商务英语 1 Unit4

1、,2,keeping up with the joneses,do you know these people?,theme of the unit,activation-theme,what might be the theme of this unit? guess and explain.,wise spending,superrich,wealth,bill gates founder and ex-ceo of software maker microsoft; once on the top of the rich list of the world; now concentrat

2、e on the couples charity foundation; have donated all their wealth to charities.,the beckhams british football star david beckham and his wife, the former spice girl posh spice victoria. beckham plays the midfield, and was once captain of england. victoria beckham has been very successful as a style

3、 icon.,who are they? what do you know about them?,keeping up with the joneses,what does the phrase keeping up with the joneses mean?,it refers to the desire to be seen as being as good as ones neighbors or contemporaries using the comparative benchmarks of social caste or the accumulation of materia

4、l goods.,keeping up with the joneses would be insane. the joneses filed bankruptcy last week!,my investment objective is to keep up with my neighbors, the joneses, who just won the lottery.,are there any other expressions with the same meaning?,keeping up with the gateses keeping up with the beckham

5、s,t1-warm-up,2,spot dictation,note taking,text i,1. whats the cars brand? 2. how much is it worth? 3. why is it so expensive?,you are to watch a video clip expensive car. take notes on the following points:,bugatti veyron hermes edition,$ 2.4 million before taxes,because it tries to satisfy potentia

6、l customers needs for more individualization on their cars (e.g. steering wheel leather is hand-stitched) and top quality, elegance.,text i,4. is it good timing to launch it now? 5. does it sell well?,yes, for there are always people who benefit from recession: people in oil industry and people in o

7、ther parts of the world and people who invest in other parts of the world.,yes, for only 1015% of the cars carry the signature and 5 of them have already been sold.,text i,the worlds most expensive and fastest production car has arrived in america. the bugatti veyron hermes edition costs 2.4 million

8、 dollars, and thats before taxes. today in new york i spoke to bugatti and hermes executives about the design of this car. and what makes it worth so much money? so the bugatti veyron base model retails for around 1.7 million dollars. why does a 1.7-million-dollar car need a deluxe edition? yeah, we

9、ll, thats because our customers increasingly ask for more and more individualization on their cars, and so here weve given the option by working with hermes to have really another step in individualization.,text i,at least we, we need one month to build this car. it takes one month, and it took 30 h

10、ours for the steering wheel leather, right? yeah, steering wheel is difficult because you see, you have very few space here when you have to stitch in the inside of the steering wheel, its very difficult, and you have to adjust your leather to come right into the middle on both sides. so its all don

11、e by hands. so it needs a lot of time to do that. is this a good time to launch such a kind of car? well, i mean thats a good question. but effectively america is a very important part of our market. it represents about 35% of the sales that weve already done.,text i,and in any recession, there are

12、always people that benefit from recession people involved in oil, people involved in other parts of the world, maybe people whove got investments in other part of the world. they still, still have their money. i find that across the board, really, what you find is that even in times of recession, an

13、d a slower market, people still want to have something of great quality. so if you are really only gonna be able to buy one thing, i find that people really want it to be the best thing that they can buy, whether its an hermes silk tie or whether its a bugatti veyron. so if you buy this car, do you

14、throw in an extra scarf, you know, to throw in an hermes scarf or anything?,text i,yeah! ha-ha. if you buy this car, you have a hermes ambience. so you can bring your scarves and your ties inside, no problem. but what we try to do is to bring maybe serenity, comfort, elegance, and simple ambience th

15、at will contrast with the very fast cars that it is. hermes fans have to act fast. only 1015% of bugattis 300 veyrons will carry the hermes signature. at least 5 have been sold. im elva ramirez for the wall street journal.,text i,you are to watch an interview with thomas van der kallen, the ceo of e

16、bel, a luxury watch maker. fill in the missing words.,for the very rich, an expensive watch is as much to indicate status as it is to tell the time, and despite the current economic climate, competition in the industry is as fierce as ever with image being the buzz word of the hour. it is also very

17、much about building the image . today we are not in the business of selling watches. we are in the business of building and selling an image . and that is why we work with ebel, only the best to really connect with our customers out there.,text i,its about buying an emotion , its about buying a bran

18、d, its about buying a work of art that reflects your own personality . we were actually the first luxury brand in the early 80s to get associated with tennis . after that we did a lot of formula one and a lot of golf and now we are launching a partnership with some of the very elite prestigious foot

19、ball clubs in europe, and we do that really as a strategy to promote and support our mens mechanical watches and also to build an image strongly towards men .,text i,it is a challenging economy in the united states. that is not a secret. everyone knows it. i think it is too early to tell right now w

20、hat the effect is, especially on the luxury segment of the business . definitely the december the holiday month in us has not been good, also not for the luxury end for the high end. january and february were on par with last year. so we think it is a little bit too early to tell. the big question i

21、s, how long is it going to take? is it going to be shallow or more deep? and is luxury is going to be affected as well or is luxury as a category going to be a little bit immune for it ? i think it is a little bit too early to tell. we are all watching it and we will know in a couple more months.,te

22、xt i,questions for discussion:,1. do the top luxury goods have a good market in boom times? how about in a sluggish economy? who are the potential buyers? how does economy affect their habits of consumption?,in general, top luxury goods have a good market in boom times, as its potential buyers inclu

23、de both the superrich and the rich who are anxious to show that they can keep up. a badly-performing economy might cut into the wealth of the rich, and thus affect their spending on top luxuries; but to the superrich, economy doesnt affect their consumption much. besides, even in a slow economy, the

24、re are new superrich, either in some new industries or in other parts of the world.,text i,2. among whom is the desire to compete stronger, the wealthy, the middle class or the poor? is such competition good to the society?,middle class tend to have s strong desire to compete, as the family in keepi

25、ng up with the joneses shows. however, there are two diverse trends: the upper middle class looks upward to the upper class while the lower middle class tend to use status to set themselves apart from the working class. the superrich use material possessions either to signify who they are or to set

26、themselves apart from the merely rich. on whether such competition is good, different views have been voiced.,text i,2,what is satire?,about the author,text i,about the author nick foulke,nick foulke is a historian, author and editor of various magazines and newspapers, including gq (uk), ft how to

27、spend it, vanity fair and the daily mail, etc. he is the author of numerous books, most notably dancing into battle: a social history of the battle of waterloo, dunhill by design: a very english story, and high society: the history of americas upper class.,text i,what is satire?,satire is employed i

28、n the text to highlight the authors criticism of competitive extravagant spending. what is satire?,satire is a way of talking or writing about something, in which you deliberately make them seem funny so that people will see their faults. common targets of satire include individuals (personal satire

29、), types of people, social groups, institutions, and human nature. although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humor in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit. a very common feature of satire

30、 is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm. satire works best when there is general agreement among its readers about what is right or normal.,text i,one of the names often associated with satire is that of the irish writer jonathan swift. his political satire gullivers travels is regarded as classic.,

31、text i,text i,in praise of competitive urges,you know it is springtime in london not by the arrival of swallows or the sprouting of blossoms, but by the printing of the annual sunday times rich list. this is a sort of league table for the superrich, a survey of the british wealthscape that decrees w

32、ho comes out on top. in publishing this list, the sunday times has made the acquisition of extreme wealth into a spectator sport. but being rich has always been a competitive business.,nick foulke,text i,we live in strange times. on one side the wheels are falling off the world economy; food and oil

33、 prices are shooting up while property values head in the opposite direction. yet at the other end of the socioeconomic seesaw, the big issue occupying some intelligent minds this summer is whether their superyacht is big enough. according to philippe lamblin, the ceo of privatsea, which sources lar

34、ge boats for people with large bank balances, the threshold for superyacht status used to be 30 meters. today that is not nearly enough to keep status-obsessed plutocrats from feeling inadequate. lamblin recalls joining the cruise of one of his clients and putting in,text i,at a harbor in the medite

35、rranean next to someone he knew; the problem was that the boat next to theirs was 55 meterssome 20 meters longer than the one they had been enjoying for a week. as he recalls, we went aboard for a drink, and after we left, the guy i was with said, you know what? next year we go bigger. once upon a t

36、ime, aristotle onassis dazzled the world with the christina o, which at just under 100 meters was considered a floating palace. but today, no self-respecting aspirationally minded, competitive billionaire would be so easily satisfied. eclipse, the largest yacht at present, has been reported to be al

37、most 170 meters long.,text i,the thing about luxury goods is that while they may look like boats, cars, wristwatches or works of art, they are, as often as not, scorecards. up to a certain level of luxury, there is comfort in showing each other that you can keep up, using well-known signifiers (a ce

38、rtain brand of watch, holiday destination, motorcar, etc.). but as merely rich escalates into unspeakably wealthy, people use possessions to set themselves apart from those who wish to be their peers.,text i,and it is for such people that the luxury world has created limited editions. the aquariva,

39、for instance, at 10 meters and 450,000 makes for a lovely powerboat. however, for those seeking a bit more who were prepared to pay an extra 50,000, a few years ago riva decided to make 10 special aquarivas, with a champagne cooler and a leather picnic box. according to riva, all 10 were sold on the

40、 first day of the 2006 genoa boat show. riva has learned from this lesson; it is linking up with the classic mille miglia car race to make a series of limited-edition riva boats, the first of which will be auctioned at the rally.,text i,its easy to imagine the sense of anticipation as the plutocrats

41、 compete to show who can carry off the first limited-edition rivas. the thrill of a good adversarial auction cannot be overestimated. one london dealer of russian antiques and artworks told me that he puts his most important pieces up for auction, since russian collectors find bidding against each o

42、ther a big part of the fun. such over-the-top competition can be traced back to ancient rome, which invoked laws to tame the excess. but historically those rules were often used to keep the lower classes in their place rather than to rein in the excesses of the elite.,text i,besides, the rich are an

43、 inventive bunch, and were there any attempts to restrict their spending, they would soon figure out how to circumvent them. indeed, one of the great joys of being really rich is devising new ways in which to communicate ones success. my favorite example comes from 19th-century new york. in 1864, ge

44、orge templeton strong noted in his diary that department-store magnate a. t. stewart had purchased a fifth avenue brownstone and decided to demolish it in favor of erecting a white marble palace. i suppose it will be just ten times as ugly and barbaric as its predecessor, strong wrote.,text i,howeve

45、r, stewart had the last laugh. his new york palace started a frenzy of competitive mansion-building among the late-19th- and early-20th-century rich, who chose to display their fortunes by cramming diverse architectural styles (renaissance, medieval, any number of louis, moorish, you name it) into v

46、ast houses along fifth avenue and in the resort of newport. one such gilded age hostess, so proud of her medieval fortress, was once heard to remark of blair castle, a 13th-century house: its not correct. there are a lot of mistakes. my castle is far more authentic! fortunately, the competitive foib

47、les of one generations billionaires are often eclipsed by those of the next.,text i,you know it is springtime in london not by the arrival of swallows or the sprouting of blossoms, but by the printing of the annual sunday times rich list.,what is highlighted in the sentence? what device is used to h

48、ighlight it?,what the sentence highlights is a social event, the printing of the annual sunday times rich list. to highlight its significance for the superrich and the spectators, the author pits it against natural phenomena like the arrival of swallows or the sprouting of blossoms as signifier of s

49、pringtime, and gives it an upper hand.,text i,food and oil prices are shooting up while property values head in the opposite direction.,what happens to property values? how do you know?,it falls sharply, for property values is preceded by while and followed by head in the opposite direction. since w

50、e are told that food and oil prices are shooting up, property values must stand in sharp contrast to the former.,text i,yet at the other end of the socioeconomic seesaw, the big issue occupying some intelligent minds this summer is whether their superyacht is big enough.,what do you think of the wor

51、d intelligent here? does it carry some special meaning?,it means to be sarcastic.,paraphrase the sentence.,yet in the world of the superrich, what some intelligent people care about is whether their superyacht is big enough.,text i,the thing about luxury goods is that while they may look like boats,

52、 cars, wristwatches or works of art, they are, as often as not, scorecards. up to a certain level of luxury, there is comfort in showing each other that you can keep up, using well-known signifiers (a certain brand of watch, holiday destination, motorcar, etc.),what does as often as not mean?,more o

53、ften than not; usually,paraphrase the sentence.,luxury goods may look like boats, cars, wristwatches or works of art, but they are usually symbols/signs, signifying/indicating ones wealth and social status. up to a certain level of luxury, there is comfort in showing others that you belong, either b

54、y consuming luxury goods or by following a certain lifestyle.,text i,text i,besides, the rich are an inventive bunch, and were there any attempts to restrict their spending, they would soon figure out how to circumvent them.,what do you think about the use of the word inventive? is it used in a posi

55、tive sense?,no, it is used to be ironic.,a more frequently-used expression for were there is if there were. both are for subjunctive mood; similar cases can be seen in were you, were they, etc.,text i,however, stewart had the last laugh.,paraphrase the sentence.,however, the victory went to stewart

56、in the end.,text i,his new york palace started a frenzy of competitive mansion-building among the late-19th- and early-20th-century rich, who chose to display their fortunes by cramming diverse architectural styles (renaissance, medieval, any number of louis, moorish, you name it) into vast houses a

57、long fifth avenue and in the resort of newport.,why does the author insert ., you name it in the brackets?,the author intends to mean any/every style that you could think of.,text i,paraphrase the sentence.,following his example, the turn-of-the-century rich started up a crazy competition of mansion

58、-building. they chose to show off their wealth by constructing vast houses along fifth avenue and in the resort of newport and decorating them with various architectural styles.,text i,fortunately, the competitive foibles of one generations billionaires are often eclipsed by those of the next.,parap

59、hrase the sentence.,fortunately, these competition-induced silly faults of one generations billionaires are often overshadowed by those of the next. thus they can rest assured. could you feel the satiric effect?,yes, this sentence highlights the competitive follies of the superrich.,text i,acquisition: n. the act of getting sth, especially knowledge, a skill, etc.,v. a