题目内容
The last two sentences of the first paragraph indicate that Crabtree survived cancer. This
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On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Representative Charles A. Eaton, Republican of New Jersey, made his case in the House for why the nation should enter the Second World War.
"Mr. Speaker," his speech began, "yesterday against the roar of Japanese cannon in Hawaii our American people heard a trumpet call; a call to unity; a call to courage; a call to determination once and for all to wipe off of the earth this accursed monster of tyranny and slavery which is casting its black shadow over the hearts and homes of every land.”
Last year, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, made the case for war in Iraq this way: "And if we don't go at Iraq, that our effort in the war on terrorism dwindles down into an intelligence operation," he said. "We go at Iraq and it says to countries that support terrorists, there remain six in the world that are as our definition state sponsors of terrorists, you say to those countries: we are serious about terrorism, we're serious about you not supporting terrorism on your own soil.
The linguist and cultural critic John McWhorter cites these excerpts in his new book. They not only are typical of speeches made in Congress on both occasions, he argues, but also provide a vivid illustration of just how much the language of public discourse has deteriorated.
Riddled with sentence fragments, run-ons and colloquialisms like "go at," Senator Brownback's speech is still intelligible, but in Mr. McWhorter's view, it is emblematic of a creeping casualness that is largely to the nation's detriment.
"We in America now are an anomaly," Mr. McWhorter said over lunch at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan this week. "We have very little sense of English as something to be dressed up. It's just this thing that comes out of our mouths. We just talk. "
Mr. McWhorter, 38, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, is hardly the first to complain about Americans' brazen disregard for their native tongue. But unlike many others, he says, the problem is not an epidemic of bad grammar.
As a linguist, he says, he knows that grammatical rules are arbitrary and that in casual conversation people have never abided by them. Rather, he argues, the fault lies with the collapse of the distinction between the written and the oral. Where formal, well-honed English was once de rigueur in public life, he argues, it has all but disappeared, supplanted by the indifferent cadences of speech and ultimately impairing our ability to think.
This bleak assessment notwithstanding, Mr. McWhorter, an intense, confident and--perhaps not surprisingly--loquacious man is not a curmudgeon or a fuddy-duddy. Nor, for that matter, a nerd, despite a resume that bristles with intellectual precociousness.
Self-taught in 12 languages--including Russian, Swedish, Swahili, Arabic and Hebrew, which he initially took up as a Philadelphia preschooler when he was 4--he is a respected expert in Creole languages.
A college graduate at 19 and a tenured professor at 33, he has published seven previous books, including the controversial, best seller, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America", in which he accused middle-class blacks of embracing anti-intellectualism and a cult of victimology. An African-American who is an outspoken critic of affirmative action, welfare and reparations, he has aroused the ire of many liberals and earned a reputation as a conservative.
In John McWhorter's view, the speech made by Senator Sam Brownback in Congress is an example of __ public discourse.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文： It's a Matter of Attitude
A: Until I was 100 years old, I hadn't really lived. All these interesting things have happened to me since I was 100 years old.
B: Tell me what's happened since you were 100.
A: Well, for one thing, I rode on the -- I had a blimp ride.
B: The Goodyear blimp.
A: The Goodyear blimp. Oh, he took me out so I could see Catalina. A very, very beautiful trip. Oh, and I' re had helicopter trips, a lot of them, over Burbank, and once he took me so close to the Hollywood sign that I could almost touch it.
B: Now, you're been alive over a century. You have seen a lot of changes...
A: Everything.
B: You were born what year？
A: I was born January 30, 1885, in a small village about 70 miles south of Chicago.
B: All right. Now, you for your 100th birthday and your 102nd and your 104th went in a helicopter and a blimp. Your 106th birthday, what do you want to do for your 106th？
A: Oh, I want to meet a superstar.
B: I hope you do. All right. As I said, we have people here who are breaking the stereotypes that getting old means sitting around doing nothing and waiting to die. Mary Ann, you are over 100 and you have gone through quite a change in the last several years, in terms of how you looked at aging and how you look at it now.
A: Well, I think my whole attitude about aging has changed. I think the older I got the more comfortable I was with myself and the happier I was. I found that as I got older I no longer ran scared anymore. It's sort of kind of go your best shot, you know, what can you do to me now？ It's ail been done to me. All that can happen now is really more of the same. So I just don't have that fear anymore.
B: Now, a lot of people think that part of aging is that we don' t get to do the things that we could do, we become inactive, we sit around, we watch television, we crochet, but we can' t go out and have fun anymore. You disprove that all the time.
A: Oh, I think people are very foolish to have that kind of attitude. We all can make choices, and it's up to us when we get older to decide what choice we're going to make. And it's a matter of attitude. If you at my age I say that any morning that I wake up and I' m still alive, it's a wonderful morning.
B: All right. Now, you do not look your age at all. Not only that, here a lot of other men might be sitting around and watching TV or playing cards all day long, You' re pressing your weight, your own weight？ And incredibly active. Did you age gracefully？ Did you think that when you got older you d be active？ Or did you have to psych yourself up and say, "Wait a minute, I don't want to get old？"
A: I think I had to psych myself up. And I agree with them in all their remarks, too. You know, young people are afraid to even say the word old. Well, they should read Browning, you know. The best is yet to come.
B: Tell me what's great about it.
A: Well, I have a chance to do the things that I didn't do when I was working and supporting my family. And a lot of people say, well, you can't do them. Well, I can. I' m going to school. I' m very active in my community. We go on vacation to Washington, Hawaii and all that. I mean, I' m enjoying life and I' m very active.
According to the interview, what happened since Mary Ann were 100？
Which of the following has resulted from the Arabian people's anger over the abuse？
A．Yes, I have.B．Yes, it is.C．I like the city.D．It's a famous city.
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