现象级英语成长群共赏《经济学人》

《经济学人》赏析:Stay Alive - Falling Su

2018-12-01  本文已影响112人  Becky_a21c

本文由 现象级英语--经济学人第三期共读 第二小组 完成。标题及1-3段由陈玉梅完成,4-5段由Becky完成,6-7段由路人丁完成,8-9段由Ada完成,10-12段由灿灿完成。

题图源自《The economist》,由Ada修改

这个文章的题目很直白:自杀率下降的原因,以及如何将它降的更低。
副标题则对题目的问题做了高度概括的回答:城市化,更少的强迫性婚姻以及更多的自杀方式的限制是自杀率降低的主要因素。副标题中fewer和more的运用,让本句话更具对比性。
这篇文章从题目和副标题一目了然的知道文章是在讲自杀比率降低原因以及降的更低的方法讨论。

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①“YOU KNOW,” says a trader in “Margin Call”, a film about the crash of 2008, as he stands high on a building above Wall Street, “the feeling that people experience when they stand on the edge like this isn’t the fear of falling—it’s the fear that they might jump.” ②Suicide fascinates us.③ It is at once appalling and yet, in the darkest places in our minds, appealing. ④It is the most damaging sort of death.⑤ A child’s suicide is a parent’s worst nightmare, and a parent’s marks their children for life.⑥ It is a manifestation not just of individual anguish but also of a collective failure: if society is too painful to live in, perhaps we are all culpable.

段落赏析

本段第①句以描述2008年次贷危机的一部电影《商海通牒》的台词为开端讲述自杀的感受,“有着自杀经验的人站在悬崖边上他们不害怕坠落的过程,而害怕那可能的一跳”。②-③表述自杀对我们有着吸引力,虽骇人听闻但那无边的黑暗也有着致命的吸引力。④-⑤自杀是最具损害性的死亡方式:孩子的自杀是父母最可怕的噩梦,父母的自杀将在孩子的一生留下印记。⑥它不仅是个人痛苦的表现,也是群体失败的表现:如果社会让人活得太痛苦,也许我们都是罪魁祸首。

没有看过《商海通牒》的电影,但因这篇文章的原因去搜索了这部电影的影评,联想到当前经济状况,与2008年那场次贷危机引发的金融海啸何其相像,股市崩盘、房市泡沫、消费降级...,也因此被安利了这部电影。这个周日可以与《商海通牒》约个会。

词句精读

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①The suicide rate in America is up by 18% since 2000. ②This is not merely a tragedy; it matters politically, too.③ The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts.④ Their deaths are a symptom of troubles to which some see President Donald Trump as the answer. ⑤Those troubles should not be ignored.

段落赏析

本段讲述美国自杀率自2000以来上升了18%。 这不仅是悲剧,更有关于政治。接着阐述了在美国中年、未受过良好教育的白人男士更容易自杀,他们这群人处在被繁荣抛弃,并陷入经济危机的地区。对于那些认为特朗普是答案的人来说,这些人的死亡是麻烦的征兆,这些麻烦是不能被忽视的。

词句精读

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①Nonetheless, beyond America’s gloomy trend is a more optimistic story: that at a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000 (see article). ②As a result, 2.8m lives have been saved in that time—three times as many as have been killed in battle. ③There is no one reason. ④It is happening at different rates among different groups in different places. ⑤But the decline is particularly notable among three sets of people.

段落赏析

第三段说明了全球自杀人数的变化:相较于美国让人沮丧的自杀趋势,新闻报道了一个更为乐观的事情:自2000以来,全球范围的自杀率降低了29%。因此,280万人的生命在这一时期被挽救了---这是三倍于在战争中被杀害的人数。这并没有一个统一的原因。在不同的地区,不同的组别自杀发生的比率是不一样的。但是这个比率的降低主要表现在三类人群中。

词句精读

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①One is young women in China and India. ②In most of the world, older people kill themselves more often than the young, and men more than women. ③But in China and India, young women have been unusually prone to suicide. ④That is decreasingly the case. ⑤Another group is middle-aged men in Russia. ⑥After the collapse of the Soviet Union, alcoholism and suicide rocketed among them. ⑦Both have now receded. ⑧A third category is old people all around the world. ⑨The suicide rate among the elderly remains, on average, higher than among the rest of the population, but has also fallen faster since 2000 than among other groups.

段落赏析

该段承接上文,讲述了自杀率呈明显下降的三类人群:印度和中国的年轻女性、俄罗斯的中年男性以及全球老龄人口。
①-④几乎全球都是老龄人口的自杀比率比年轻人更高、男性自杀率大于女性,而在中国和印度的年轻女性自杀倾向更显著,但这种情况正在逐渐减少。
⑤-⑦苏联解体后,俄罗斯中年男性酗酒及自杀情况激增,现在则都有所减缓。
⑧⑨平均而言,老龄人口的自杀率仍高于其他人群,但从2000年以来,其自杀率的下降速度高于其他人群。

词句精读

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①Why are these people now less likely to take their own lives? ②Urbanisation and greater freedom have helped. ③Accounts of those who attempt suicide, and of the relatives of those who succeed, suggest that many young Asian women were driven to despair by violent husbands and overbearing in-laws. ④As people move to cities and the grip of tradition loosens, women have more choice about whom they marry or live with, making life more bearable. ⑤Leaving the village helps in another way, too. ⑥Because farming involves killing things, rural folk are likelier to have the means to kill themselves—guns, pesticides—to hand.

段落赏析

该段讲述了自杀率下降的原因:城市化和更高的自由度,从两方面说明城市化对自杀率降低提供了帮助。
①-②即段落主旨,城市化和更高的自由度对减少自杀行为很有帮助。
③据试图自杀和成功自杀者的亲属描述,亚洲女性自杀主因是家庭暴力和婆媳关系。
④随着移居城镇和传统力量的减弱,女性对于自己的结婚对象和居住地点有了更多的自主权,使得生活不再让人难以忍受。
⑤⑥从另一方面来说,搬离农村也让枪、杀虫剂这类致死物不再容易获得。

词句精读

Take ten lives, you're a serial killer. Take thousands, you're a war hero.
夺走十条生命,你就是个连环杀手。但如果是上千,你倒能成战争英雄了。

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①Social stability is also a factor. ②In the turbulence that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, many middle-aged people saw their sources of income and status collapse. ③Unemployed people kill themselves at around two-and-a-half times the rate of those in work. ④The financial crash of 2007-08 and the resulting recessions are reckoned to have caused an extra 10,000 or so suicides in America and western Europe. ⑤As crises recede and employment rises, so suicide tends to ebb. ⑥And falling poverty rates among the old, which have declined faster than among other groups globally, are reckoned to have contributed to the drop in the number of elderly suicides.

段落赏析

①是用“also”来承上启下,并且直接点出了这段话的中心思想:自杀率高低跟社会稳不稳定有关系。②③从政治层面举例:随着苏联解体,那些失业的自杀率是在职的的2.5倍。④则从经济层面来说明:在欧美的07-08的金融危机,自杀数攀升。⑤则跟②③④反面即社会环境稳定下说明:后来在危机减弱加上就业率的攀升的情况,自杀也消退。⑥则从老年人这个群体来说明:随着贫困率的降低下,老年人的自杀情况也急剧好转。

词句精读

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①But the decline is not just the consequence of big social trends. ②Policy plays a role, too. ③When Mikhail Gorbachev restricted the production and distribution of booze in the mid-1980s, both drinking and suicide fell sharply. ④The collapse of the Soviet Union swept those regulations aside, and both drinking and suicide shot up again. ⑤Restrictions introduced by Vladimir Putin in 2005 are reckoned to have contributed to the recent decline.

段落赏析

第①句用not just引出自杀下降的另一原因。第②句直接了断地阐明了它:政策。这个短句就用得很好,非常突出。③④⑤句用俄国(前苏联)对酒的管控及其相应自杀变化的关系来说明。③④这两句都是前面policy后面suicide的变化,同样的句式有助于加强对比效果。第⑤句则用单句串起了policy跟suicide,让句式有了变化。

词句精读

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①Governments can also help limit the consequences of social and economic turbulence.②Active labour-market policies,which help re-train jobless workers and ease them back into work, prevent many suicides.③And spending on health services, especially those that most benefit the old and sick, can make a big difference: fear of chronic pain is one of the things that leads people to seek a quick way out.④The remarkable recent fall in suicide among elderly Britons may have happened in part because Britain’s palliative-care system is the best in the world.

段落赏析

政府对自杀率下降所起的作用。

词句精读

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①Efforts to curb access to the means to kill oneself can help, too. ②Suicide is surprisingly impulsive.③A study of young Chinese women who had tried to kill themselves showed that three-fifths had been contemplating suicide for less than two hours, and one in ten for less than a minute. ④Of 515 people who had survived the leap from San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge between 1937 and 1971, 94% were still alive in 1978—which suggests that a suicide postponed is likely to be a suicide prevented.

段落赏析

抑制自杀的工具途径也有助于降低自杀率(下一段具体展开讲了从哪些方面控制自杀的方式和途径)。

词句精读

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①Governments can do a lot to put self-slaughter a little further out of reach. ②The most toxic pesticides account for one-seventh of suicides. ③When South Korea outlawed paraquat in 2011, it saw a decline in suicides but no drop in agricultural output. ④Requiring potentially lethal medicines to be sold only in small quantities, as some countries have done with aspirin and paracetamol, has also been shown to help. ⑤But the most effective measure of all is limiting access to guns. ⑥Half of all Americans who commit suicide shoot themselves, and the overall rate in America is about twice that in Britain, which has strict gun controls. ⑦The difference in gun ownership largely accounts for the state-by-state variation in suicide rates.

段落赏析

本段主要是说政府的举措可以使得自杀行为不是那么容易实现。主要从控制剧毒农药的禁售、致命药物的小剂量出售和枪支管制方面,通过举出韩国、美国、英国的例子来重点阐述的。

词句精读

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①The media can also do their bit. ②Suicide is strangely contagious. ③When Robin Williams, an actor, killed himself in 2014, his method and motives were reported in great detail. ④Researchers calculated that there were 1,800 more suicides than would otherwise have been expected in the next four months, often using the same method. ⑤Journalists should cover such tragedies in less detail, and with more restraint.

段落赏析

本段是说导致自杀的发生,媒体也要负一定的责任。因为自杀奇怪的传染性,用演员Robin Williams自杀的例子来说明,他去世的那段时间,由于媒体过于细节性质的报道,导致采取和他相同方式自杀的案件明显增多。建议记者报道时要少细节,多约束。

词句精读

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①For a few people—those who are terminally ill, in severe pain and determined to die—suicide may be the least terrible option. ②In such circumstances, and with firm safeguards, doctors should be allowed to assist. ③But many of the 800,000 people who kill themselves each year act in haste, and more could be saved with better health services, labour-market policies and curbs on booze, guns, pesticide and pills. ④America, in particular, could spare much pain by learning from the progress elsewhere.

段落赏析

本段是说对于重症患者,通过自杀来缓解疼痛也是不得已而为之的选择。在这种特殊情况下,医生应当提供帮助,也就是提供“安乐死”。最后一句话精炼地总结全文,通过更好的医疗服务、劳工市场的政策、控酒、控枪、控杀虫剂、控药等方式,可以减少自杀率。美国,学学其他国家吧!

词句精读

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