In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank: Global sustainability discourse has not so much evolved as ossified into a lexicon of managerial (1) ____—terms engineered more for reputational lubrication than ecological redress. What was once a moral reckoning with planetary precarity now traffics in dashboards and metrics, calibrated less to redistribute power than to launder it. Words like “resilience,” “stakeholder engagement,” and “net-zero” populate position papers, their meanings stretched until they acquire the elasticity of (2) ____. In this semantic economy, language ceases to be revelatory and becomes performative. Reports teeter on euphemism; declarations bristle with procedural piety. Crises are not named; they are (3) ____ into ‘developmental challenges.’ The grammar of suffering is bleached, even as the facts remain uncompromising. What emerges is not truth, but a choreography of credibility—an affective simulation of care. Meanwhile, epistemic asymmetries persist: indigenous knowledge is (4) ____ as “local insight,” offered just enough space to decorate, never to reorient. Environmental justice, once confrontational, now wears a diplomatic smile, folded neatly into intergovernmental communiqués. If sustainability is to escape the orbit of self-congratulation, it must surrender its obsession with optics and inhabit the discomfort of history. Anything less is not stewardship—it is semantic (5) ____ masquerading as progress.
This question requires identifying the appropriate term for the placeholder labeled as blank number (2).
The available choices are:
The indicated correct answer is rhetoric.
What would come in blank space (1)?
What would come in blank space (2)?
What would come in blank space (3)?
What would come in blank space (4)?
What would come in blank space (5)?