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  3. March 17th is St Patrick’s day, a celebration of all things Irish — and of o

March 17th is St Patrick’s day, a celebration of all things Irish — and of o

游客2023-08-22  31
问题     March 17th is St Patrick’s day, a celebration of all things Irish — and of one thing in particular. Around Ireland and all over the world people will celebrate with a pint or two (or three, or four) of Guinness, Ireland’s unofficial national intoxicant (酒类饮料). Publicans love St Patrick’s day, so much so that it can sometimes feel like less a celebration of Irish culture than a marketing event for Guinness’s owner, Diageo. Now exported to more than 120 countries, the black stuff has become a powerful symbol of Ireland. But how Irish is it really?
    Arthur Guinness, who founded the brewery in Dublin in 1759, might have been surprised that his drink would one day become such a potent national symbol. He was a committed unionist and opponent of Irish nationalism, who before the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was even accused of spying for the British authorities. His descendants continued passionately to support unionism — one giving the Ulster Volunteer Force ￡10,000 in 1913 (about ￡lm, or $1.7m, in today’s money) to fund a paramilitary campaign to resist Ireland being given legislative independence. The company was alleged to have lent men and equipment to the British army to help crush Irish rebels during the Easter Rising of 1916, afterwards firing members of staff whom it believed to have Irish-nationalist sympathies.
    The beer the company has become most famous for — porter stout — was based on a London ale, a favorite of the street porters of Covent Garden [(科芬园) (伦敦中部一个蔬菜花卉市场)] and Billingsgate markets. Since 1886 the firm has floated on the London Stock Exchange, and the company moved its headquarters to London in 1932, where it has been based ever since (it merged with Grand Metropolitan and renamed itself Diageo in 1997). Even in terms of branding, the company was considering disassociating itself from its Irish reputation as recently as the 1980s.
    Worried about the impact on sales of the IRA’s terrorist campaign during the Troubles, Guinness came close in 1982 to re-launching the brand as an English beer brewed in west London. But as Northern Ireland’s situation improved in the 1990s, the company’s marketing strategy changed again towards marketing the beer as Irish, aiming its product at tourists in Ireland and the estimated 70m people of Irish descent living around the world. Now the Guinness Storehouse, part of the original Dublin factory which was reopened as a tourist attraction in 2000, promotes Guinness to tourists as an Irish beer once again.
    Guinness is not the only company to play up or hide its national origins to try and boost sales. Jacob’s biscuits have been marketed by some shops as being British, in spite of the company’s origins as an Irish company from Waterford. And Lipton now markets its black teas on the strength of the company’s British origins, in over 100 countries — except Britain, where it is not commonly sold. In a world where multinational companies control a large chunk of the global food supply chain, national identity — at least in branding — matters as much as ever. [br] When Arthur Guinness founded his brewery in 1759, he______.
选项 A、merged Grand Metropolitan and named it Diageo
B、did not expect it to be a potent national symbol
C、was accused of being a spy of the British authorities
D、hired people who have Irish-nationalist sympathies
答案 B
解析 第2段首句指出，阿瑟.吉尼斯于1759年在都柏林成立了该酿酒公司，他一定会为健力士黑啤有朝一日会成为爱尔兰有影响力的国家象征而感到惊讶。即他当时并未料想健力士黑啤会成为国家象征。B)是对该句的转述，故为答案。A)的内容出现在第3段倒数第二句，合并和更名发生在1997年。C)的内容出现在第2段第2句．他被指控为间谍发生在1798年之前。D)的内容出现在第2段末句，发生在1916年后，并且选项中的hired与原文中的firing矛盾。
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