2. 外语
  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 Mc Whorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, see the triumph of 1960s counter-culture 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. Mc Whorter’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 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. Mc Whorter 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. Mc Whorter 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.
The word "talking" (Line 5, Para. 3) denotes ______.
选项 A、modesty
B、personality
C、liveliness
D、informality
答案D
解析 本题可参照文章的第3段。从中可知，20世纪60年代以前，那些受过适当教育的人在动笔写东西时都在寻求高雅的语调，但那以后，连那些最受尊敬的写作都寻求应用口头英语。同样，在诗歌中，只有高度个性化的诗歌类型才可以称得上真正具有活力的诗歌。在口头和书面英语中，随意言谈胜过正式演说，自发性胜过技巧。据此可知，该单词的意思是“随意言谈”。D项与文章的意思相符，因此D项为正确答案。
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