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Файл:Linguistic and Cultural Studies of English-speaking countries. Лингвострановедение. Англоязычные страны. Учебное пособие
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In modern English the number of native words is rather small, about 30%.
About 70% of words are borrowed from other languages: French, Latin, Scandinavian, and German and Dutch.
English is an analytical language. It tends to bring its units into complexes, rather than use morphological combination.
English language is the richest in vocabulary of all the world’s languages
(which now number some 2,700). The Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000
words; and a half million technical and scientific terms. German has a vocabulary of
about 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000.
England is the largest and most populated part of the United Kingdom. 46
million people of the population of the country live in England. England is a
highly developed industrialised country, 80 per cent of the population live in urban areas. It is a major trading nation. The sea played an important role in the
history of England. It was a good protection against attacks of outside enemies.
England has highly developed fishing industry.
England is mostly a lowland country. The midlands is the main industrial
area in England. Birmingham is a big city where all kinds of metal goods are
produced. Manchester is a centre of the textile industry and one of the chief centres of heavy engineering. Sheffield is famous for its high-quality steels and
tools. Liverpool is the second port of Britain after London, a great centre of
shipbuilding.
Scotland is the most northern of the four countries constituting Britain. It
occupies the territory of 80 thousand square kilometers and is not so densely
populated as England.
Scotland is the land of mountains, lakes. Scotland’s main regions are the
Lowlands and Highlands.
Scotland is best-known to the world through its national costume, the kilt,
its musical instrument, the bagpipe, and its national beverage, whisky.
Wales is another part of the United Kingdom. It became part of England in
1536 by the Act of Union. This small country is situated along the western side of the
island, about 250 km long and 130 km wide. It occupies the territory of 35 thousand
sq. km. Three million people live in Wales. It is a highland country. The pride of
Wales is Snowdonia, the national park. Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales.
The capital of Wales is Cardiff, the largest city in Wales. The second largest city in
Wales is Swansea where metal industries are developed.
Northern Ireland (sometimes called Ulster) is the smallest part of the
United Kingdom. Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
It is independent since 1922, the capital is Dublin. Northern Ireland is Protestant
and the Irish Republic is Catholic.
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In 1171 English invaders landed in Ireland and since that time the struggle of
the Irish people has never stopped. In 1949 Ireland was officially proclaimed an independent state. But part of the country the northeast was retained by Britain.
Northern Ireland occupies only one sixth of the territory of the island of
Ireland. The capital is Belfast. Northern Ireland is not rich in minerals. Its population is a million and a half. Three basic industries are developed there: agriculture, textile and shipbuilding.
Topics for discussion:
Geographical Survey
Demographic Background
Composition of the Country
The Main Cities of the United Kingdom
Task:
Prepare presentation about: capitals and cities of the United Kingdom.
Video (DVD): Window on Britain (Oxford English Video) («Окно в Британию»)
LECTURE 8: FAMILY LIFE AND
HUMAN RELATIONS
The Family Status
The Way of Life
Married Life
The Individual and the Family
Social Class Society
House and Home
A typical British family used to consist of mother, father and two children,
but in recent years there have been many changes in family life. Nowadays the
family group is smaller. People’s views on marriage and the family are very different from the views of their parents and grandparents. Some of these have
been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. Divorce
was very difficult and took a long time. In 1969, the divorce laws were changed
and divorce became quicker and easier and the number of divorces has increased. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce. Today there
are a lot of one-parent families. Society is more tolerant than it used to be of
unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents. However, the majority
of divorced people marry again.
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Another change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer
nowadays, and many old people live alone. When children grow up, they usually
leave their parents’ home for university or work.
Members of a family – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – keep in touch, but
they see less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away
from their home town to work. Christmas is the traditional season for reunions. Relatives often travel many miles in order to spend the holiday together.
The most common type of household in England, Scotland and Wales today
is two people; either married or living together without being officially married,
have no children. Only seven per cent of British families consist of five or more
people. The average British couple today has only 1,8 children.
The average British family lives in a semi-detached house with a garden
in the south of England. They own their house, which is situated in the suburbs
of a large town. The house has three bedrooms. On average they have two children and a pet. The family drives a two-year-old Ford Cortina. He works in the
office of an engineering company for 40 hours a week and earns 200 pounds per
week. He starts at 9.00 in the morning and finishes at 5.30 in the evening. He
goes to work by car, which takes him 20 minutes.
He likes: The Times, the Queen, privacy, people who call him “Sir”, dogs
and his umbrella. He is never tired of saying “Thank you”, “I am sorry”.
She works in a service industry for three days a week and earns £ 95. She
works locally and goes there by bus.
The children go to a state school which is a few miles from home. A special
bus comes to pick them up every day. They are at school from 9.00 to 3.30.
Nowadays, if two people are living together, they are not necessarily ma rried. Eighteen per cent of unmarried people aged between 36 and 59 years old
are living with someone. Often people get married after living together. People
get married at a later age now. In Britain people can get married in a church or
in a registry office. The average age for the first marriages in England is now
over 26 for men and 24 for women. 29% of the married couples have no children, 28% - have children.
Relationships within the family are different now. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to, and children have more freedom to make
their own decisions. The father is more involved with bringing up children, often
because the mother goes out to work. Although the family holiday is still an important part of family life (usually taken in August, and often abroad) many
children have holidays away from their parents, often with a school party or other organized group.
An invitation to tea is a common way of keeping in touch with friends and
relatives. Besides endless cups of tea, there is thin bread and butter with jam,
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meat or fish paste and some home-made or bought cakes. On special occasion
the family may go out to tea – to a tea-shop or a café and order high tea that is a
fairly substantial meal often consisting of fish and chips, or ham and salad, followed by bread and butter and cakes.
Sunday dinner is a special family occasion in many parts of the country.
On Saturday the housewife chooses beef or lamb (pork is not eaten very much in
England). The meat is roasted in the oven and the roasted or boiled potatoes and
other vegetables are added.
All letters concerning social affairs – invitations to parties, dinners, weddings, etc. – have to be directed to the wives and husbands together, never to the
husband alone. The habit of taking flowers to the hostess is not observed in England. “White Tie” means full evening-dress.
Whenever you have spent a night or a weekend in somebody’s house you
have to write a letter, when you get back, a so-called bread-and-butter letter.
Britain has a deeply individualistic society, also described as a classridden one. Most people are classified according to their work occupations, falling into two broad groups, as in other industrialised societies: the middle class
(or white-collar workers) and the working class (or blue-collar workers).
The peculiarity of the British class make-up is that there are no peasants at all.
There are farmers and their hired (mostly for a season) labourers, which make a part
of the working class. Less than 2% of the working population work on farms.
The middle class in Britain embraces a range of people from senior professionals, judges, senior medical specialists and senior civil servants to clerical
workers – in other words, people who earn their living in a nonmanual way.
Beyond the middle class lies a small but powerful upper class, which survives from one generation to another. It is characterised by three things: property, networks and power.
The strangest feature of class in Britain is that it is not entirely dependent
on money. One can be high class and poor, or low class and rich. It is so because
the class system is based on something historical which does not exactly match
present conditions.
Official statistics treats class as an economic distinction which is based on a
six-point scale of employment types:
A – Upper middle class (top managers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)
B – Middle class (middle managers, teachers, etc.)
C1 – Lower middle class (office workers, etc.)
C2 – Skilled working class (electricians, car mechanics, etc.)
D – Unskilled working class (farm or building labourers, etc.)
E – Residual (unemployed, etc.)
Pension age is 65.
The Englishman prefers his own house to an apartment in a block of
flats. Traditionally, it is a two-storey house with a lawn in front of it and a gar-
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den behind it. Everyone knows the saying: “An Englishman’s home is his castle”
and it is true.
About 80 per cent of British people live in houses. About 67 per cent of
the people in Britain own their own houses or flats. Most of the rest live in rented accommodation.
In towns, there are three main types of houses: detached, semi-detached
and terraced. A detached house, standing on its own plot of land, is usually more
expensive than the others. A semi-detached house (also called a semi) is similar,
but shares one wall with its neighbour, which is its “mirror image”. It is usually
smaller than a detached house. Most of these houses have two storeys, with two
rooms and a kitchen downstairs and the bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. A
terraced house is one of a row of houses, often built in blocks of four or more
and sometimes extending the entire length of a street.
Bungalows (single-story detached houses) are popular, especially with elderly people because there are no stairs to climb.
Topics for discussion:
The British at Home
Social Class Make-Up
Ways of Life
Housing
LECTURE 9: ECONOMY OF
THE UNITED KINGDOM
Main Branches of Industry
Industrial Centres
Foreign Trade
Britain is a highly developed industrial country with the market economy.
It has heavy and light engineering. The country is the fourth largest exporter of
manufactured goods. The most important British manufacture is machinery,
tools, bridges, ships.
Industry is concentrated in the north and midlands of England. London is
one of the largest city in Europe and a world centre for business and finance, the
country’s largest port and a cultural centre.
Birmingham is the Britain’s second largest city and its engineering centre.
Sheffield is the centre of the steel industry. It produces airplanes, motor-cars,
electric machinery, and agricultural machinery.
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Manchester is the world’s leading producer of cotton goods. The wool industry, England’s oldest large trade is located in Leeds. Liverpool is the second
after London, largest port.
The United Kingdom’s economic prosperity is dependent on its foreign
trade. Leading exports are machinery, road vehicles, aircraft, chemicals, iron
and steel. Leading imports are meat, fruit and vegetables, metals and wood.
The United Kingdom is a state with the mixed economic system where production is controlled by both the Government and the private producers. The
characteristic feature of British industry is the production of high quality expensive goods requiring skilled labour.
Topics for discussion:
Mixed Economic System
Branches of Industry
Leading Exports and Imports
Video (DVD): Britain London Wales Scotland («Британия Лондон Уэльс Шотландия»)
LECTURE 10: POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF
THE UNITED KINGDOM
The British Monarchy
The UK Government
Parliament
Political Parties
The monarchy is the most ancient institution in the United Kingdom. The
monarch now is the Queen Elizabeth II. In law the monarch is the head of the
executive power, a part of the legislative power, the head of the judiciary, the
commander-in-chief of all the armed forces of the crown and the head of the
Church of England. In practice, as a result of a long evolutionary process, these
powers have changed. Today the Queen acts only on the advice of her Ministers
which she cannot constitutionally ignore.
One of the most important of these powers is the duty of appointing the
Prime Minister. No Bill can become law until it receives the Royal Assent. Nobody but the Queen can summon or dissolve Parliament. The Prime Minister
must inform the Queen of all decisions.
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Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926. Being the elder daughter of King
George VI, she succeeded to the throne on the death of her father in 1952. She
was married in 1947 to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen’s heir is
Charles, Prince of Wales, born in 1948.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a parliamentary monarchy. The power of the British monarch is limited by Parliament. The
organs of government in the United Kingdom are:
the highest legislative system consists of the Queen and Parliament and is
the supreme authority of the state;
the highest executive system consists of the Cabinet of Ministers who are
responsible for initiating and directing national policy.
The highest legislative power belongs to Parliament which consists of two
chambers: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The main function of
Parliament is law-making.
The Government is formed by the party that wins the election and obtains
the majority of seats in the House of Commons. The second largest party becomes the official Opposition with its own leader and the Shadow Cabinet.
The Prime Minister is the leader of the party that has a majority in the
House of Commons. He (or she) appoints ministers and forms the Cabinet, consisting of 20 ministers. Each Member of the Cabinet is a minister responsible for
a government department. All the affairs of the state are conducted in the name
of the Queen (or King), but it is the Prime Minister, who is the ruler of the country. He (or she) is responsible for every measure submitted to Parliament.
Any Member of Parliament (M.P.) may introduce a Bill. The Bill is
brought before the House of Commons for the first reading. When the second
reading takes place, the Member who has introduced the Bill makes his speech,
explaining new law. Other Members may support or oppose the Bill. After the
third reading the Bill goes before the House of Lords. If the Lords agree to the
Bill, it will be placed before the Queen for signature. The Bill becomes an Act
of Parliament.
Parliament in Britain is an ancient institution dating from the beginning of the
13th century. It consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The
House of Commons is elected at a general election. There are at present 651 members
of the House of Commons, who are elected every five years. Members of the House
of Commons receive a salary for their parliamentary work.
The House of Lords or the Upper House is composed of Church of England
bishops and archbishops, peers who have inherited titles and peers who are appointed
for life. Today one-third of the Lords are company directors. They include bankers,
steel magnates, and industrialists of all kinds. The Lords can only reject a Bill once.
At one end of the Chamber the Throne stands. In front of the throne there is the
Woolsack, where the Lord Chancellor sits as Speaker of the House of Lords.
37
Though Britain is a multiparty democracy its political scene is dominated
by two-party system: one party in power, the other in opposition. The Con-
servative and Liberal Parties are the oldest and until the end of the 19th century they were the parties elected to the House of Commons.
At present the main political parties are the Conservative and Labour Parties. The Conservative Party is the ruling party nowadays; the Labour Party is
the Opposition to the Conservative Party. The two-party system has evolved
since the 18th century when conflicting groups within Parliament formed opposing parties known as Tories and Whigs.
The Conservative Party often called the Tory Party, started in the 17th
century. The party defends the interests of big business, industry and landowners. The party represents those who believe in private enterprise as opposed to
state-owned enterprises.
The Labour Party was established at the beginning of the 20th century. It
was set up by the Trade-Unions and small socialist groups. This party is more
democratic. The Labour Party is the party of social justice, though its emphasis
is less on equality than on the achievement of wellbeing and opportunity for all
members of society.
Topics for discussion:
Parliamentary Monarchy
The Highest Legislative Power
The Highest Executive Power
The Main Political Parties
LECTURE 11: BRITISH MASS MEDIA
British Press
Radio and Television
The Internet
Mass Media has become an important part of the Britons life. There are
four types of Mass Media: Radio, Television, the Press and the Internet. In Britain the
mass media has three functions: information, discussion and representation.
The Britons are one of the biggest newspaper reading nations in the
world. And maybe because of this, there are lots of various papers in the UK.
There are about 130 daily and Sunday newspapers, over 2 thousand weekly and
7 thousand periodical publications in this country. The daily circulation of some
newspapers in the United Kingdom is over 15 million copies.
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The important role of the press in Britain is in forming public and political
opinion and to be an instrument for controlling and criticizing government. It is often
called “The Fourth Power”. To get more information most Britons read two different
types of newspapers, National and Regional papers.
All British newspapers are of two types: broadsheets or quality papers and tabloids or popular papers. The quality papers are mainly published for educated people.
They include the latest news and comments, articles written by professionals concerning business, politics, arts or sport reviews, etc. in a formal style. The major daily
broadsheets in the UK are the Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and some others. The Sunday papers are the Observer, the
Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph and others.
The Popular Papers provide sensational news and scandals. They use big headlines and colour pictures to attract readers. These papers are of lower standards, use
everyday English, and the reading public comes from the middle and working class.
Such popular papers are the Sun, the Daily Mirror, etc.
All the main news comes first of all from the world known News Agency
“Reuters”.
All newspapers in the UK are mostly owned by large publishing companies or
individuals. Rupert Murdoch is one of them and he owns 30 % of Britain’s national
press.
Radio and television are very important media for the “spread of information”.
British broadcasting has been based on the principle that it is a public service.
Three public bodies are responsible for TV and radio in Britain:
The BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation – TV and radio).
The ITC (Independent Television Commission – BBC TV services including
cable and satellite).
The Radio Authority – BBC radio.
The BBC was founded in 1922 and is directed by the Government. It has certain obligations: it must be politically neutral and commercially independent. That means, it
is not allowed to broadcast commercials.
BBC World is a popular international channel that offer good quality news
programmes. In the company, the journalists are experienced writers that produce
programmes of a high standard. However, there are alternative news channels which
people watch because they want a less traditional or non-western view on world
events.
The British Broadcasting Corporation runs 4 national radio stations, two national TV networks (BBC 1 and BBC 2) and a number of local radio stations. The
main television channel the BBC 1, have programmes of general interest, like entertainment, sports, news and current affairs. The BBC 2 transmits more specialized
programmes like documentaries, serious plays and films. The BBC programmes are
not financed by advertising and it gets money from licence fees, sales of programmes,
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recordings and publications. The BBC documentary presentations are known as
“high-standard-productions” worldwide.
The second broadcasting authority the Independent Broadcasting Authority
(IBA) was set up to coordinate independent television and radio stations. The IBA
owns Channel 4 and 5, which are financed by commercial advertising. The British
also receive programmes by cable and satellite television.
Today the Internet offers more variety than other means of mass media. One
World is an Internet site which has stories about the developing world and human
rights, rather than the usual stories about politics and business. The writers for this
company are often local people who write the stories for free. This non-professional
journalism is increasing and it certainly offers more choice.
Topics for discussion:
British Quality Press
Popular TV Channels
The Internet Information Sites
LECTURE 12: THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH
OF NATIONS
The End of the British Empire
The Union of Nations
In the 19th century Britain became the largest colonial power in the world. Large
territories in North America, Africa, the whole continent of Australia, New Zealand,
India and a lot of islands in the Atlantic Ocean got under the British rule. Thus, gradually, in the course of centuries, the huge British Empire came into being.
After World War I and II, as a result of national liberation movement, the British
Empire fell apart.
But economic, cultural and political ties of former colonies with Britain were too
strong and a new organisation was established: the British Commonwealth of Na-
tions. It includes 49 independent states which were formerly parts of the British Empire. The Queen is the official head of the Commonwealth. Leaders of members of
Commonwealth meet for a conference every two years in London.
Topics for discussion:
The History of the Union of Nations
The End of the British Empire
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