题型：阅读理解 题类：模拟题 难易度：普通
江苏省盐城中学2019届高三英语4月质量检测一
For all the pressures and rewards of regionalization (地区化) and globalization, local identities remain the most deeply impressed. Even if the end result of globalization is to make the world smaller, its scope seems to foster the need for more private local connections among many individuals. As Bernard Poignant, mayor of the town of Quimper in Brittany, told the Washington Post, "Man is a fragile animal and he needs his close attachments. The more open the world becomes, the more ties there will be to one's roots and one's land."
In most communities, local languages such as Poignant's Breton serve a strong symbolic function as a clear mark of "authenticity (原真性)". The sum total of a community's shared historical experience, authenticity reflects a noticeable line from a culturally idealized past to the present, carried by the language and traditions associated with the community's origins. A concern for authenticity leads most secular (世俗的) Israelis to defend Hebrew among themselves while also acquiring English and even Arabic. The same obsession with authenticity drives Hasidic Jews in Israel or the Diaspora to champion Yiddish while also learning Hebrew and English. In each case, authenticity amounts to a central core of cultural beliefs and interpretations that are not only resistant to globalization but also are actually reinforced by the "threat" that globalization seems to present to these historical values. Scholars may argue that cultural identities change over time in response to specific reward systems. But locals often resist such explanation and defend authenticity and local mother tongues against the perceived threat of globalization with near religious eagerness.
As a result, never before in history have there been as many standardized languages as there are today: roughly 1,200. Many smaller languages, even those with far fewer than one million speakers, have benefited from state-sponsored or voluntary preservation movements. On the most informal level, communities in Alaska and the American northwest have formed Internet discussion groups in an attempt to pass on Native American languages to younger generations. In the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions of Spain, such movements are fiercely political and frequently involved loyal resistance to the Spanish government over political and linguistic rights. Projects have ranged from a campaign to print Spanish money in the four official languages of the state to the creation of language immersion nursery and primary schools. Zapatistas in Mexico are championing the revival of Mayan languages in an equally political campaign for local autonomy.
In addition to causing the feeling of the subjective importance of local roots, supporters of local languages defend their continued use on practical grounds. Local tongues foster higher levels of school success, higher degrees of participation in local government, more informed citizenship, and better knowledge of one's own culture, history, and faith. Government and relief agencies can also use local languages to spread information about industrial and agricultural techniques as well as modern health care to diverse audiences. Development workers in West Africa, for example, have found that the best way to teach the vast number of farmers with little or no formal education how to sow and rotate crops for higher yields is in these local tongues. Nevertheless, both regionalization and globalization require that more and more speakers of local languages be multi-literate.
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