matters beyond the examination hall, since administrative writing depends on choosing the word that fixes a category rather than the word that gestures at it. Note also what the item does not require: no judgement about whether the organisers were right, and no knowledge of any law about public speech. The Commission is asking only which of four adjectives best describes the phrase in italics, and every option is a real English word correctly used in its own right, so the discrimination is entirely semantic. Each item carries 2·5 marks, with a third of that deducted for a wrong response.

• 'Incendiary' means, literally, designed to cause fire, as in an incendiary device, and, figuratively, tending to inflame feeling or stir up conflict. Both senses descend from the Latin 'incendere', to set fire to, by way of 'incendium', a conflagration.
• The same Latin verb gives English the verb 'to incense', meaning to make very angry, through the past participle 'incensus'. Recognising the shared root is a reliable way to fix the figurative sense of 'incendiary' in memory.
• The italicised phrase and the keyed option share a metaphor: 'ignite passions' is a fire expression and 'incendiary' is a fire word. In this set the correct option frequently belongs to the same figure of speech as the phrase it describes.
• The neighbours divide by emphasis: 'inflammatory' is the everyday equivalent of incendiary, 'rabble-rousing' stresses the appeal to a crowd's emotions, 'provocative' is broader and milder, and 'seditious' is a legal category for speech inciting disaffection against lawful authority rather than a synonym.
• The sentence establishes that the criterion is effect and not quality: the organisers refused the speaker a platform because of what his speeches tended to do to an audience, not because of anything about their accuracy, their respectfulness or their pertinence.

• Choosing an option because it shares the sentence's disapproving tone. All four options criticise the speaker, and only one describes what the phrase actually says about his speeches.
• Substituting a different criticism of the same object. Being unsupported by evidence and being irrelevant are both real faults in a speech and neither is what 'provoke and ignite passions' asserts.
• Missing the metaphor the sentence supplies. When a phrase uses a figure such as igniting, the option built on the same figure is very often the key, and the correspondence is deliberate.

In the italicised-phrase set the Commission usually includes one item whose phrase describes an effect on other people — inflaming a crowd, reassuring an audience, dividing a meeting — and surrounds it with options describing properties of the thing itself. The candidate's task is to notice which axis the phrase is on before comparing the options, since three of the four will be defensible criticisms on other axes. Expect the sentence to name the consequence that followed, as the refusal of a platform does here, because that consequence is the examiner's way of fixing the criterion.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the option that best describes the phrase in italics: 'The pamphlet was withdrawn because it made claims about the community that the district administration feared would set neighbour against neighbour.'

  • (a)verbose claims
  • (b)divisive claims
  • (c)outdated claims
  • (d)anonymous claims

  Answer(b) divisive claims — the phrase describes an effect, setting one part of a community against another, and 'divisive' is the word for material that produces exactly that. Verbosity, obsolescence and anonymity are all properties the pamphlet might have had, but none of them is what the phrase asserts about it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following words denotes speech that incites disaffection against lawful authority, rather than speech that merely inflames feeling?

  • (a)incendiary
  • (b)seditious
  • (c)provocative
  • (d)vituperative

  Answer(b) seditious — sedition is a legal category concerned with inciting disaffection or rebellion against lawful authority, so the word carries a specific target that the others do not. 'Incendiary' and 'provocative' describe the heat generated in an audience, and 'vituperative' describes abusive language directed at a person.