2. 外语
  3. (1) I heard it argued recently that saying "My father died" is insufficiently honest. Instead, one should say "My father is dead

(1) I heard it argued recently that saying "My father died" is insufficiently honest. Instead, one should say "My father is dead

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问题     (1) I heard it argued recently that saying "My father died" is insufficiently honest. Instead, one should say "My father is dead", to better recognise that death is an ongoing condition rather than a one-off tragedy. This struck me as both true and uncomfortably strict.
    (2) There is, at the moment, a craze for speaking bluntly about death. It began, as so many fashionable ideas do, as a necessary reaction to the status quo. Modern death is so discreetly done, overseen by professionals in hospitals and funeral homes, that it often feels weirdly invisible. Using delicate or obfuscating language is thought to reinforce the sense of taboo.
    (3) The terminal illness charity Marie Curie has just released a list of the 50 most popular British euphemisms (委婉语) for death—ranging from "passed away" to the less familiar "wearing a wooden onesie". The sheer volume of phrases, says the charity, "suggests society still has some way to go to feel comfortable about talking about dying".
    (4) But I’m not sure about that correlation. Some of the phrases listed here, such as "popped their clogs" or "kicked the bucket", are not really euphemisms. They are little jokes, defiant jabs of humour. Many of them originate from WWI, when the casualties were so relentless that the only way to endure it was with black humour. "Pushing up the daisies" and "become a landowner"—both phrases that date from the Great War—are almost anti-euphemisms, with their frank insistence on the corpse rotting in the soil.
    (5) Even the much-derided "pass away" isn’t a modern euphemism at all, but a 14th century invention. Death was hardly a secret during the plague-ridden Dark Ages, when the average life expectancy was 24 for men and 33 for women. "Pass away" was not intended to disguise the reality of death, but to describe it. Christians of the time believed that the souls of the recently dead stayed in their bodies until the funeral rites were complete, at which point they "passed away" into the afterlife.
    (6) The difficulty now is that we live in a secular society, but rely on the consolations of faith. Christian phrases that once had literal meanings are now reduced to hollow platitudes. Few modern Britons really believe that the dead are "with the angels" or "looking down from Heaven". For the recently bereaved, these empty sentiments can in fact be the opposite of consoling. I remember, after my baby nephew died, feeling a rush of rage towards someone who assured me that he had "gone to a better place". Better than his mother’s arms? It’s not a comfort: it’s an insult.
    (7) But an abundance of language is not, ordinarily, evidence of a taboo (禁忌). Quite the opposite. We have all those words for death because we need them. The reality is too vast, too various, too confounding to be simply expressed. One word just isn’t enough.
It can be learned from the passage that the author’s attitude is________towards the euphemisms for death.
选项 A、sarcastic
B、prudent
C、agreeable
D、ambiguous
答案B
解析 观点态度题。第1段最后一句的uncomfortably strict表明作者是严肃地思考相关问题的。第5、6段中作者直指一些委婉语在如今社会已变成了陈词滥调，乃至造成负面影响，可见作者对一些委婉语持批评态度：但最后一段作者又说这些委婉的说法是出于我们的需要，以描述广阔、多样和复杂的现实。作者从反面和正面看待“死亡”委婉语，可见其态度是“谨慎的”，故选B项。A、D两项明显不对。C项片面，作者对委婉语还持有批评的态度，故不选。
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