小站备考
托福
托福听力
Official5听力真题

托福official5听力lecture1 Meme原文解析+翻译音频

展开
Tip:单击查看句义;划选/双击查生词

[00:00.00]Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a sociology class.
[00:04.40]FEMALE PROFESSOR: Have you ever heard the one about alligators living in New York sewers? [00:08.13]The story goes like this: a family went on vacation in Florida, and bought a couple of baby alligators as presents for their children, then returned from vacation to New York, bringing the alligators home with them as pets.
[00:21.86]But the alligators would escape and find their way into the New York sewer system where they started reproducing, grew to huge sizes and now strike fear into sewer workers. [00:32.65]Have you heard this story? Well, it isn't true and it never happened, [00:37.08]but despite that, the story's been around since the 1930s.[00:41.35]Or how about the song "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"? You know  "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…" [00:50.89]Well, we've all heard this song.
[00:52.79]Where am I going with this?  [00:54.50]Well, both the song and the story are examples of memes, [00:59.04]and that's what we'll talk about, the theory of memes.[01:02.61]A meme is defined as a piece of information copied from person to person. [01:08.18]By this definition, most of what you know… ideas, skills, stories, songs… are memes. [01:15.85]All the words you know, all the scientific theories you've learned, the rules your parents taught you to observe… all are memes that have been passed on from person to person.
[01:27.51]So what?… you may say. [01:29.08]Passing on ideas from one person to another is nothing new… [01:32.75]Well, the whole point of defining this familiar process as transmission of memes is so that we can explore its analogy with the transmission of genes.[01:43.73]As you know, all living organisms pass on biological information through the genes.
[01:49.88]What's a gene? [01:51.23]A gene is a piece of biological information that gets copied, or replicated, and the copy, or replica, is passed on to the new generation. [02:01.19]So genes are defined as replicators…[02:05.00]Genes are replicators that pass on information about properties and characteristics of organisms. [02:12.12]By analogy, memes also get replicated and in the process pass on cultural information from person to person, generation to generation. [02:24.49]So memes are also replicators.
[02:27.08]To be a successful replicator, there are three key characteristics: longevity, fecundity, and fidelity. [02:37.29]Let's take a closer look …[02:39.06]First, longevity.  [02:41.46]A replicator must exist long enough to be able to get copied and transfer its information. [02:47.47]Clearly, the longer a replicator survives, the better its chances of getting its message copied and passed on. [02:53.72]So longevity is a key characteristic of a replicator. [02:57.59]If you take the alligator story, it can exist for a long time in individual memory—let's say my memory. [03:04.60]I can tell you the story now, or ten years from now. The same with the "Twinkle, twinkle" song. [03:09.96]So these memes have longevity, because they're memorable, for one reason or another.
[03:15.53]Next, fecundity. [03:17.44]Fecundity is the ability to reproduce in large numbers. [03:21.40]For example, the common housefly reproduces by laying several thousand eggs. So each fly gene gets copied thousands of times. [03:31.58]Memes? Well, they can be reproduced in large numbers as well. [03:35.49]How many times have you sung the "Twinkle, twinkle" song to someone? [03:39.06]Each time you replicated the song—and maybe passed it along to someone who didn't know it yet, a small child maybe.
[03:46.99]And finally, fidelity. [03:49.74]Fidelity means accuracy of the copying process. [03:54.53]We know fidelity is an essential principle of genetic transmission.  [03:59.69]If a copy of a gene is a bit different from the original, that's called a genetic mutation, [04:06.11]and mutations are usually bad news. [04:09.05]An organism often cannot survive with a mutated gene—[04:13.07]and so a gene usually cannot be passed on unless it's an exact copy.
[04:18.69]For memes, however, fidelity is not always so important.  [04:23.65]For example, if you tell someone the alligator story I told you today, it probably won't be word for word exactly as I said it. [04:32.63]Still, it will be basically the same story, and the person who hears the story will be able to pass it along. [04:39.46]Other memes are replicated with higher fidelity, though—like the "Twinkle, twinkle" song?
[04:45.15]It had the exact same words twenty years ago as it does now. [04:49.46]Well, that's because we see songs as something that has to be performed accurately each time. [04:56.53]If you change a word, the others will usually bring you in line. [05:00.51]They'll say, "That's not how you sing it," right?[05:03.64]So, you can see how looking at pieces of cultural information as replicators, as memes, and analyzing them in terms of longevity, fecundity, and fidelity, we can gain some insight about how they spread, persist, or change.

1.What is the main purpose of the lecture?

你的答案:
正确答案:B
题目解析:
 后才能查看题目解析,还没有账号? 马上注册
教授先是讲故事然后又是说小星星的歌都是为了引出主题也就是the theory of meme。而么么就是A meme is defined as a piece of information copied from person to person.

学习页面

Medi

terr

anean

加强 + 政府 + 名词后缀

加强的政府——管理

原文例句

加入生词

本文生词 0

色块区域是你收藏过的生词;

查询次数越多,颜色越深哦~

显示文中生词

登录后才能收藏生词哦,现在登录注册>

本文重点词 45

文中加粗单词为本文重点词;

根据词频与核心词范围精心挑选,托福考试必掌握词汇。

显示文中重点词
学习本文词汇

文中划选/双击的生词、加粗重点词已收纳至词盒

可随时点击词盒查看哦~

只有在词句精学模式下才能开启词盒功能哦~

我知道了

词盒
收藏
笔记
我的笔记
5000
保存
反馈