2. 外语
  3. Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action that we never recognize the assumptions on which th

Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action that we never recognize the assumptions on which th

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问题    Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action that we never recognize the assumptions on which their lives and their sanity rest. As one observer put it, if birds were suddenly endowed with scientific curiosity they might examine many things, but the sky itself would be overlooked as a suitable subject; if fish were to become curious about the world, it would never occur to them to begin by investigating water, e For birds and fish would take the sky and sea for granted, unaware of their profound influence because they comprise the medium for every fact. Human beings, in a similarly way, occupy a symbolic universe governed by codes that are unconsciously acquired and automatically employed. So much so that they rarely notice that the ways they interpret and talk about events are distinctively different from the ways people conduct their affairs in other cultures.
   As long as people remain blind to the sources of their meanings, they are imprisoned within them. These cultural frames of reference are no less confining simply because they cannot be seen or touched. Whether it is an individual neurosis that keeps an individual out of contact with his neighbors, or a collective neurosis that separates neighbors of different cultures, both are forms of blindness that limit what can be experienced and what can be learned from others. ~
   It would seem that everywhere people would desire to break out of the boundaries of their own experiential worlds. Their ability to react sensitively to a wider spectrum of events and peoples requires an overcoming of such cultural parochialism. But, in fact, few attain this broader vision. Some, of course, have little opportunity for wider cultural experience, though this condition should change as the movement of people accelerates. Others do not try to widen their experience because they prefer the old and familiar, seek from their affairs only further confirmation of the correctness of their own values. Still others recoil from such experiences because they feel it dangerous to probe too deeply into the personal or cultural unconscious. Exposure may reveal how tenuous and arbitrary many cultural norms are; such exposure might force people to acquire new bases for interpreting events. And even for the many who do seek actively to enlarge the variety of human beings with whom they are capable of communicating there are still difficulties.
   Cultural myopia persists not merely because of inertia and ’habit, but chiefly because it is so difficult to overcome. One acquires a personality and a culture in childhood, long before he is capable of comprehending either of them. To survive, each person masters the perceptual orientations, cognitive biases, and communicative habits of his own culture. But once mastered, objective assessment of these same processes is awkward since the same mechanisms that are being evaluated must be used in making the evaluations.
The passage might be entitled“______”。
选项 A、How to Overcome Cultural Myopia
B、Behavioral Patterns and Cultural Background
C、Harms of Cultural Myopia
D、Cultural Myopia—A Deep-rooted Collective Neurosis
答案D
解析 主旨题。文章的第一句话就是主题句，可知cultural norms无处不在，而在第二段提出individual neurosis和collective neurosis的危害，第三段说明cultural norms，cultural parochialism实质上是collective Myopia，即文化狭隘主义和文化短视，人们不愿打破自己固有的文化传统，最后一段指出这种困难难以克服更深层的原因在于儿时形成的文化认知和交际模式已根深蒂固，使人很难客观判断，所以D 为答案。 A 选项文章没有提及;B 选项过于宽泛;C 选项虽然提到，但是文章主要是分析Cultural Myopia的原因(第三段，第四段)，而不是讲述其危害。
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专业英语四级

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