2. 外语
  3. An English schoolboy would only ask his friend: "Wassa time, then?" To his teacher he would be much more likely to speak in a mo

An English schoolboy would only ask his friend: "Wassa time, then?" To his teacher he would be much more likely to speak in a mo

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问题     An English schoolboy would only ask his friend: "Wassa time, then?" To his teacher he would be much more likely to speak in a more standardized accent and ask: "Excuse me, sir, may I have the correct time please?" People are generally aware that the phrases and expressions they use are different from those of earlier generations; but they concede less that their own behavior also varies according to the situation in which they find themselves. People have characteristic ways of talking, which are relatively stable across varying situations. Nevertheless, distinct contexts, and different listeners, demand different patterns of speech from one and the same speaker.
    Not only this, but, in many cases, the way someone speaks affects the response of the person to whom he is speaking in such a way that "modeling" is seen to occur. This is what Michael Argyle has called "response matching". Several studies have shown that the more intimate these details are, the more personal secrets the other person will divulge (泄露).
    Response matching has, in fact, been noted between two speakers in a number of ways, including how long someone speaks, the length of pauses, speech rate and voice loudness. The correspondence between the length of reporters’ questions when interviewing President Kennedy, and the length of his replies has been shown to have increased over the duration of his 1961-1963 news conferences. Argyle says this process may be one of "imitation". Two American researchers, Jaffe and Feldstein, prefer to think of it as the speaker’s need for equilibrium (平衡). Neither of these explanations seems particularly convincing. It may be that response matching can be more profitably considered as an unconscious reflection of speakers’ needs for social integration with one another.
    This process of modeling the other person’s speech in a conversation could also be termed "speech convergence". It may only be one aspect of a much wider speech change. In other situations, speech divergence may occur when certain factors encourage a person to modify his speech away from the individual he is dealing with. For example, a retired brigadier’s wife, renowned for her incessant snobbishness, may return her vehicle to the local garage because of inadequate servicing, voicing her complaint in elaborately phrased, yet mechanically unsophisticated language, with a high soft-pitched voice. These superior airs and graces may simply make the mechanic reply with a flourish of almost incomprehensible technicalities, and in a louder, more deeply-pitched voice than he would have used with a less irritating customer.
Which of the following can be an appropriate heading for the passage?
选项 A、Different Patterns of Speech in Different Situations.
B、Response Matching and Speech Divergence.
C、Social Integration or Imitation?
D、Ways of Speaking: Present and Past.
答案A
解析 主旨题文章的每个部分都涉及到不同场合的谈话方式，因而A选项正确。选项B、C是作者给出的解释。选项D显然不对。
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