高级英语 第三课.doc

Lesson Three Pub talk and the kings English酒馆聊天和标准英语StyleLoose organization, which suits the theme talking about pub conversation, is the most dominant characteristic of this passage. Since the focus of this passage is on what makes for good conversation, it is natural that this passage is intentionally written in a conversatinal style. The charm of conversation is that it doesnt really start from anywhere, and no one had any idea where it will go, it just rambles around touching on many subjects or angles. This characteristic is well embodied in this passage. In addition, there is an abundance of rhetorical and linguistic devices worthy of mention, such as simile, metaphor, alliteration, sarcasm, allusion, etc. the language used in this passage is charaterized by informality, colloquialism and idioms. The passage is taken from The Washington Post, which determines its style as one that is often used in journalism. Therefore, the title reads oddly but is attractive to readers; transition paragraphs and digressions occur often and without preamble, reflecting shifting thought patterns. All these are essential ingredients of this passage, without which the style of the passage would not be well maintained.Words and phrases1 indulge in 2 delve into each others lives3 get out of bed on the wrong side 4 be on the rocks5 the alchemy of conversation 6 lay down rules7 swing fromto 8 be on wings9 out of snobbery 10 deep class rift11 scamper over 12 turn up ones noses at13 the heirs to 14 ring true15 tussle with 16 come into ones own17 be mocked by 18 say with a jeer19 lay down as an edict 20 make immune to21 slips and slides 22 sit up at23 bind the conversation 24 let it flow freely25 leap back in time 26 raise the subject27 talk sense 28 think oneself back into the shoes ofHenry Fairlie1 Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However intricate the ways in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything that deserve the name of conversation. And conversation is an activity which is found only among human beings.在所有的活动当中，聊天最有利于增进彼此之间的友谊，而且它是人类独有的一种活动。动物之间的信息交流方式，无论多么错综复杂，都称不上聊天。2 The charm of conversation is that it doesnt really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good conversation is the person who has something to say. Conversation is not for making a point. Argument man often be a part of it, but the purpose of the argument is not to convince. There is no winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists are those who are prepared to lose. Suddenly they see the moment for one of their best anecdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on and the opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go.Conversation is not for persuading others to accept our idea or point of view. In a conversation we should not try to establish the force of an idea or argument.In fact, the person who really enjoys and is skilled at conversation will not argue to win or force others to accept his point of view.聊天没有事先约定的话题，这就是聊天的魅力；它时而似小溪蜿蜒流淌，时而似江河急速奔腾；有时火花迸射，有时炙热燃烧。谁也无法预料话题最终会转到哪里。成功聊天的大禁忌是有人觉得“有大事要说”。聊天不是为了阐述观点。争论只是聊天的部分内容，但其目的并不是要说服对方。聊天不存在孰是孰非，输赢胜负。事实上，真正善于聊天的人往往是随时准备让步的人。有时他们会突然碰上可以讲奇闻异事的机会，但一转眼，话题又转到别的事情上去了，稍纵的机会随之即逝，对此他们听之任之。3 Perhaps it is because of my up-bringing in English pubs that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each others lives. They are companions, not intimates. The fact that their marriages may be on the rocks, or that their love affairs have been broken or even that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern. They are like the musketeers of Dumas who, although they lived side by side with each other, did not delve into each others lives or the recesses of their thoughts and feelings.People who meet each other for a drink in the bar of a pub are not intimate ifriends for they are not deeply absorbed or engrossed in each others lives.In serious trouble; served with ice cubes.Be cross or in a bad temper for the day.或许是我从小在英国小酒馆所受到的熏陶吧，我觉得酒馆聊天别有韵味。酒馆里的酒友们相互之间并不十分了解，他们只是酒伴，不是密友。他们当中或许有人婚姻“触礁”，或许恋爱受挫，甚至遇到倒霉的事，但这些都无关紧要。就像大仲马笔下的火枪手，他们虽然有共同的生活，却从不过问彼此的私生活，也不揣摩对方内心的秘密。4 It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it-she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her mind-but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk.有一天晚上的情形就是如此。人们正在海阔天空地聊着，从平凡的琐事谈到木星趣闻，漫无主题，也无需主题。突然奇迹出现，人们的闲聊集中到一个话题上。我不曾记得这个同伴谈及该话题的原因是什么-显然这个话题并不是她来酒吧前事先准备好的，也不是什么非说不可的要紧话-她那句话是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然脱口而出的。5 “Someone told me the other day that the phrase, the Kings English, Was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly use. ”“前几天，有个人告诉我，标准英语 这个短语是个带贬义的批评用语，意思是指人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。”6 The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denials, and of course the promise, made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the morning. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be settled; it could still go ignorantly on.The conversation could go on without anybody knowing who was right or wrong.顿时如星火燎原，谈话的气氛迅速热烈起来。有人赞成，有人反对，有人不以为然。最后，当然少不了要像处理所有这类谈话分歧的方式一样，由大家说定第二天早上去查证一下。于是，问题便迎刃而解了。不过，聊天是不需要解决问题的，大伙儿仍然可以不分孰是孰非，继续聊下去。7 It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of “the kings English”, which produced some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there would be resistance to the Kings English in such a society. There is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for “English as it should be spoken.”原来有个澳大利亚人告诉她标准英语应做那样解释。得知此情，有人便开始尖酸刻薄地评论起来，说囚犯的后代这样胡说八道不足为奇。就这样，在5分钟之内，我们便像到澳大利亚游览了一番。在那样的社会里，“标准英语”当然不受欢迎。每当上流社会想给“规范的英语口语”制定一些条条框框时，总会遭到下层社会的抵制。8 Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors. The conversation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings.The conversation became spirited and exciting.看看撒克逊农民和征服他们的诺尔曼统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。于是聊天的话题从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转到了12世纪的英国农民。孰对孰错，此时无关紧要，聊天如鸟，凭空飞翔。9 Someone took one of the best-known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on our tables we use French words; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we use Anglo-Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork on the table. They are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef. Chickens become poultry, and a calf becomes veal. Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, the English we used in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in the culture of England after the Norman conquest. These animals are called cattle when they are alive and feeding in the fields; but when we sit down at the table to eat, we call their meat beef.有人举出了一个众人皆知，但仍能发人深省的例子。我们谈到饭桌上的肉时，用的是法语词；而说到提供这些肉食的牲畜时，则用安格鲁-撒克逊词。猪圈里的活猪叫pig，而饭桌上的猪肉叫pork（来自法语pore）；田里放牧着的牛叫cattle，席上享用的牛肉叫beef（来自法语boeuf）；chicken用作肉食时变成了poultry（来自法语poulet）；而牛犊加工成肉则变成了veal（来自法语veau）。即便我们的菜单上没有因为趋炎附势而使用的法语，我们所使用的英语也仍然是诺尔曼式的英语。这一切都像我们表明：诺尔曼人征服英国后，英国文化中存在着深刻的阶级裂痕。10 The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their fields and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of course turned up their noses at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin. Rejected; scorned.撒克逊农民种地养畜，却吃不起自己蓄养的畜肉，肉全被送到了诺曼人的桌上。农民只能吃在地里乱窜的兔子。由于兔子肉便宜，那些诺曼贵族自然嗤之以鼻，因此，活蹦乱跳的兔子与烹调好的饭桌上的兔子都叫rabbit，而没有变成由法语lapin派生来的某个词。11 As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the Wake. “The Kings English”-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it. The new ruling class by using French instead of English made it difficult for the English to accept or absorb the culture of the rulers.Be in anothers position今天，当我们听到有关双语教育的讨论时，我们应该设身处地地为当时的撒克逊农民想一想。新的统治阶级用法语来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围竖起了一道文化障碍。在撒克逊领神们-比如觉醒者赫里沃德（Hereward the Wake）-的领导下，英国人民起来造反了；英国人民一定深深地体会到了文化上的屈辱。“标准英语”-如果那时就有这个说法的话-已经变成了法语。而900年后的今天，我们在美国这儿仍然继承了这种法语的影响。12 So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. ”Queens English” is found in Nashs “Strange Newes of the intercepting Certaine Letters” in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, “thou clipst the Kinges English.” Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He uses it once, When Mistress Quickly in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” says of her master coming home in a rage, “here will be an old abusing of Gods patience and the Kings English,” and it rings true.那晚闲聊过后，第二天早上便有人去查阅了词典。这个短语在16世纪就有人使用过。在纳什1593年的作品截获信函奇闻中就发现了“标准英语”（Queens English）的提法；1602年德克写到某人时，这样说：“你把标准英语简化了。”莎士比亚的作品中是否出现过这个短语呢？如果出现过，那就证明这个短语在当时已经通用。他在温莎的风流娘们中使用过一次，作品中快嘴桂嫂讲到她家老爷回家时的盛怒，说：“少不了一顿臭骂，上帝都容忍不了，“标准英语”不知被他糟蹋成啥样！”老爷回家后的情形，果不其然，被她说中。13 One could have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, of tussling with the Normans and the Angevins and Plantagenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror. English had come royally into its own.The English language received proper recognition and was used by the King once more. Come to its own:receive what probably belongs to one, especially acclaim or recognition.我们有理由认为这个人短语就是在那个时期形成的。经过五个世纪的发展，在顽强诺曼人，安如王朝及金雀花王朝的法语后英语终于同化了法语。被征服者终于征服了统治者。英语最后回归了国语的地位。14There was a Kings (Queens) English to be proud of. The Elizabethans blew on it as on a dandelion clock, and its seeds multiplied, an floated to the ends of the earth. “The Kings English” was no longer a form of what would now be regarded as racial discrimination.这样便有了一种英国人引以自豪的“标准英语”。伊丽莎白时代的人犹如吹蒲公英一般，不费吹灰之力就使“标准英语”遍及全球。“标准英语”这个短语再也不被视为今天所谓种族歧视的一种形式。15 Yet there had been something in the remark of the Australian. The phrase has always been used a little pejoratively and even facetiously by the lower classes. One feels that even Mistress Quickly-a servan-is saying that Dr Calus-her master-will lose his control and speak with the vigor of ordinary folk. If the Kings English is “Enlish as it should be spoken,” the claim is often mocked by the underlings, when they say with a jeer “English as it should be spoke.” The rebellion against a cultural dominance is still there.The phrase, the Kings English, has always been used disparagingly and jokingly by the lower classes. The working people very often make fun of the proper and formal language of the educatd people.There still exists in the working people, as in the early Saxon peasants, a spirit of oppositiono to the cultural authority of the ruling class.不过，那个澳大利亚人的解释也不无道理。下层阶级使用这个短语时，总是带有点儿蔑视和戏虐的意思。我们发现就连快嘴桂嫂这样一个侍女也会说，主人凯厄斯大夫发起脾气来会控制不住自己，说百姓的粗话。如果说“标准英语”等同于“规范的英语口语”的话，下层百姓往往会对这种说法大加嘲弄，故意把“规范的口语”说成“鬼范的口语”。对于统治阶级的文化专制，下层百姓仍然极为反感并予以抵制。16 There is always a great danger, as Carlyle put it, that “words will harden into things for us.” Words are not themselves a reality, but only representations of it, and a class representation of reality. Perhaps it is worth trying to speak it, but it should not be laid down as an edict, and made immune to change from below.There is always a great danger that we might forget that words are only symbols and take them for things they are supposed to represent.始终存在一种危机，诚如卡莱尔所说，就是“词语会物化为具体的事物”。词语本身并不代表现实，仅仅是代表现实的符号而已。与诺曼人的盎格鲁法语一样，“标准英语”也只不过是表达现实的符号。也许值得人们努力去学着说，但既不该立为法规，敢不敢完全拒绝下层社会的修改。17 I have an unending love affair with dictionaries-Auden once said that all a writer needs is a pen, plenty of paper and “the best dictionaries he can afford”-but I agree with the person who said that dictionaries are instruments of commom sense. The Kings English is a model-a rich and intructive one-but it ought not to be an ultimate.我对词典一直有着无法了断的情节-奥登曾说过，一个作家全部所需的是一支笔，足够的纸张，还有“他买得起的最好的词典”-但我更赞成词典是一种常识工具的说法。“标准英语”是一种典范-一种内容丰富且有指导意义的典范-但并不是强加给人们的最后通牒。18 So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most educated and the most literate, the Kings English slips and slides in conversation. There is no worse conversationalist than the one who punctuates his words as he speaks as if her were writing, or even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of prose for print. When E.M.Foster writes of “the sinister corridor of our age,” we sit up at the the vividness of the phrase, the force and even terror in the image. But if E.M.Fosters sat in our living room and said, “we are all following each other down the sinister corridor of our age,” we would be justified in asking him to leave.Even the most educated and literate people use non-standard, informal, colloquial English in their conversation.Become suddenly alert.至此，我们又回到了先前的话题。即便学识最广博，文学造诣最深的人，他们他闲聊中使用标准英语时也会口误，也会犯错。那些说话想写文章一样句逗分明，或者想写散文发表一样咬文嚼字的人，聊起天来都是最糟的。爱德华.摩根.福斯特写有“当今时代的阴森恐怖的长廊”，看到这里，我们定会因其用语之生动及其产生的生动有力乃至恐怖的形象而拍案叫绝。但若福斯特坐在我们会客厅里说：“我们大家正一个接一个步入当今时代的阴森恐怖的长廊”，我们就完全有理由请他离开。19 Great authors are constantly being asked by foolish people to talk as they write. Other people may celebrate the lofty conversations in which the great minds are supposed to have indulged in the great salons of 18th century Paris, but one suspects that the great minds were gossiping and judging the quality of the food and the wine. Henault, then the great president of the First Chamber of the Paris Parlement, complained bitterly of the “terrible sauces” at the salon of Mme.Deffand, and went on t observe that the only difference between her cook and the supreme chef, Brinvilliers, lay in their intentions.一些愚蠢的人经常要求大作家们谈话和写作风格一致，字字珠玑。还有人对18世纪巴黎文艺沙龙里文人墨客的高谈阔论推崇备至，但或许这些文人墨客们也是在拉家常，谈论饭菜和酒水的好坏。巴黎大法院第一庭长埃诺在德芳侯爵夫人家的沙龙里做客时，曾抱怨“调料糟透了”，并接着说侯爵夫人家的厨子与总厨师之间的唯一区别在于居心不同罢了。20 The one place not to have dictionaries is in a sitting room or at a dining table. Look the things up the next morning, but not in the middle of the conversation. Otherwise one will bind the conversation, one will not let it flow freely here and there. There would have been no conversation the other evening if we had been able to settle at once the meaning of “the Kings English”. We would never have gone to Australia, or leaped back in time to the Norman Conquest.客厅里或餐桌上是无需摆放词典的。闲聊中若遇到需查实的问题可留到第二天早上再说，而不要话说一半去查词典。否则，聊天就会受到束缚，无法自由转换话题。那天晚上，如果我们当场就能弄明白“标准英语”的意义，也就不会有那一场交谈辩论，我们也就不可能“溜了一趟”澳大利亚，或者时光倒转，“回到”诺曼征服者的时代。21And there would have been nothing to think about the next morning. Perhaps above all, one would not have been engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject, wondering more about her. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin all conversation.而且，我们也就没有什么要留到第二天早上去思考了。也许，尤为重要的是：如果我们当场就能解决“标准英语”的问题，就没有人对那个引出的话题火枪手那么感兴趣，也不会想多了解她的情况了。教“黑猩猩”说话的难度就在于：它们或许想说出一些堂而皇之的话来，致使聊天索然无味。NOTES1. Fairlie: Henry Fairlie (1924-) is a contributing editor to The New Republic as well as a contributor to other journals. He is author of: The Kennedy Promise ; The Life of Politics ; and The Spoiled Child of the Western World. 2. The Washington Post: an influential and highly respected U.S. newspaper with a national distribution 3. pub: contracted from public house ; in Great Britain a house licensed for the sale of alcoholic drinks4. musketeers of Dumas: characters created by the French novelist, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) in his novel The Three Musketeers5. Jupiter: referring perhaps to the planet Jupiter and the information about it gathered by a U.S. space probe6. descendants of convicts: in 1788 a penal settlement was established at Botany Bay, Australia by Britain. British convicts, sentenced to long term imprisonment, were often transported to this penal settlement. Regular settlers arrived in Australia about 1829.7. Saxon churls: a farm laborer or peasant in early England; a term used pejoratively by the Norman conquerors to mean an ill-bred, ignorant English peasant8. Norman conquerors: the Normans, under William I, Duke of Normandy (former territory of N. France) conquered England after defeating Harold, the English king, at the Battle of Hastings (1066).9. lapin: French word for rabbit10.Hereward the Wake: Anglo-Saxon patriot and rebel leader. He rose up against the Norman conquerors but was defeated and slain (1071).11.Nash: Thomas Nash (1567-1601), English satirist. Very little is known of his life .Although his first publications appeared in 1589,it was not until Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil (1592),a bitter satire on contemporary society ,that his natural and vigorous style was fully developed .His other publications include: Summer s Last Will and Testament; The