Unit 1 Cultural Heritage阅读理解精练-【帮课堂】2023-2024学年高一英语同步学与练（人教版2019必修第二册）

Unit 1 Cultural Heritage阅读理解精练 （最新名校真题） （2023秋·河南郑州·高一郑州外国语学校校考阶段练习）Several years ago, Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of the famous BBC television programme Top Gear’, discovered that one of his guests was half German and half Irish. Immediately, he said: “That’s quite a strange combination. It’s like, this must be done absolutely perfectly... tomorrow”. This is a joke about the stereotype (刻板印象) that Germans are efficient and Irish are lazy. Many people could understandably be offended by these kinds of assertions (断言). We do not know every Irish person, so how can we then conclude that every Irish person is lazy? I recently read on a website that Irish business people were described as being ‘generally rather casual’ and ‘more outwardly friendly than many European countries’. German business people, on the other hand, are considered to be very direct and according to the website, they do not need a personal relationship in order to do business. Once you hear advice like this, it becomes easier to understand where jokes like the one in the first paragraph come from. So why do some people disagree with the kind of stereotypes as seen in Clarkson’s joke, but agree when it comes to generalizations (概括)? What is the difference between the two? By definition, a stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. A cultural characteristic, on the other hand, is a pattern of behaviour that is typical of a certain group. So what does this really mean? Stereotypes are simply overstated assumptions about groups of people. Imagine if a tourist visited a small town in Switzerland and saw a number of locals playing the alphorn instrument, and then claimed that Swiss people can play the alphorn. This would be a stereotype! This is an overstated image of the Swiss which is based on one tourist’s experience. If, however, this tourist were to say that the Swiss are very punctual, this could be seen as a cultural characterist