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  3. Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift.

Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift.

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问题    Americans 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 counterculture 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 speciality 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-endings 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 nonstandard 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.
According to the last paragraph, "paper plates" is to "china" as
选项 A、temporary is to "permanent".
B、radical is to "conservative".
C、functional is to "artistic".
D、humble is to "noble".
答案C
解析 推断题。根据第五段第二、三句可知，麦荷特先生并不觉得正式英语是不可或缺的，也 并没提出彻底的教育改革——他只是为那些“虽不实用却很美好的事物”的消逝而哀叹，如今 我们过多地用非正式英语去替代正式英语。这虽然令人惭愧，但已经无法避免。由此可知，作 者用“纸盘子”和“瓷盘子”来比喻正式英语的退化，联系上文可以推知，“纸盘子”指的是那些 “实用却不美好”的事物，即非正式英语；“瓷盘子”则是指那些“不实用却美好”的事物，即正 式英语，故选C项。
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