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In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, Boroditsky is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that “the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically,” not only when they are thinking in order to speak, “but in all manner of cognitive tasks,” including basic sensory perception. “Even a small fluke of grammar”—the gender of nouns—“can have an effect on how people think about things in the world,” she says.

As in that bridge, in German, the noun for bridge, Brucke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schlussel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine? Grammatical gender also shapes how we construe abstractions. In 85 percent of artistic depictions of death and victory, for instance, the idea is represented by a man if the noun is masculine and a woman if it is feminine, says Boroditsky. Germans tend to paint death as male, and Russians tend to paint it as female.

Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names—not English’s light blue and dark blue, for instance, but Russian’s goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that’s a trivial finding, showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English speakers when the colors had distinct names,

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. . . .

suggesting that having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses one word for “in” when one object is in another snugly, and a different one when an object is in something loosely. Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.

Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. In Russian, verb forms indicate whether the action was completed or not—as in “she ate [and finished] the pizza.” In Turkish, verbs indicate whether the action was observed or merely rumored. Boroditsky would love to run an experiment testing whether native Russian speakers are better than others at noticing if an action is completed, and if Turks have a heightened sensitivity to fact versus hearsay. Similarly, while English says “she broke the bowl” even if it smashed accidentally, Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like “the bowl broke itself.” “When we show people video of the same event,” says Boroditsky, “English speakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality.” 21. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “accolades” in PARAGRAPH ONE? A. Praises. B. Awards. C. Support. D. Gratitude.

22. What can be inferred from PARAGRAPH TWO?

A. Language does not shape thoughts in any significant way.

B. The relationship between language and thought is an age-old issue. C. The language we speak determines how we think and see the world.

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. . . .

D. Whether language shapes thought needs to be empirically supported. 23. What is the role of the underlined part “As in that bridge” in PARAGRAPH THREE?

A. Reflecting on topics that appeal to the author and readers. B. Introducing new evidence to what has been confirmed before. C. Identifying the kinds of questions supported by the experiments. D. Claiming that speakers of different languages differ dramatically. 24. Which of the following has nothing to do with the relationship between language and thought?

A. People remember what they saw both visually and verbally. B. Language helps to shape what and how we perceive the world. C. Grammar has an effect on how people think about things around us. D. Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. 25. Which of the following best represents the author’s argument in the passage?

A. The gender of nouns affects how people think about things in the world. .

B. Germans and Frenchmen think differently about the Viaduct de Millau. C. Language shapes our thoughts and affects our perception of the world. D. There are different means of proving how language shapes our thoughts. 请阅读Passage 2.完成第 26~30小题。

Passage 2

When American-born actor Michael Pena was a year old, his parents were deported. They had illegally walked across the U.S. border from Mexico and when they were caught by immigration authorities, they sent Pena and his brother to stay with relatives in the U.S. “It was quite a bit of a gamble for my parents,” says Pena, “but they came back a year later.” Pena’s father, who had been a farmer in Mexico, got a job at a button factory in Chicago and, eventually, a green card. Pena stayed in Chicago

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until, at 19, he fled to Los Angeles to pursue his acting dreams. This family history makes Pena’s latest role especially personal. In Cesar Chavez, Pena plays the labor leader as he struggles to organize immigrant California farm workers in the 1960s. To pressure growers to improve working conditions and wages, Chavez led a national boycott of table grapes that lasted from 1965 to 1970 and is recorded in the film. Chavez, like Pena, was the American-born son of Mexican farmers who immigrated to the U.S. “He understands this duality, the feeling of being born in a place but having a very big idea of where your heritage comes from,” says the film director, Diego Luna. “This thing of having to go to school and learn in English and then go home to speak Spanish with your parents.”

As immigration policy is hotly debated on Capitol Hill this year, Luna and others who were involved with Cesar Chavez are hoping the movie will spark new support for reform and inspire American Latinos to get involved. “The message Chavez left was that change couldn’t happen without the masses being a part of their own change,” says Ferrera, a first generation Honduran American who plays the union leader’s wife Helen. Rosario Dawson, who co-founded the advocacy group Voto Latino, plays Chavez ally and labor leader Dolores Huerta.

Immigrant-rights issues in the U.S. have evolved substantially in the years since Chavez founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). Undocumented workers now make up a far larger share of the agricultural workforce in California than they did in the 1960s, according to Miriam Pawel, author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, published the next month. Chavez was vehemently against illegal immigration, believing it made strikes difficult to execute and weakened the union. He initiated a program in the mid-1970s to locate undocumented farm workers and report them to immigration officials, Pawel writes. And despite his early victories,

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