2005年Text 4
American no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing. The Degradation of language and Music and why we should like, care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter's academic specialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of "whom", for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-ending of Old English.
But the cult of the authentic and the personal, "doing our own thing", has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive-there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper.
Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms-he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English "on paper plates instead of china". A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.
37. The word "talking" （Line6, paragraph3） denotes
[A] modesty.
[B] personality.
[C] liveliness.
[D] informality.
[答案] D
[解題思路]
第三段最后一句話為"In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft"（無論是在口頭英語和書面語中，說話勝過了談話，自然發(fā)揮勝過了精雕細(xì)琢），此外該段第一句話中提到了the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music（已經(jīng)宣布了正式演講、寫作、詩歌和經(jīng)典音樂的滅亡），因此可以推斷talking 代表的就是informal及非正式的形式，也就是D選項(xiàng)。
[題目譯文]
"talking"（第三段第五行）這個(gè)詞代表 。
[A] 謙虛
[B] 個(gè)性
[C] 生動(dòng)
[D] 非正式
