北师大研究生英语课程.doc

各位2011级的同学好：首先欢迎大家成为北京师范大学的新成员！本学期英语（基础部分）读译课程的教学模式为网络教学，所有尚未提前通过读译考试的同学必须修读该课程。请大家以实名制方式登录我们的研究生英语教学网（以便有效与教师互动和提交作业，具体登录方法将另行通知）。现先把9月19日至10月7日的学习内容公布如下，请大家注意研究生院网上的读译课分班情况，并自行安排好学习时间。学术型研究生要求具有较强的文献阅读理解能力和归纳总结能力，据此从2011级开始，我们对教学模式和考试题型进行了改革。从我们本次分级考试的结果看，我们的理解能力和归纳能力尚待加强我们要求大家写出段落主旨的题目，鲜有人及格。同时，我们必须认识到，语言是知识和文化的载体，学习语言的真正目的是掌握拓展知识、理解文化的工具，使自己真正成为 “cultured” or “civilized” person（本次请大家阅读的文章将提到这两个概念）。本次考试的结果表明，我们这部分的知识也亟待加强。例如，我们本次考试的英译汉部分选取了关于“新英格兰”的一小段文章。我们有70%左右（甚至还多）的同学似乎对美国这个具有悠久历史的文化中心一无所知，很多人把New England搬到了英国，进行了“建立一个新英国”的“冒险”尝试，大多数同学还把Massachusetts也迁到了英国，使它摇身一变成了“曼彻斯特”。其实，我们相信，大家对哈佛、耶鲁、麻省理工（MIT,就在Massachusetts）一定是耳熟能详，但很多人可能并不知道，它们都位于美国东北角上的New England。所以，我们学习语言的同时，一定要注意对知识的汲取。只有我们的知识面儿宽了，我们将来的学术道路才会更顺畅。因此，我们读译课的阅读材料将包括学术文章和时文阅读两个部分。在阅读时，可能会遇到困难，请大家一定静下心来，潜心学习。阅读有难度的文章，可以更好地提高大家的理解能力，Reading和 Comprehension永远是无法割裂的。只有认真精读一些有难度的篇章后，大家再读一般难度的文章，才能体会到“一览众山小”的快乐。学习英语，学习任何知识都绝对没有捷径可走，这点其实大家都知道。本次选择的篇章是关于“通俗文化（学）的地位”的。文章旁征博引，为通俗文化进行了学理上的辩护，认为“通俗”的不一定就是“没有文化的”(uncultured)。文章中提及了许多二十世纪西方思想界的理论重镇和他们对通俗文化的观点。简单了解这些思想家以及他们的主要观点对大家更好地理解二十乃至二十一世纪的西方思潮有一定帮助。所以我们这两周的任务是，请大家通过网络或者图书馆查阅相关文献，了解下文中提到的几位著名思想家和他们的主要论著、观点（建议尽量阅读英文）,并通过表格（或其他）方式整理出来（暂无需精读以下文章）：1. Mathew Arnold2. Roland Barthes3. Michel Foucault4. Mikhail Bakhtin5. Pierre Bourdieu6. Stanley Fish此外，请大家关注一下下文的脚注，这是西方学术论文（专著）引用的一种典型格式（当然还有很多专著采用尾注形式），可供借鉴。The Status of the PopularKatarzyna SmyczyskaAs the border between “low” and “high” cultural forms becomes continuously blurred, it is no wonder that chicklit has a somewhat ambiguous status in western cultural discourse. Unlike relatively anonymous mass-produced paperback romances (organized in series and therefore called “category romances”), some novels promoted as chicklit fiction have gained the status of bestsellers. While numerous novels have only been published in their paperback version, some have been issued in hardback and sold at a much higher price than conventional “pulp fiction” for women. As some of them contain elements of humour and irony, they are often discussed alongside such cult productions as the internationally known American TV series Sex and the City, Friends and Ally McBeal, Imelda Whelehan, Overloaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism, (London: Womens Press, 2000), 139. Also see Joanna di Mattia, “Whats the harm in believing Mr Big, Mr Perfect, and the romantic quest for Sex and the Citys Mr Right”, in Reading Sex and the City, Ed. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 17-32. canonical popular texts of the era whose postmodern narrative twist and constant play with the audiences expectations imply more sophisticated readings than those associated with category romances.Although the existence of popular culture in industrial societies has been an area of concern for political and social thinkers of the modern era, Matthew Arnolds famous definition of culture (“the best that has been thought and said in the world”) from his book Culture and Anarchy implies a clear dichotomy between culture produced by the social elite and the “anarchic” culture made by common people, which considered degenerative in nature. His works strongly influenced another cultural critic, F. R. Leavis, who perceived “mass civilization” as inherently manipulatory and therefore dangerous. Their works, nevertheless, initiated further studies on mass-produced culture (in England represented by the works of such eminent theorists as Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall) and opened up an academic discussion which continues till the present day. See for example John Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Pop Culture, (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). its definition, status, and the character of its signifying practices still remain ambiguous. While some strands in postmodern theory have emphasized the importance of popular culture in the everyday experience of individuals, the view that mass culture should not be merely thought of in negative terms, either as a tool of capitalist ideology in maintaining the political and social status quo, or as the exclusive determinant of individual and collective identity is still relatively uncommon. Studies on various aspects of the popular have drawn attention to the complexity of practices of popular culture and have initiated semiotic discussions on it. The Structuralist approach is represented in Barthes early works, the prime example being Mythologies. Still, in accordance with structuralist and semiotic thought, popular texts have come to be understood as bearers of meaning and ideologies, connoting prevalent cultural myths.Marxist and the Frankfurt School critics, whose approach pervaded the most influential schools of pre-war critical thought, believed that “the culture industry of capitalism homogenized people into a mass, and deindividualise them by debasing their taste into that of the lowest common denominator.” John Fiske, Television Culture, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 38. They also coined the term “mass culture”, suggesting the “uncultured” character of this kind of cultural output, and as such, the embodiment of characteristics which was entirely at variance with those so far associated with art and original cultural creation. In response to works emphasizing ideological prevalence in culture and to the pessimism of some strands in postmodern philosophy aimed aimed at popular consumption, the 1980s gave birth to a number of studies on popular culture which questioned the derogatory status of mass entertainment, the production of which was no longer perceived as simply the effective dissemination of dominant meanings. Graeme Turner discusses the writings of theorists such Michel de Certeau, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Roland Barthes, thinkers who influenced modern thinking about popular culture. See Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 216-222. The perspective shifted towards the actual consumers of mass artifacts, which as a result instigated substantial change in the perception of cultural consumption. The notion appeared that consumers are not “cultural dopes” but are able to think critically and use the objects of consumption to their own advantage. A number of reception studies that followed Some of the works by academics who became interested in the ethnographic research and adopted an approach to popular media which reflected the perspective of their consumers, known as the audience research, include David Morleys study on the reception of news magazine programs (1978, 1980), Angela McRobbies analysis of girls magazines (1991), Janice Radways study on popular romance readers(1984), Ien Angs work on Dallas(1985), Dorothy Hobsons analysis of Crossroads (1982) and Tania Modleskis studies on the viewers of soap opera and romance readers(1982). were grounded in Stanley Fishs notion of interpretive communities, Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). which he used to emphasise the variability of reading competence within different social milieux, dependent on the social context, thus indirectly subverting earlier beliefs in the monolithic character of popular texts and their apparent connotative limitations.Some of the progressive theoretical reflections on popular culture from the 1970s onwards have also drawn on the findings of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and Foucaults theory on power relations. Foucaults assertion that “where there is power, there is resistance, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley, (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 95. was transferred and applied to popular culture theory and advocated by a number of cultural critics. John Fiske, for example, perceives popular culture as a site of struggle between the dominant and resistant meanings. He also argues that if cultural products are texts where meanings are both constructed and contested, those, however limited, disruptive elements in the dominant message make space for popular pleasure. John Fiske, Reading the Popular, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 2. While some readings may appear more obvious and may be the ones which are preferred by those empowered in one way or another, there is the possibility of reading texts “against the grain,” or reading subversively. Turner, British Cultural Studies, 123. The popular text, a term embracing all kinds of cultural products which are significatory (Barthes calls a text a constant play of signifiers), is a dynamic construct where signifieds are nothing but the next signifiers. The notion of pleasure, together with the poststructuralist assertion of the locality and instability of meaning as well as of textual polysemy, explains why the study of the practices of popular culture has become crucial to a fuller understanding of its inextricable link with, and role in, both reflecting and challenging everyday human practices.Much as critics like Fiske are challenged for being excessively optimistic in tone, and seen as those exceeding glorifying the progressive potential of popular culture, McGuigan quoted in Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Pop Culture, 182-187. their emphasis on its heterogeneity and complexity should be acknowledged as an important contribution to the understanding of the process of mass production and consumption. This approach makes it possible to perceive cultural products not only in terms of their commodity status, but also as signs which can be interpreted on the basis of what messages they make explicit, what they only imply, and about what they remain silent. In other words, texts are symptomatic of social tensions, which may render their systems of representations ambiguous.As Barthes states in one of his poststructuralist writings, the text must not be thought of as a defined object”, Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text”, trans. by Joshue V. Harari, in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, Ed. Joshue V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 74. instead, it is plural and indeterminate. While reader-oriented ethnographic critics like Radway emphasise that analyses of actual activities of readers of popular texts display differences between reading strategies employed by academics and “ordinary” consumers, it is important to acknowledge the aspect of the polysemy and potentiality of messages produced by the text itself. It is possible to trace moments of indeterminacy and destabilization of meaning through “the forms of resistance present in the text, those forms that make up the textual dynamic as a field of clashing and heterogeneous forces and as a never quite predictable potential of surprise.” Shoshana Felman, What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference, (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 6.At the same time, popular texts cannot be investigated without taking into account the historical and social norms by which they are produced. Texts are social discourses which cannot be separated from the systems of power and knowledge existing in a particular historical moment. They operate in the system of power which acts as “the truth” in specific historical circumstances, See Foucaults influential study on the normalizing functions of “the truth of sexuality” produced by the prevailing systems of knowledge and power. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. and they produce subject positions based on that truth, however historically specific and local it may be. Popular texts operate on social norms existing at a specific time within specific social groups and both reflect, produce and potentially challenge these norms. The emphasis on the social “immersion” of texts relies on the writing of Mikhail Bakhtin, whose theory of language stressed its interaction with, and dependence on the social. It also challenges the assumption that a text is a closed entity, the meanings of which are determined, or that it is possible to study those meanings “objectively.” As Bakhtin observes, “the word in language is half someone elses. the word does not exist in a neutral or impersonal language rather it exists in other peoples mouths, serving other peoples intentions: it is from there that one must take the work and make it ones own.” Mikhail Bakhtin; Michael Holquist ed., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 293-294. What he argues is, as it were, the indeterminacy of meaning and constantsemiotic and socialnegotiation of meaning ful messages, a process which always involves the dialogue with Other.This discursive approach to popular texts obliterates the border between the “high” and “low” culture, as the texts are no longer judged according to their aesthetic value; taste as an arbitrary category is not a determining factor in the critical analysis of cultural practices. The “innocence” of the category of taste was criticized by Pierre Bourdieu, who saw it as an agent of ideological class division and a marker of social difference. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Judgment of Taste, trans. By Richard Nice, (Cambraidge