Lectures of The Linguistic Culture (798449), страница 27
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Americans have always been concerned with making the chores of everyday life less tiresome and distasteful. Inventors, businessmen, designers, neighborhood initiatives and interest groups, public officials and private citizens – all try to make things better, more efficient, more readily available, more convenient. From mail order shopping to drive-in banking, from durable-press materials for clothes to computerized services and take-out food, Americans have shown their preference for a convenient lifestyle.
In the average American home, there is a great amount of activity, of coming and going, all happening at once. For the parents, there are perhaps courses at the local evening school or college. There are bridge and bowling clubs and golf leagues. There are PTA (Parent Teacher Association) meetings. The church is having a bake sale, a car wash, or a “potluck” dinner (everyone contributes a dish). The social life of American children is often hectic as well. One child is off to a party, another to the music or sport classes.
One of the features of American life is volunteer work. According to the statistical Gallup polls, about 84 million Americans both adults and teenagers donated part of their time as volunteers. Some of this work is done through volunteer organizations and clubs; some is on a personal basis. Teenagers, for example, often volunteer to work in hospitals – so-called “candy- stripers”, from their striped uniforms.
At the same time, many American middle-class families expect their children to find part-time jobs, especially as they enter their teens. This might be work in the local supermarket or service station, mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, or babysitting. The idea seems to be that the work experience is “good for the kids». One effect on American society is that middle-class children can do menial work without losing face. This also effects customer-employee relations: the kid who just packed your groceries or filled your tank could be your neighbor’s son or daughter. In general, Americans feel that young people should appreciate the value of work and learn how to stand on their own feet.
It is necessary to mark that since the 1960s there has appeared a great and drastic shift in seemingly ideal “puritan” moral behavior of the middle class young people in the USA. the “new morality., characterized by violence, sexual permissiveness and cheating, drug and alcohol abuse. According to a federal finding of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism a minimum of 10 million Americans has alcoholic-connected problems, more than 1.1 million youths between the ages 12 and 17 have “serious drug-abuse problems”. According to the Police Foundation there are some 40 million handguns in America and according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the chance of being victimized by violent crime has increased 24% since 1980 and more than 50% during the last 10 years. One of the trends of the “new morality” among ypoung Americans is close relationships and living together before marriage. A study by the National Foundation released in 1995 shows that between 1970 and 1993 birth to mothers under 16 rose by 80%.
A steady progression of life-changing landmarks: the automobile, the radio, cars,.” TV and movie era” may result in even greater future changes in lives and attitudes of Americans.
The Car in American Life
The fact that the Americans can’t do without a car is well known to everybody. One primary reason for having cars is that the public transportation in the USA is not so well developed as in Europe. Bus lines in the US suburbs are unprofitable, bus routes are scarce and the scheduling is very unstable. So, willy-nilly people have to use their own cars.
The car is such an important part of American life that for many people it would be impossible to manage without it. The car is inherently built into the tissue of American life Today only really poor families and those too old to drive do not own a motor vehicle. But for the 87 % who do have cars, there is hardly any need to leave them.. There are banks, fast-food restaurants, and movie theaters, where you can withdraw money, eat a meal, or see a film without ever getting out of your car. There are even drive-in churches. It’s surprising that some people remember how to walk at all. Taking a job or entering a college leads to an immediate follow-up of buying a car. The car is also an absolute necessity for the rural or suburban parent, often the mother, who goes shopping for the family and takes the children to after-school activities. Some people wind up driving many miles a day doing errands and taking their children from one place to another. When it comes to vacation time, many American families prefer to drive, sometimes very long distances. Even if they go by plane, when they arrive, they often rent a car (fly-drive).
American society’s dependence on automobiles creates a lot of serious problems, such as air-pollution, the growing accident rates, traffic jams. Cities, towns and states spend tremendous resources constantly repairing and expanding their streets, roads, and highways. As some roads have been expanded to their limit, there is nowhere to go but up, so in some places “double-decker” appeared, that is, two-tiered highways.
As the automobile plays such a large part in American life, it has a great impact on American economy. Now the manufacture of automobiles in America is becoming more and more international. Japanese companies like Honda and Toyota do not just sell cars in America, they have their own plants where they build them. The major American automobile companies, such as Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler have also formed various kinds of partnerships with Japanese and German manufacturers. In addition to the traditional sedans, station wagons, and sports cars, different kinds of jeeps and vans have become especially popular in recent years.
Some Americans take special pride in their cars. They give them special names (John, Marietta, etc ), wash and wax them regularly. Others constantly trade and buy them. Whatever an American’s attitude toward cars, it is unlikely that he or she will do without it.
National Symbols
One feature of American life that some European observers often comment on is the frequent display of flags and other national symbols in the U.S. The pride of Americans of their country is perhaps not much different from that in other nations, but it seems more apparent. The ‘Star-Spangled Banner” and the flags of the states are found in many places and displayed on many occasions, including even demonstrations against the government. Advertisements, too, sometimes cater to a shared sense of national pride. To Americans, patriotism is largely a natural response to the nation’s history and its ideas. Immigrants who apply after five years of residence to be naturalized and become American citizens must prove that they know the national symbols and support the Constitution of the USA..
1. Answer the questions.
1 .Why is it so difficult to make generalizations about American character?
2. What is the main idea of the “Melting pot”?
3. What are the most distinctive American characteristics from your point of view?
4. What can you say about American social life?
5. Why Americans are Americans so much involved in volunteer work?
6. Why do so many American parents think that part-time jobs are “good for their kids”?
7. What is the impact of cars on the US economics?
8. What are the main demands for an immigrant to be naturalized and become an
American citizen?
2. Speak about recent changes in American lifestyle according to the models:
Now that VCRs have come in drive-ins are getting out; Now that compact discs have come in records have gone out; Economy cars-big cars; push-button-telephones-dial telephones; aerobics-jogging; canned and frozen food-traditional cooking; wash and wear clothes-ironing; credit cards-checkbooks; checkbooks-cash.
3 .Match the names in the left part with the definitions in the right one:
Car park 1) a window that you drive up to and get your banking problems done;
Parking meter 2) a special area for parking cars;
Parking lot 3) a multi-stored building for parking cars;
Parking ticket 4) a place where people can watch movies staying in the cars;
Drive-in theater 5) a metal box on a stick to drop the money for parking;
Drive-in bank 6) a document for paying a parking penalty;
Drive-in food stand 7 ) a window that you drive up to and buy some food.
4.Discussion problems:
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The American Frontier and American character;
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Compare typical English and American characters. Which traits are in
common and which are different?
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American houses and homes;
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American society and cars
CHAPTER IX. CULTURAL LIFE
Read and translate the following words and word combinations:
to set the problem to pull the leg
to degenerate progenitor
to steer boats gospel music
expatriate romantic crooning
to defer (deferred) at large
to enchant spiritualism
ensuing unconventional
to be nourished to shuttle back and forth
Although it is a generalization, it is useful to divide the US cultural history into three broad stages.
The first stage stretches from colonial times until about the Civil war. In this period, American art, architecture, music and literature were strongly influenced by European ideas and traditions. What was fashionable or popular in London, Paris, Rome or Vienna usually set the pattern for Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. Some of the colonial painters, like other craftsmen, came across the sea to try their luck. A few American painters of that time among them Benjamin West, Washington Allston, John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart still considered themselves largely as part of European tradition.
Gradually America was becoming subject and substance of separate artistic creation. Through the Colonial period and for the first half century of the Republic, American painting was dominated by portraiture. Painting portraits was the way an artist could make at that time a living. Like the 17th century European portraitists, the American artists left rich information about their time. Portraits became documents detailing furniture, costumes, jewelry, and implements of their occupation. Unfortunately there were few history paintings of good quality recording the Revolution, except some made John Trumbull After the invention of camera in 1839 the proportion of portraits to dropped and. the Civil War was best recorded by its photographers except for the genre pieces of life done by Eastman Johnson and Winslow Homer.
The period after the Civil War saw two new genres in American painting, the creation of works, which described American landscapes and the everyday life of people, depicted mostly by a Russian artist Pavel Svirin. Scores of street scenes, gathering in village taverns, political rallies, poor women’s kitchens, factory workers, Black slaves were already on canvases.
If genre art was nourished by political and social forms, landscape paintings owed much to romantic poetry of William Cullen Bryant and books by James Fennimore Cooper. Landscape were merged with scenes of the migrants crossing the plains and mountains in their wagons, with Indians, buffalo and death often in the background. Among the American artists of that period one can mark Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins..
A landmark in the history of American painting was made by the Armory Show of 1913 Sixteen hundred paintings by more than 300 Americans artists were shown there, representing some new genres like the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and the Cubists. Later on with the Depression, many American artist of different sties depicted the strikers, the unemployed, the Blacks, all those whose lives were crushed by the economic desaster. R. Marsh was dealing with urban poor, Ch. Burchfield and E. Hopper with dreary working class identical houses.
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