阅读理解
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.
