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  3. The English language exists in a condition of everlasting danger, its America

The English language exists in a condition of everlasting danger, its America

游客2023-11-17  53
问题    The English language exists in a condition of everlasting danger, its American branch most particularly, assaulted as it is from all sides by those who would reduce it to puzzling and obscure jargon, pop-psychological nonsense and vague beautified words, but it is not without its defenders. Ken Smith, author of Junk English, is the leading figure. He begins with a brief and clear declaration:
     "Junk English is much more than loose and casual grammar. It is a signal of human weaknesses and cultural license: abandoning the language of the educated yet giving birth to its own serf-glorifying words and phrases, favoring appearance over substance, broadness over precision, and loudness above all. It is sometimes innocent, sometimes lazy, sometimes well intended, but most often it is a trick we play on ourselves to make the unremarkable seem important. Its scope has been widened by politicians, business executives, and the PR and advertising industries in their employ, who use it to spread fog before facts they would rather keep hidden. The result is…a world of humbug in which the more we read and hear, the less we know."
     Smith is, of course, saying something not true—it is difficult to imagine that Junk English will be noticed, much less read, by those who most could profit from it—but it is an instructive and entertaining instructions and explanation all the same. He tries his hands at all the right places—jargon, clichés, euphemisms and exaggeration—but he doesn’t swing blindly. "Although jargon often sounds ugly to outsiders, it speeds communication within the community that uses it" —and that "clichés, though popular objects of scorn, are useful when they most compactly express an idea; deliberate avoidance of an appropriate cliché sometimes produces even worse writing."
     In other words, Smith may be passionate but he’s also sensible. In a section about "free-for-all verbs," for example, he acknowledges that "There is no law against inventing one’s own verbs" before citing a few funny instances of what happens when "Things get a little out of hand," i.e. "We’re efforting to work this out" or "She tried to guilt him into returning the money." In the end, though, being sensible about language is in essence trying to insist that words mean what they properly mean and are used accordingly. Thus, for example, Smith insists that "dialogue" and "discussion" are not synonyms and should not be used interchangeably; that "complimentary" does not mean "free"; that "experience" does not mean "feel"; that "facilitate" does not mean "ease"; that "generate" does not mean "produce"; that "lifestyle" does not mean "life".
     Smith obviously has spent a lot of time making notes about the ways in which we ruin and abuse our language, with results that are impressive in their thoroughness and depressing in their going to far. Occasionally he overlooks the obvious—among euphemisms he mentions "customer care representative" but not "courtesy call," and among the previously mentioned palsy-walsy language he inexplicably overlooks "Your call is important to us" —but then, as he says at the outset, he intended to write a short book and as a result had to leave out many misdeeds. The ones he includes more than do the job. [br] Which of the following best describes Junk English?
选项 A、Overblown.
B、Complicated.
C、Vulgar.
D、Unfashionable.
答案 A
解析 细节题。根据文章第二段第二句话可以确定A 为正确答案。B 只是表层现象，并未涉及垃圾英语的本质特点；C 偏离文章意思，并不是“粗俗的，粗鄙的”；根据本段最后两句话可知这种英语很盛行，故排除D
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