Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:США. Этические проблемы. Учебное пособие на английском языке.pdf
11. There were rumors of bombings in the northern part of the
country.
12. Federal law forbids discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or
color.
13. He believed his boss had violated the age discrimination law.
14. The monkeys were easily able to discriminate between the
different objects, according to their visual appearance.
15. Discriminating travelers return to Italy year after year.
16. Compatible couples generally share the same values and have
similar lifestyles and goals.
17. Unfortunately he bought a printer that was not compatible
with his computer.
18. After a week together on vacation it was clear that they were
totally incompatible.
19. The centre gives advice to women who find the demands of
marriage and work incompatible.
20. Conventional wisdom holds that more money for education
means better schools for children.
21. A microwave cooks food much faster than a conventional
oven.
22. He is a young man with conventional tastes in clothes and
music.
23. Acupuncture may work, but I still believe in a more
conventional approach to medicine.
24. The governor could be pressured to resign by a vote of
censure.
25. Angry journalists accused the government of censorship of
free speech.
26. Any films that are shown here have to pass government
censorship.
27. From that fate no trader was immune.
28. Big losses due to theft and fraud forced the company to close.
29. Landale is calling for more laws to protect consumers against
fraud.
291
30. Students have spoken of their growing frustration with school
administrators.
31. The discussion sessions help patients deal with some of the
frustrations they may be feeling.
32. At that time we had to make the assumption that the disease
was spreading and take action to stop it.
33. Eden acted on the assumption that his allies would support
him.
34. Labels on clothes should be removed for kids with sensitive
skin.
35. At one time he was given the label ‘communist’ for his
opposition to the Vietnam war.
36. Stacy blushes at the label “father” of the institution, but
admits he likes it.
37. Children who are labeled “slow” usually get less attention
from teachers.
III. Paraphrase using the active vocabulary:
1. Fertilizer stimulates leaf growth.
2. The company encourages women and minorities whenever
possible.
3. Have you heard the gossip about him and his secretary?
4. A test is useful for differentiating those students who have
reached a higher level from those at a lower level.
5. The two businesses have similar aims, and a merger would be to
everyone’s advantage.
6. They’ve always seemed so different — no wonder they’re
getting a divorce.
7. My mother was very traditional — she didn’t approve of my
hippie lifestyle.
8. Many community leaders have called for control of the Internet.
9. It was weeks before they realized that the young man who had
charmed them all was a lie.
10. Poetry helps me express some of the disappointments I feel.
11. She carefully tagged each jar with its contents and the date.
292
IV. Answer the following questions using the active vocabulary:
1. What qualities are necessary for an employee to get promoted?
2. What kinds of goods are usually promoted on TV?
3. Do you expect to get a job with good prospects of promotion?
4. Have you ever heard of someone being sued for slander?
5. How can rumors influence people’s life? Give examples from
your own experience.
6. Is discrimination relevant for our society? Prove your point of
view.
7. What is the difference between segregation and discrimination?
Consult a dictionary.
8. Do you pay a lot of attention to compatibility of colors when
you decide what to wear to school, work, party, etc.?
9. Do you think that spouses should be compatible people?
10. Do you prefer conventional medicine or untraditional methods
of healing?
11. Should censorship be encouraged in a democratic society?
12. What categories of population in Russia are immune from arrest?
13. Have you ever come across a credit card fraud?
14. When do people feel a sense of frustration?
15. Can you think of a situation when it was difficult for you to
get a word in edgeways?
16. Is it easy for you to make judgments or assumptions about
other people?
17. Do you always pay attention to labels when you buy new
clothes?
18. Do designer labels guarantee the quality of what you get?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How can freedom of speech coexist with the existing
limitations on it?
2. How relative is freedom of speech in American society?
3. Freedom of speech in Russia and in the U.S.A. – is it the same
notion?
4. Are censorship and freedom of speech friends or enemies?
293
TEXT 2
AMERICAN ENGLISH TODAY
by Bill Bryson
Early in 1993, Maryland discovered that it had a problem when
someone noticed that the state motto, Fatti maschii, parole femine
(“Manly deeds, womanly words”), was not only odd and fatuous, but
also sexist. The difficulty was that it was embossed on a lot of
expensive state stationery and engraved on buildings and monuments,
and anyway it had been around for a long time. After much debate, the
state’s legislators hit on an ingenious compromise. Rather than change
the motto, they decided to change the translation. Now when
Marylanders see Fatti maschii, parole femine, they are to think,
“Strong deeds, gentle words.” Everyone went to bed happy.
Would that all issues of sensitivity in language were so easily
resolved! In fact, however, almost nothing in recent years has excited
more debate or awakened a greater polarity of views than the vaguely
all-embracing issue that has come to be known as political
correctness. The term was coined in 1975 by Karen DeCrow,
president of the National Organization for Women, but not until about
1990 did it begin to take on an inescapably pejorative tone. Since that
time, newspapers and journals have devoted acres of space to reports
that have ranged, for the most part, from the mildly derisive to the
openly antagonistic. Some treated the issue as a kind of joke (a typical
example: Newsweek report in 1991 that pondered whether restaurant
customers could expect soon to be brought a womenu by a waitron or
waitperson), while others saw it as something much graver. Under
leading headlines like “The New Ayatollahs” (U.S. News & World
Report), “Politically Correct Speech: An Oxymoron” (Editor &
Publisher), and “The Word Police” (Library Journal), many
publications have assayed the matter with a mixture of outrage and
worry.
Most of the arguments distill down to two beliefs: that the English
language is being shanghaied by people of linguistically narrow
views, threatening one of our most valued constitutional freedoms,
294
and that their verbal creations are burdening us with ludicrously
sanitized neologisms that are an embarrassment to civilized discourse.
All too often overlooked in discussions of the matter is that at the
root of the bias-free language movement lies a commendable
sentiment: to make language less wounding or demeaning to those
whose sex, race, physical condition, or circumstances leave them
vulnerable to the raw power of words.
That a subtle and pervasive sexual bias exists in English seems to
me unarguable. Consider any number of paired sets of words —
master/mistress, bachelor/spinster, governor/governess, courtier/
courtesan — and you can see in an instant that male words generally
denote power and eminence, and that their female counterparts just as
generally convey a sense of submissiveness or inconsequence. That
many of the conventions of English usage — referring to all humans
as mankind, using a male pronoun in constructions like to each his
own and everyone has his own view matter — show a similar tilt
toward the male is also, I think, beyond question. There is no question
that English is historically a male-oriented language.
The difficulty, as many critics of political correctness have pointed
out, is that the avoidance of gender-specific constructions contorts the
language, flouts historical precedent, and deprives us of terms of
longstanding utility. People have been using man, mankind,
forefathers, founding fathers, a man’s home is his castle, and other
such expressions for centuries. Why should we stop now?
For two reasons. First, because venerability is no defense. Ninety
years ago, moron was an unexceptionable term — indeed, it was a
medically precise designation for a particular level of mental acuity.
Its loose, and eventually cruel, application banished it from polite
society in respect for the subnormal. Dozens of other words that were
once unselfconsciously bandied about — piss, cretin, nigger — no
longer meet the measure of respectability. Just because a word or
expression has an antiquity or was once widely used does not confer
on it some special immunity.
Moreover, such words are often easily replaced. People, humanity,
human beings, society, civilization, and many others provide the same
295
service as mankind without ignoring half the populace. Twenty years
ago, chair for chairman sounded laughable to most people. Ms., if not
absurd, was certainly contentious. Most newspapers adopted it only
fitfully and over the protests of white-haired men in visors. Today,
both appear routinely in publications throughout the English-speaking
world and no one thinks anything of it.
What I think is the greatest weakness of the bias-free usage
movement — namely, that often it doesn’t know where to stop. The
admirable urge to rid the language of its capacity to harm can lead to a
zealousness that is little short of patronizing. Maggio, for instance,
cautions us not to “use left-handed metaphorically; it perpetuates
subtle but age-old negative associations for those who are physically
left-handed.” I would submit that a left-handed person (and I speak as
one myself) would have to be sensitive to the point of neurosis to feel
personally demeaned by a term like left-handed compliment.
Similarly she cautions against using black in a general sense —
black humor, black eye, black mark, blacksmith (though not, oddly,
blackout) — on the grounds that most black words have a negative
connotation that subtly reinforces prejudice. Or as she puts it:
“Avoiding words that reinforce negative connotations of black will
not do away with racism, but it can lessen the everyday pain these
expressions cause readers.” I cannot pretend to speak for black people,
but it seems to me unlikely that many can have experienced much
“everyday pain” from knowing that the person who shoes horses is
called a blacksmith.
Even “violent expressions and metaphors” —to kill two birds with
one stone, how does that strike you, to knock someone dead, smash
hit, one thing triggers another, to kick around an idea — are to be
excluded from our speech on the grounds that they help to perpetuate
a culture sympathetic to violence.
Such assertions, I would submit, are not only an excessive
distraction from the main issues, but dangerously counterproductive.
They invite ridicule — and, as we have seen, there is no shortage of
people who ache to provide it.
296
A final charge often laid against the bias-free speech movement —
that it promotes a bias of its own — is also not always easy to refute.
Maggio outlaws many expressions like a man’s home is his castle
(and rightly in my view) but defends a woman’s work is never done
on the grounds that “this is particularly true and usually more true than
of a man with a paid job and a family.” Just because a sentiment is
true doesn’t make it nonsexist. (And anyway it isn’t true.) Others take
matters much further. When the University of Hawaii proposed a
speech code for students and staff, Mari Matsuda, a professor of law,
endorsed the idea but added the truly arresting belief “Hateful verbal
attacks upon dominant group members by victims is permissible.”
With respect, I would suggest that consideration, reasonableness,
and a sense of fairness are qualities that apply to all members of a
speech community, not just to those who hold the reins.
(Abridges from: Made in America)
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
acre
Ms
Newsweek
political correctness
COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. What was wrong with the state motto of Maryland and how was
the situation resolved?
2. When was the term political correctness coined?
3. When did political correctness become especially relevant?
4. What kind of attitude did newspapers and magazines in America
demonstrate towards PC?
5. What is the basis of the bias-free language?
297
6. What examples of a subtle and pervasive sexual bias in English
does the author give?
7. Why is it evident to the author that English is historically a
male-oriented language?
8. How does the avoidance of gender-specific constructions
contort the language? Why does the author believe that they should
not be used?
9. What is the greatest weakness of the bias-free usage movement?
10. What are “violent expressions and metaphors”? Give
examples.
11. What is your attitude towards PC — is it a positive or a
negative trend?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
motto (n) — a short sentence or phrase giving a rule on how to
behave, which expresses the aims or beliefs of a person, school, or
institution
stationery (n) — 1. paper for writing letters, usually with matching
envelopes: a letter on hotel stationery 2. materials used for writing,
such as paper, pens, pencils, etc.
pejorative (adj) — a word or expression used to show disapproval or
to insult someone: For hard-line Republicans, the word ‘liberal’
had become a pejorative term.
outrage (n) — 1. (uncountable) a feeling of great anger and shock:
The response to the jury’s verdict was one of outrage.
outrage at/over – environmentalists' outrage at plans to develop the
coastline
public/popular outrage: The case generated public outrage.
2. (countable) an event that produces great anger and shock, esp.
because it is cruel or violent: bomb outrages in London; This is an
outrage!
discourse (n) — 1. (countable) a serious speech or piece of writing on
a particular subject: discourse on/upon; a discourse on art
2. (uncountable) serious conversation or discussion between
298
people: Candidates should engage in serious political discourse.
3. (uncountable) the language used in particular types of speech or
writing: a study of spoken discourse
bias (n) — 1. a tendency to be in favor of or against something or
someone without knowing enough to be able to judge fairly.:
political/gender/racial, etc. bias; Students were evaluated without
bias or favoritism.
bias against/towards/in favor of: It's clear that the company has a
bias against women and minorities.
2. (singular) a natural skill or interest in one type of thing: Lydia
has a strong artistic bias.
demeaning (adj) — showing less respect for someone than they
deserve, or making someone feel embarrassed or ashamed;
degrading: demeaning to
vulnerable (adj) — 1. (a place or thing) weak; not well protected,
able to be easily attacked.: They were in a vulnerable condition.
2. (of people and their feelings). He took advantage of me when I
was most vulnerable. We work mainly with the elderly and other
vulnerable groups. Children are most vulnerable to abuse within
their own home.
a place, thing, or idea that is vulnerable is easy to attack or
criticize: The fort was vulnerable to attack from the north. Their
theories were badly thought out and very vulnerable to ridicule.
counterpart (n) — someone or something that has the same job or
purpose as someone or something else in a different place
to be little short of — used to emphasize that something is very good,
very surprising, etc: Her recovery seemed nothing short of a
miracle. The results are little short of astonishing.
prejudice (n) — (uncountable and countable) an unreasonable dislike
and distrust of people who are different from you in some way,
especially because of their race, sex, religion etc,; used to show
299
disapproval: Women still face prejudice in the workplace. It takes a
long time to overcome these kinds of prejudices.
prejudice against — a cultural prejudice against fat people
racial/sexual prejudice: Asian pupils complained of racial
prejudice at the school.
to perpetuate (v) — to make a situation, attitude, etc. especially bad,
continue to exist for a long time, preserve: an educational system
that perpetuates the divisions in society
EXERCISES
I. Translate into Russian paying attention to the active
vocabulry:
1. “Be prepared” is the motto of the Boy Scouts.
2. The school’s motto was “Work hard and play hard.”
3. “Try before you buy” is a good motto.
4. The rest of the money went toward books, equipment,
stationery and field trips.
5. He used the word ‘girl’ in the pejorative sense when referring
to the women who worked for him.
6. Any attempts to lessen his prison sentence will cause public
outrage.
7. It’s an outrage that men who didn’t finish high school
sometimes earn more than women with college education.
8. Rational discourse on public policy is vital to a democracy.
9. Conservatives say the press has a liberal bias.
10. Any attempt to dodge this is professionally demeaning and
destructive of a trustful caring relationship with the client.
11. He hated himself for these demeaning fantasies, and was
reasonably afraid that she might suspect he nourished them.
12. Ground floor windows are particularly vulnerable, and secure
locks should be fitted.
13. His victims are vulnerable young women.
14. I’ve been feeling very vulnerable since we broke up.
300