英美文化部分名词解释

The Cold War （冷战）By the end of WWⅡ, the United States, which had not suffered as much as other allied countries, because the strongest country in the world. As the possessor of atomic tombs and much of the world’s gold reserve and industrial production in its hand, the policy-makers of the US wanted a world order dominated by the US, a world market free and open to American goods and services. In pursuing this goal, the US encountered determined resistance from the Soviet Union. Gradually the two wartime allies fell apart and the Cold War began.Mrs. Thatcher （撤切尔主义）Thatcherism referred to the policies put forward by Margaret Thatcher, the first woman prime minister in England in 1979. The main contents of her policies included the return to private ownership of state-owned industries, the use of monetarist policies to control inflation, the weakening of trade unions the strengthening of the role of market forces in the economy, and an emphasis on law and order. To some extent her program was successful and she led one of the most remarkable periods in the British economy.Service industries （服务业）They are industries that sell a service rather than make a product，which now dominate the economy. Service industries range from banking to telecommunications to the provision of meals in restaurants. As more and more people are employed in service industries in the US, it is sometimes said the US has moved into a “post-industrial era”.Regionalism (地方主义)As pioneers settled new territories in the West, writers now focused on the differences between the various regions of the United States rather than on a single vision of the expanding country.Stock （股票）When starting or expanding business, corporations need to borrow money. They may issue stocks for people to buy. When people buy stock, they become part owner of the company. If the company makes a profit, they receive a share of it. Likewise, if the company loses money, the stockholders will not make a profit or the value of their shares will drop—they lose money. Therefore buying stock is a risk.Three Faiths in the US （三大信仰）By the 1950s, the three faiths model of American religion had developed. Americans were considered to come in three basic varieties: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. In terms of numbers, the Protestants are the strongest, the Catholics are next to the Protestants and Jewish are the smallest amongthe three groups.The Civil Rights Movement （公民权利运动）It’s one of the most important of all social movement in the 1960s U.S. history. Rosa Park’s spontaneous action in 1955 was believed to be the true beginning of the civil rights movement. The black students’ sit-in at a department lunch counter in North Carolina touched off the nationwide civil rights movement. During the first half of the decade, civil rights organizations like SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), and SCLC (the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) struggled for racial integration by providing leadership, tactics, network and the people. In the latter half of the decade, some black organizations changed their nonviolent tactics, and emphasized on more radical means to end discrimination and raised the self image of the blacks. The civil rights movement produced such great leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, who inspired a generation of both blacks and whites to devote their lives to fighting for racial equality in the U.S.The containment policy （压制政策）The US put into effect the containment policy in the late 1940s. By containment, the US meant that it would use whatever means, including military force, to prevent the Soviet Union from breaking out of its sphere of influence. In order to contain communism, the US fought two was in Asia: the Korean War and the Vietnam War.The “Lost Generation” (迷惘的一代)In the aftermath of World War I, many novelists produced a literature of disillusionment. Some lived abroad. They were known as the “Lost Gener ation”. The two most representative writers of the “Lost Generation” were Hemingway and Fitzgerald.Transcendentalists（超验主义者）In his book Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that by studying and responding to nature individuals could reach a higher spiritual state without formal religion. A circle of intellectuals who were discontented with the New England establishment gathered around Emerson. They accepted Emerson’s theories about spiritual transcendence. They are known as Transcendentalists. The “Beat Generation”（跨掉的一代）The “Beat Generation” was made up of a group of young writers in the 1950s based in San Francisco. The name referred simultaneously to the rhythm of Jazz music, to their sense that society was worn out, to the interest in new forms of experience, through drugs, alcohol or Eastern mysticism. Alan Ginsburg’s Howl set for them a tone of social protest.Greensboro Sit-in (格林斯博罗静坐)On February 1, 1960, 4 freshmen from a black college in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a department lunch counter and ordered coffee. When refused, they continued to sit at the counter, openly defying the segregation law prevailing in the state. The next day, more students joined them. Thus began the civil rights movement, which spread from the south to th e north. Later, this quiet “sit-in” became the major nonviolent direct action tactics to be used by black civil rights activists.White-collar crimes (白领阶层的犯罪)White-collar crimes are those committed by higher income groups such as the crimes of fraud, false advertising, corporate price fixing, bribery, embezzlement, industrial pollution, tax evasion and so on. Yet the statistics provided by the FBI tend to overlook white-collar crimes. In fact, white-collar crimes are often ignored by law enforcement agencies. Some sociologists argue that the higher classes may actually have a higher rate of crime than the lower classes.。