杨继23（OG－11）

mariewoo

PASSAGE 23
* At the end of the nineteenth century,
a rising interest in Native American customs and an increasing desire to
understand Native American culture prompted ethnolo- gists to begin recording
the life stories of Native Amer-
5)
            ican. Ethnologists had a
distinct reason for wanting to hear the stories: they were after linguistic or
anthropo-logical data that would supplement their own field observations, and
they believed that the personal stories, even of a single individual, could
increase their
10) understanding of the cultures that they had been
observing from without. In addition many ethnologists at the turn of the century
believed that Native Amer-ican manners and customs were rapidly disappearing,and
that it was important to preserve for posterity as
15)
            much
information as could be adequately recorded before the cultures disappeared
forever.
* There were, however, arguments against this method as a way of
acquiring accurate and complete informa-tion. Franz Boas, for example, described
autobiogra-
20) phies as being "of limited value, and useful chiefly
for the study of the perversion of truth by memory," whilePaul Radin contended
that investigators rarely spent enough time with the tribes they were observing,
and inevitably derived results too tinged by the investi-
25) gator's
own emotional tone to be reliable.
* Even more importantly, as these life
stories moved from the traditional oral mode to recorded written form, much was
inevitably lost. Editors often decided what elements were significant to the
field research on a
30) given tribe. Native Americans recognized that
the essence of their lives could not be communicated in English and that events
that they thought significant were often deemed unimportant by their
interviewers.Indeed, the very act of telling their stories could force

35) Native American narrators to distort their cultures, astaboos had
to be broken to speak the names of deadrelatives crucial to their family
stories.
* Despite all of this, autobiography remains a useful tool for
ethnological research: such personal reminis-
40)
            cences and
impressions, incomplete as they may be, arelikely to throw more light on the
working of the mindand emotions than any amount of speculation from an
ethnologist or ethnological theorist from another culture.

8. It can be inferred from the passage that the author wouldbe most
likely to agree with which of the followingstatements about the usefulness of
life stories as a sourceof ethnographic information?
(A) They can be a
source of information about howpeople in a culture view the world.
(B) They
are most useful as a source of linguisticinformation.
(C) They require
editing and interpretation before theycan be useful.
(D) They are most
useful as a source of informationabout ancestry.
(E) They provide incidental
information rather thansignificant insights into a way of life.

这题是10thOG－11多出来的题，想问下定位在哪呢？我是定位在文中标红处，结合后面说要翻译成English 或是edit则blablabla 所以这道infer题选了C

可是答案是A，定位在哪呢？谢谢！

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-8-21 14:16:13编辑过]

gre0426

The sentence in red font merely states that editors often decided what elements were significant, i.e. they selectively consider life stories. This is more about stating a common practice than about asserting that life stories have to be edited or interpreted to be useful.

A's claim can be found in the last sentence: "such personal reminiscences and impressions ... are likely to throw more light on the working of the mind and emotions than any amount of speculation from an ethnologist or ethnological theorist from another culture."

Disclaimer: I didn't work on this question before; please make sure A is indeed the correct answer. I'm not 100% sure.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-8-22 8:50:04编辑过]

mariewoo

谢谢！标黄处是隐含了view the world的意思么？
我再想想 ……逻辑做的头晕……