2021年英语专八试卷真题及答案

2021 年英语专八试卷真题及答案 PART Ⅰ LISTENING COMPREHENSION SECTION A TALK Language is used for doing

2021年英语专八试卷真题及答案 PART ⅠLISTENING COMPREHENSION SECTION ATALK Language is used for doing things. People use it in everyday conversation for transacting business, planning meals and vacations, debating politics, and gossiping. Teachers use it for instructing students, and comedians use it for amusing audiences. All these are instances of language use -that is activities in which people do things with language. As we can see, language use is really aform of joint action. What is joint action? Ithink it is an action that is carried out by agroup of people doing things in coordination with each other. As simple examples, think of two people waltzing, or playing apiano duet. When two dancers waltz, they each move around the ballroom in aspecial way. But waltzing is different from the sum of their individual actions. Can you imagine these two dancers doing the same steps, but in separate rooms, or at separate times? So waltzing is, in fact, the joint action that emerges as the two dancers do their individual steps in coordination, as acouple. Similarly, doing things with language is also different from the sum of the speaker speaking and the listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, or writers and readers, perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. Therefore, we can say that language use incorporates both individual and social processes. Speakers and listeners, writers and readers, must carry out actions as individuals, if they are to succeed in their use of language. But they must also work together as participants in the social units Ihave called ensembles. In the example Imentioned just now, the two dancers perform both individual actions, moving their bodies, arms, and legs, and joint actions, coordinating these movements, as they create the waltz. In the past, language use has been studied as if it were entirely an individual process. And it has also been studied as if it were entirely asocial process. For me, Isuggest that it belongs to both. We cannot hope to understand language use without viewing it as joint actions built on individual actions. In order to explain how all these actions work, I'd like to review briefly settings of language use. By settings, Imean the scene in which language use takes place, plus the medium -which refers to whether language use is spoken or written. And in this talk, I'll focus on spoken