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  3. Every culture attempts to create a “universe of discourse” for its members, a way in which people can interpret their experience

Every culture attempts to create a “universe of discourse” for its members, a way in which people can interpret their experience

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问题     Every culture attempts to create a “universe of discourse” for its members, a way in which people can interpret their experience and convey it to one another. Without a common system of codifying sensations, life would be absurd and all efforts to share meanings doomed to failure. This universe of discourse — one of the most precious of all cultural legacies — is transmitted to each generation in part consciously and in part unconsciously. Parents and teachers give explicit instruction in it by praising or criticizing certain ways of dressing, of thinking, of gesturing, of responding to the acts of others. But the most significant aspects of any cultural code may be conveyed implicitly, not by rule or lesson but through modeling behavior. A child is surrounded by others who, through the mere consistency of their actions as males and females, mothers and fathers, salesclerks and policemen, display what is appropriate behavior. Thus the grammar of any culture is sent and received largely unconsciously, making one’s own cultural assumptions and biases difficult to recognize. They seem so obviously right that they require no explanation.
    In The Open and Closed Mind, Milton Rokeach poses the problem of cultural understanding in its simplest form, but one that can readily demonstrate the complication of communication between cultures. It is called the “Denny Doodlebug Problem”. Readers are given all the rules that govern this culture: Denny is an animal that always faces North, and can move only by jumping; he can jump large distances or small distances, but can change direction only after jumping four times in any direction; he can jump North, South, East or West, but not diagonally. Upon concluding a jump his master places some food three feet directly west of him. Surveying the situation, Denny concludes he must jump four times to reach the food. No more or less. And he is right. All the reader has to do is to explain the circumstances that make his conclusion correct.
    The large majority of people who attempt this problem fail to solve it, despite the fact that they are given all the rules that control behavior in this culture. If there is difficulty in getting inside the simplistic world of Denny Doodlebug — where the cultural code has already been broken and handed to us — imagine the complexity of comprehending behavior in societies whose codes have not yet been deciphered, and where even those who obey these codes are only vaguely aware and can rarely describe the underlying sources of their own actions.
Which one of the following statements about cultural code is discussed in The Open and Closed Mind?
选项 A、People in the same society may be governed by different cultural codes.
B、Cultural codes are passed on from one generation to another either in written form or in oral form.
C、Cultural codes in different cultures may differ sharply from one another.
D、The influence of cultural codes on an individual may decrease as he becomes older.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。本题提问的是关于《开放的心灵和封闭的心灵》这本书的内容的。原文是在后两段提到这本书的，且并没有给出具体的关于这本书的内容，所以我们只能根据所提到的信息进行推测。对于这本书的总结，出现在文章最后一段。[A]和[B]中谈到的“不同文化的文化规则”和“文化规则的传播形式”在第一段被谈到，但两项的表达与原文不符，更不会是这本书的内容，所以排除。而 [D]项所述内容原文未提及，也可以排除。第二段首句提到了the complication of communication between cultures，如果各种社会的 codes都一样的话，也就不会存在不同文化之间交流的复杂性了，由此可以判断[C]项正确。所以本题答案为[C]。
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