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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 counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
    Blaming the permissive in 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s 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 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 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 educational 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.
To which of the following statements would McWhorter most likely agree?
选项 A、Logical thinking is not necessarily related to the way we talk.
B、Black English can be more expressive than standard English.
C、Non-standard varieties of human language are just as entertaining.
D、Of all the varieties, standard English can best convey complex ideas.
答案A
解析 本题可参照文章的第4段。从中可知，通过大量来自于高雅和粗俗文化的有趣例子，McWhorter先生证实的趋势是清楚明白的；但是，对副标题中的问题“我们为什么应当、喜欢、在乎”的答案则不那么清楚。作为一名语言学家，他承认所有类型的人类语言，包括像黑人英语那样的不标准语言，都可以极具表现力——世界上还不存在不能表达复杂思想的语言或方言。正如许多人一样，他不是在争论说我们再也不能有条理地思考，因为我们无法恰当地交谈。据此可知，McWhorter可能认为，人们的思维方式与人们的交谈方式没有多大关系。A项与文章的意思相符，因此A项为正确答案。
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