1 . “Hi, how are ya,” some people say when they see a familiar face. The words run together into a mass, all sense and meaning lost. All the same, people do care how you are. After they greet you, it’s likely you will greet them back, with an equally meaningless phrase like, “Can’t complain, can’t complain.” You could probably complain, at length, or share a brilliant thought you were just beginning when a greeting interrupted you. You don’t though, you say, “Great, you?”
You are not giving each other information about your health and well-being. All the same, you are sharing information. You’re acknowledging each other’s positions as acknowledged friends, or at least as accepted acquaintances. And you are reestablishing the ties that may have lapsed since yesterday.
It’s what anthropologist Bronislaw Malinoski called a phatic communication. Its message is not in the words you use, but in the fact that you speak ritually accepted words. In Asia, for example, people may ask one another if they have eaten, or if they are busy. They’re not really asking for their lunch menu or their agenda, they are saying hello. A phatic signal says hi.
There’s embarrassment of being near people without acknowledging them. That uncomfortable feeling is one reason why lonely passengers in the subway may behave as if they cannot see anyone around them or may escape their uncomfortable situation with a book. Some people read all the way home, and never turn a page.
Your friend isn’t asking how you are, and you aren’t telling him. However, he is recognizing your existence, and when you answer, you are recognizing his. In addition, the set speech you have shared opens the door to closer communications if both agree. Someday, you may come to real close friendship, and really tell one another how you are.
Meanwhile, people who greet one another this way do care. They care enough to recognize someone’s essential humanity. They send a signal across the space between, to share, very briefly and lightly, in awareness of one another.
Your greetings prove that neither of you has become a social outcast. How are you? You are still a member of society in good status. You are still the one who knows the rituals necessary to get to work each day.
1. When people greet, they ________.| A．want to show their different educational backgrounds |
| B．rarely show something related to the words themselves |
| C．want to know other people’s privacy |
| D．often complain about the bad weather |
| A．is rarely used by Asian people | B．is too complex to be used often |
| C．helps establish or keep certain relationships | D．often ruins the normal relationships between friends |
| A．they want to be polite to others | B．they feel uncomfortable to do it |
| C．they don’t know when to greet them | D．they want to do something meaningful |
| A．a person who is well-educated | B．a person who succeeds suddenly |
| C．a person who is a burden to society | D．a person who is not accepted by others |
| A．Greetings should be better expressed. |
| B．Greetings convey different meanings to different people. |
| C．Greetings help prove an individual’s social independence. |
| D．Greetings help an individual be connected with the society. |
My mother made me what I am. She gave me the greatest gift a mother can give — the desire to excel (超越). She taught me to read before I was four. She also encouraged me to write. When I was 10, I wrote a story and she sent it to a children’s magazine. They accepted it and paid me some money. So I started earning money by writing at a young age.
I also learned a lot from my father. He’d say, “Stand tall, be independent and keep your eyes open.” For what, I don’t know! He was quite good at telling stories, and I think I inherited my gift for storytelling from him. But he could be pretty strict. If I went out with a boy, he had to pick me up from home so my father could question him inside out.
My father was 6 feet tall and good-looking, with great charm. He lost a leg m the war while serving in the Royal Navy, but never let it hold him back. When he was in hospital, ready to have his leg amputated, he said, not depressed, “Well, half a loaf is better than none.” After his death, I returned his artificial leg to the hospital, but walked away in tears. It felt as if I was giving part of him away.
My parents had a son, Vivian, who died before I was born, so my mother put all her love into me. She also gave me an. education I couldn’t get at school. She took me to the pictures every week, to the theatre to see the Russian ballet whenever it came to Leeds, where we lived.
At 20, I moved to London to become fashion editor of Woman’s Own and later a columnist on the London Evening News. The day I left home, my mother wrote in her diary that all the sunshine had gone out of her life when her daughter left home.
根据短文内容完成下列小题。
1. Why does the author mention her parents?(no more than 10 words)
2. What is the author good at according to the second paragraph?(no more than 5 words)
3. What does the underlined word “amputated” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?(no more than 5 words)
4. What was the author’s childhood like according to the last two paragraphs?(no more than 10 words)
5. What can you learn from the author’s father?(no more than 25 words)
