2. 职称英语
  3. Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been

Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been

游客2025-05-06  32
问题     Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
    It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoё Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K.
    Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush’s predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chrétien and Koizumi). The world’s three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world’s five richest men (Gates, Buffet, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht).
    Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.
    The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees, all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them. [br] What can we infer from the first three paragraphs?
选项 A、In both East and West, names are essential to success.
B、The alphabet is to blame for the failure of Zoё Zysman.
C、Customers often pay a lot of attention to companies’ names.
D、Some form of discrimination is too subtle to recognize.
答案 D
解析 本题的四个选项中，只有D项为正确答案。这可从文中前三段的内容推知，其中举例说明了由于在日常生活中按照字母顺序排序带来了许多不平等的现象，往往很有成就的人都是姓的字母排在前面的人，而这种现象还不为人知。所以说像字母顺序引起的歧视太微妙了而不易被发觉。A、C两项在文中未被提及；B项正是人们所忽视的，因此不正确。
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