Read the following passage and answer the questions based on it:
The inheritance of culture is rarely obvious. What we call tradition is often just repetition with reverence, and what we call structure is more often sediment—settled behaviors shaped by forgotten motives. No individual wakes up conscious of the script they perform daily: the deference coded into language, the hierarchy in who speaks and who listens, the legitimacy given to one dialect over another. These scripts are learned by doing, not by knowing. Structures do not enforce themselves through law alone; they linger in weddings, gestures, floor plans, and silence. The most enduring hierarchies don't shout — they whisper, hiding in rituals too familiar to question. When efforts are made to 'preserve culture,' they often freeze one version of the past, assuming it pure and unchanging. However, culture never stood still. It changes, not by denial, but by negotiation. To honor a legacy is not to protect its shape, but to confront what it excludes. If history is architecture, then culture is weather — it reshapes even stone, slowly, insistently. A society unwilling to interrogate its inherited rhythms is not preserving culture — it is embalming it.
Q4. What tone does the author use toward cultural rituals?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Correct Answer: Affectionate yet interrogative
Explanation
• The author acknowledges rituals and traditions with deep familiarity and emotional weight (identifying them in weddings, gestures, and daily life), showing an affectionate awareness of their place in society.
• Simultaneously, the author insists that we must critically examine them, explicitly stating that a society must "interrogate its inherited rhythms" and "confront what it excludes" rather than accepting rituals blindly.
• Combining this warm engagement with a questioning mindset produces an affectionate yet interrogative tone.