新编英语教程第四册 Unit 02 英语, 新编, Unit, 教程

Ceilia

Unit 2 Englishes

Of course a scale of styles exists in all our use of English. Each of us works not just with on English but with many Englishes, and the wider the range of our life and the more various the contacts we have, the wider and suppler must be our command over a range of English styles, each of which we know how to use consistently. A haphazard knowledge of several styles may be worse than useless if we do not know the type of occasion on which each is appropriate, or if we don’t know when we are sliding from one to another. We do not say, ”It was extremely gracious of you to invite me, Lady Jones, and I’ve had bags of fun.” Because ”bags of fun does not mix with “extremely gracious”, and because to use an expression like ”bags of fun,” we should need to know Lady Jones well enough to be addressing her by her first name.

It is not---we must never tire of interesting--- that bags of fun can be labeled “bad” or “ slovenly” English, a lazy substitute for thought”. “bags of fun” is no a lazy substitute for thought in its appropriate setting than is “extremely gracious” in the setting that is appropriate for this expression. As we have seen repeatedly, it is the height of naivety to go round with a single yardstick, measuring English as” good” or “bad”. Take the opening suggested earlier for an information letter:” My dear Frank, it was awfully nice to get your note the other day.” Here are the words that would greatly please the receiver with their warmth and friendliness, yet they include awfully, get and nice, three words which have been condemned so often that many people can not write them without having a slight feeling of guilt. They have been called slovenly and even meaningless. Such an attitude is plainly ridiculous and can do nothing but harm to the good use of English.

But it would be equally ridiculous to reverse the judgment just as flatly. It is the type of judgment that is wrong: it is not merely that the judgment is faulty in this particular instance. If we were studying a review and found the comment “ this is an awfully nice book,” our reaction to the words in this situation might will be to call them slovenly and meaningless. We do not want merely polite noises in a review: we want some precise observation about the book’s content and quality. Equally, however, we should disapprove of the English used if we were greeted by a friend at a party with the words, “I apprehend an atmosphere of spontaneous delight with your arrival,” whereas “Awfully nice to see you here” would strike us as just right?