英语四级阅读理解精练及答案(2)

　　Sad Poets'Society

　　It may be possible to detect suicidal tendencies in poets from the words in their poems,according to a paper published in the July /August issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

　　Poets who killed themselves were more self-preoccupied and isolated than a control1 group,the researchers found. There are several theories about why people kill themselves: forinstance, the"social integration / disengagement"model of sociologist Emile Durkheim2, whotheorized that a major cause of suicide was an individual's lack of bonding with others, and amore traditional model emphasizing the role of hopelessness and helplessness. PsychologistsJames Pennebaker from the University of Texas, Austin, and Shannon Wiltsey Stirman of theUniversity of Pennsylvania used poetry to put these two to the test.

　　They selected nine American, Russian, and British poets, all but one from the 20 th century,who had committed suicide, and matched each with a colleague of the same sex andnationality who lived at approximately the same time. About 300 poems were analyzed bysoftware called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, which is programmed to recognize some 70dimensions of language, such as whether a word is a pronoun, or whether it refers to anegative emotion. The researchers tested Durkheim's integration theory by looking atreferences to self and others, and to communication ( words like" talk"or " alone ") .Hopelessness, they decided, would be marked by mentions of death and negative emotions.

　　Many of the control poets shared depression and other mood disorders with the ones thatcommitted suicide, says Pennebacker:"Nonsuicidal poets are not a particularly optimisticgroup. "But a higher number of first person singular self-references in the works of the suicidalpoets suggested they were more self-preoccupied and detached from others — thus backingup3 the Durkheim model. Reading over Sylvia Plath4, for example, who killed herself in 1963, "there's'I's' everywhere, " Pennebacker says. And near the poets'death, the word" we "becameless common, signaling increasing isolation. " A tremendous amount of action is in thepronouns, "he says.

　　One finding the authors did not expect was that the suicide group used a significantly higherpercentage of sexual words throughout their careers. Whether that supports either of the twotheories will have to await further research, Pennebaker says.

　　练习题：

　　Ⅰ. Fill in each blank with proper phrases from the passage:

　　1. Durkheim believes that a major reason people kill themselves is .

　　2. A person would kill himself if he fell more .

　　3. Some words in poems are believed to communicate like .

　　Ⅱ. Question:

　　How many dimensions of a language can the software Linguistic Inquiry and Word

　　Count know?

　　Ⅰ. 1. an individual's lack of bonding with others

　　2. self-preoccupied and isolated

　　3."talk"or"alone"

　　Ⅱ. 70 .

　　1. control n. 检查, 核对, ( 试验中的) 对照( 处理) 。这里所说的control group 指control poets, 可以翻译成“ 对照组诗人”, 也就是下文提到的nonsuicidal poets。

　　2. 涂尔干( 1858—1927) , 法国实证主义社会学家、法国社会学学派的奠基人, 认为劳动分工是社会团结的基础,“集体意志”在社会中具有决定性作用。主要著作《论社会分工》、《论自杀》等。

　　3. 支持, 为……撑腰, 堵塞, 拦( 水) 。back down ( 放弃权利等, 撒手, 打退堂鼓, 取消前言) ;back off ( 退避, 后退) ; back on to ( 背靠着) ; back out ( of) ( 放弃某事, 取消, 扭松, 旋出,逃避责任等) ; back thewrong horse ( 估计错, 选错) 。

　　4. 西尔维亚·普拉丝( 1932—1963) , 长期旅居英国的美国女诗人。曾获得奖学金在剑桥大学学习, 与诗人泰德·休斯结为夫妇, 后两人离异。因自传体小说《钟罩》而大获成功, 以天鹅之歌《瞪羚》为绝笔。