一般人都认为文章有好坏之分。《好文章,坏文章》则提出一个观点:语言没有高低之分,因而文章写法也就没有优劣之分。
Good Writing, Bad Writing?
Despite the modern desire to be easy and casual, Americans from time to time give thought to the language they use, to grammar, vocabulary, and official languages. And, as on other issues, they divide into two parties. The larger, who includes everybody from the plain people to the professional writer, takes for granted that there is a right way to use words and construct sentences and many wrong ways. The right way is believed to be clearer, simpler, more logical, and hence more likely to prevent error and confusion. Good writing is easier to read; it offers a pleasant combination of sound and sense.
Against this majority view is the doctrine of an opposing minority, who make up for their small number by their great learning and their place of authority in the school system and the world of scholarship①. They are the professional linguists, who deny that there is such a thing as correctness. The language, they say, is what anybody or everybody speaks. Hence there must be no interference with what they regard as a product of nature. They denounce all attempts at guiding choice.
Within the profession of linguists there are, of course, fighting factions, but, on this conception of language as a natural growth with which it is criminal to interfere, they are at one. In their arguments one finds appeals to feelings of social equality and individual freedom. These beliefs further suggest that the desire for correctness, the very idea of better or worse in speech is what is left over from noble and humble times. To the linguists, change is the only rule to be obeyed. They consider it to be equal with life and accuse their critics of being clock-reverses, enemies of freedom, menaces tolife.
【经典作文范文及专家点评:好文章坏文章】相关文章:
最新
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-08-28
2020-08-28
2020-08-28