And Culture» or the «Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary» (Encyclopedic edition) to explain the words and expressions in bold type.
1. Across the street there is a permanent settlement of dissatisfied people and crazies, living in cardboard boxes, protesting at the Central Intelligence Agency controlling their thoughts from outer space. (Well, wouldn’t you?) There was also a guy panhandling for quarters. Can you believe that? Right there in our nation’s capital, right where Nancy Reagan could see them from her bedroom window.
Washington’s most famous feature is the Mall, a broad grassy strip of parkland which stretches for a mile or so from the Capitolbuilding at the eastern end to the Lincoln Memorial at the western side of the Potomac. The dominant landmark is the Washington Monument. Slender and white, shaped like a pencil, it rises 555 feet above the park. It is one of the simplest and yet handsomest structures I know, and all the more impressive when you consider that its massive stones had to be brought from the Nile delta on wooden rollers by Sumerian slaves. I’m sorry, I’m thinking of the Great Pyramids in Giza. Anyway, it is a real feat of engineering and very pleasing to look at. I had hoped to go up it, but there was a long line of people, mostly restive school children, snaked around the base and some distance into the park, all waiting to squeeze into an elevator about the size of a telephone booth, so I headed east in the direction of Capitol Hill, which isn’t much of a hill at all.
2. Basil’s decision to go into the City, announced to an incredulous family in his last undergraduate year at Oxford, had not been an idle threat. He had joined a merchant bank on graduating and after only three years’ employment was already earning more than his father, who had related this fact to Robyn at Christmaswith a mixture of pride and resentment. Basil himself had not been at home for Christmas, but skiing in St Moritz. It was in fact some time since Robin had seen her brother because for their parents’ sake, they deliberately arranged their visits home to alternate rather than coincide, and they had little desire to meet elsewhere. She was struck by the change in his appearance: his face was fatter, his wavy corn‑coloured hair was neatly trimmed, and he seemed to have had his teeth capped – all presumably the results of his new affluence. Everything about him and his girlfriend signified money, from their pastel‑pale, luxuriously thick sheepskin coats that seemed to fill the threshold when she opened the front door to the red C‑registration BMW parked at the kerb behind Charles’s four‑year‑old Golf.
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Exercise 9.The following letters are written in a mixture of formal and informal styles. Rewrite the business letter in a consistently formal or unmarked style and the friendly letter in an informal style. Consult register labels in monolingual dictionaries.
1. Mrs. Jane Hobbs
Personnel Officer
Robert Donaldson and Partners
14, Manton Terrace
London, W
2 July 2002
Hi, Jane,
I’ve just seen your advertisement for a Bi‑lingual Administrative Assistant, in last Friday’s Guardian, and though it would be a good idea to apply for this post.
I am twenty‑six years old and possess a Bi‑lingual Secretary’s Diploma. At present I’m toiling for a publishing company in Vienna, but for personal reasons I would like to return to the UK.
When I was at school I specialized in languages and passed advance examinations in French, German and Italian. On leaving school I went to Hammersmith Secretarial College where I obtained my diploma. After finishing my course I spent a year in Italy where I worked as a receptionist and continued to study Italian.
Mr. Joseph Keller, the Senior Manager of IPCO International, Vienna has agreed to give you any further information you require about my work.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Sally Brook.
2. S.S.Glory of Greece
Sweet,
This is Algiers. Not very eastern. In fact it abounds in full of frogs. So it is all off with Arthur. I was right about him at first. But who I am engaged to is Robert, which is much better for all, concerned really particularly Arthur on account of what I said originally. First impressions are always right. Yes? No? Robert and I drove about all day in the Botanic gardens. And Goodness! He was Decent! Bertie got plastered and had a row with Mabel – Miss P. Again – so that’s all right too. And Robert’s lousy girl spent all day on board (with second officer). Mum bought a shawl. Bill told Lady M. about his disillusionment and she told Robert, who said: «Yes, we all know.» So, Lady M. said it was very unreticent of Bill and she had very little respect for him, and didn’t blame his wife. Or the foreigner.
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Love,
Miss Mary Spencer.
Exercise 10. Read the following passages from a) a business presentation and b) a lecture. They are written in a mixture of styles. Rewrite them in a consistently unmarked style.
1. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
First of all I’d like to express my gratitude to you for joining us today. I see that you’re all ears. I hope that by the end of the day you’ll think your precious time has been well spent.
I’m going to talk today about a new product, a new range of fax machines, and how by selling them, we can all make a lot of dough. And that I guess is the most exciting thing about it: how we can make a healthy profit.
To begin with I’ll give you some statistics. One in three organizations in the UK has a fax machine. Well, of course, what it means that two out of three organizations don’t have a fax. So, I would suggest to you that in fact the home market has hardly been touched.
Let me give you an example which serves a perfect illustration of what I have just expounded. I walked into a chain store in Leeds the other day and it was my intention to buy a Walkmanbecause my son was eager to have one. I wanted some information on that blinking thing, but the man who was trying to sell it to me didn’t have a promotional leaflet. So, I said, why, on earth, don’t you ask your office to fax that information to you. But the chap didn’t have a fax machine! More than that, in the course of our negotiation it transpired that none of 500 branches of that particular chain store was equipped with a fax machine. Think of that potential, a potential of 500 machines just from this one organization!
Now, I’ll be very much obliged to you if you look at the screen. Here I’ve listed the most important benefits of our new models.
2. Hi, guys,
last time we saw how separation in space – geographical or social – could cause a language to assume considerable variation. Today we’ll continue our discussion and concentrate on British and American variants of English.
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The modes of infiltration are fairly obvious. Personal contact has increased terrifically: in 1910, the vast majority of Britons had never spoken to an American; by 1990, few had not. Even fewer, of course, had not heard an American by 1990; the overwhelming mass of the British population hear Americans every evening – now on TV, but already from the early 1930s in the cinema. You may not believe me but American influence through the written word seems to be even more powerful.
Let me just mention a very ordinary example. A British linguist happened to notice a headline in the Daily Mirror in the mid 1950s: ‘Rocks thrown at French General’. The source was an American news agency but who was to be alerted to this by two letters ‘AP’ (Associated Press). The Daily Mirrorat that time a daily sale of five million and it is likely therefore that around ten million British readers absorbed that headline: ten million who were thus propelled along the road to learning that you no longer needed to be a fairy‑tale giant to throw rocks. The linguist duly reported the headline to a class of British students the next day and they shared his interest. Ten years later, in the mid 1960s, he repeated the story to a similar group of 19‑year‑olds and they could not see the point of what he was saying. In other words, already to young people in 1965 the American sense of ‘rocks’ as small throwable stones was thoroughly familiar, the older British restriction forgotten or never known.
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