Pre-reading exercise

Read the following sentences, try to guess the right translation of the underlined word (if you already know the word, go on to the next). While reading the article, single out these words and translate the sentences they are used in. Check with your teacher.

1. Highwaymen are thought of as holding a pistol and saying ‘stand and deliver!’

а) дорожная полиция б) разбойники в) регулировщики движения

2. Throngs of visitors crowded through the art gallery.

а) группа б) тусовка в) толпа

3. This politician deliberately makes his speech illiterate thinking that it will appeal to the rabble.

а) сброд, чернь б) политики в) аристократия

4. It was very naughty of you not to tell me where you were going.

а) любезно б) плохо в) нелюбезно

5. When I got my prize money we all went out on a spree.

а) загул б) запой в) печаль

6. We had a ghastly holiday: it rained all the time.

а) чудесный б) кошмарный в) приятный

7. The murderer was sent to the gallows for his crimes.

а) камера б) виселица в) полицейский участок

8. One of their players kicked me, so I retaliated and kicked him back.

а) обрадоваться б) отступить в) ответить тем же, отомстить

9. Attention to detail is the hallmark of a fine craftsman.

а) недостаток б) торговая марка в) отличительный признак

10. Even the most eminent doctors could not cure him.

а) знаменитые б) плохие в) талантливые

11. He eventually fell foul of the tax authorities.

а) низко пал перед б) удрал от в) попался за нарушения

12. He claims he has garnered a lot of information about Peter the Great.

а) собрал б) приукрасил в) скрыл

· Pre-reading questions

1) What do you know about crime in the 18^th century England?

2) How do you think criminals were punished at the time?

· Read the following review of the book The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh published in 2003 and see whether your guesses are right.

· Pre-reading note: William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a British painter known especially for his very detailed pictures showing the immoral pleasures of his time, in works such as The Rake’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode.

Swinging London

There is a tendency to regard public hangings in the 18th century as some kind of carnival. The handsome highway­man goes cheerily to his death, blowing kisses to the pretty women in the crowd. The rabble shouts encouragement, aware that it is participating in a ritual act de­signed to re-affirm community bonds. The dreadful deed done, the bad man hanged, the Hogarthian throng of cheerful trades­men and naughty 'prentice boys return, re­freshed and reassured, to their daily grind. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Peter Linebaugh, in a reissue of his meticulously researched 1991 classic. The author has studied the ghastly sprees of "legal massacre" (Dr Johnson's phrase) that took place in London - at Tyburn, Ken­nington and Newgate. He links the peri­odic hunger for public hangings with the ups and downs of trade cycles and corres­ponding shifts in semi-migrant labour; all too often the gallows became the place where the waste and nuisance products of mercantilism - the hungry, poor and far-­from-home - were efficiently dispatched.

"The London Hanged" is intent on com­memorating the thousands of virtually anonymous individuals who were hanged in Europe's most violent city dur­ing one of its more prosperous centuries. There is Patrick Brown, a spalpeen, or im­migrant farm worker from Ireland, who re­taliated against his dismissal from the hay harvest in Hampstead in July 1841 by steal­ing his employer's silver spurs.The gentle­man had him hanged, but not until much later, the death being carefully timed so that it would act as a warning to the next season's spalpeens. Then there was Joseph Philip, who stole simply because he was so tired of the periodic famines that were part and parcel of being a silk weaver that "he mightily long'd to die".

Mr Linebaugh's passionate engage­ment with Homo faber - the making class - of the 18th century bears all the hall­marks of the years he spent working with E.P. Thompson, an eminent socialist histo­rian and anti-nuclear campaigner. Nor does he keep his anger safely in the past, dressed up in breeches and bonnets. In a new introduction, Mr Linebaugh argues that the upsurge in the use of the death penalty since the 1970s is linked to the growth in global capitalism. Just as 18th­century workers found themselves falling foul of rapidly changing definitions of property, rights and labour so, Mr Line­baugh argues, do the mobile work-forces of post-colonial Africa and Asia - exactly those people who are most likely to be exe­cuted in the 21st century. Even if you find this implausible, there is no denying the weight and breadth of Mr Linebaugh's re­search, which puts to shame much recent work on the 18th century. Add the fact that he writes as stylishly as a novelist, and you have a book of rare worth - and one which richly deserves to garner a fresh set of admirers.

Word Study

I. Find in the article above the words massacre and execute, make sure you know their meaning and pronunciation. Using your English-English dictionary, compare these words with the words murder, slaughter, butcher, assassinate, commit suicide, destroy that can be used instead of the general word kill, and fill the gaps in the following sentences. Put the verbs in the necessary form.

1) King Charles I _____________ on 30^th January 1639.

2) Rather than be taken prisoner, they preferred to _____________.

3) Men ran through the village burning houses and ______________ anyone that got on their way.

4) Whole native populations _________ when the European settlers arrived.

5) The cat had developed cancer and had to ____________.

6) After the battle the bloody _____________ of innocent civilians took place in the village.

7) Thousands of people ____ needlessly _____________ each year in road accidents.

8) The felon _____________ for murder.

9) The prime minister _____________ by extremists.

10) The key witness ____________ before he could testify.

11) Our army _____________ by the enemy’s much larger forces.

12) The army entered the city and _____________ all women and children.

13) She was sent to prison for _____________ her husband.

II. Find in the article the word famine, make sure you know its meaning and pronunciation. Using your English-English dictionary, compare this word with the words hunger and starvation and fill the gaps in the following sentences.

1) There will be a terrible _____________ if the crops fail.

2) Men, women and children are facing death by ____________ in some parts of the world.

3) The war has brought disease and ____________ to thousands of people.

4) He felt weak from _____________ and the intense heat.

5) The long draught was followed by months of severe ____________.

6) He has an insatiable ____________ for adventure.

7) I’m on a __________ diet (=eating little food in order to become thinner).

III. 1) Find in the article the word shame used in the expression put sb/sth to shame, as in Your beautiful handwriting puts my untidy scrawl to shame. Translate the expression and the sentence it is used in into Russian.

2) Analyse the words and expressions in bold type, give their Russian equivalents, and use them in sentences of your own.

1) To my shame I never thanked him for his kindness.

2) It’s a crying shame that we didn’t buy the house when we had the money.

3) What a shame you didn’t win.

4) Isn’t it a shame that the rain spoiled our picnic?

5) How could you treat her so badly? Shame on you!

6) He had the grace to look shamefaced about it.

7) He demonstrates a shameful lack of knowledge about current affairs.

8) Her education had been shamefully neglected.

9) Their son’s shameless behaviour made them blush.

10) The experience was deeply shaming for us all.

11) He was shamed by how much work the others had done.

12) You ’ve shamed your family.

13) They have a record of industrial peace which shames other companies.

14) I tried to shame her into voting in the election, but she has no sense of public duty.

СЛОВАРИ И ЛИТЕРАТУРА

1. Астафурова Т.Н. Английский для социологов: Учебно-методическое пособие. – Волгоград: Изд-во ВолГУ, 2004. – 104 с. – (Учебно-методический комплекс «Профессиональная межкультурная коммуникация»).

2. Мюллер В.К. Новый англо-русский словарь / Изд-во «Русский язык» - 6-е изд. – М.: Рус. яз., 1999. – 880 с.

3. McCarthy M., O’Deil F. English Vocabulary in Use: Advanced. – Cambridge University Press. – 314 p.

4. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture: New Edition. – Longman. – 1568 p.

5. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English: Fifth Edition. – Oxford University Press. - 1428 p.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24