issues208 衣着与社会价值 欠抽的题目啊……逻辑不清，求抽！

starshaneUID: 2616355

TOPIC: ISSUE208 - "The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people."
WORDS: 423
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010/4/17 12:28:42

My analysis on this issue consists of two parts. First, does the way people dress and behave themselves indicate their attitudes and interest? The answer may be contingent on social, economical and political conditions. However, by observing people's appearance and behavior, we can safely get a general picture of the social values.


好纠结的逻辑……

1）
The way people look，dress，and act(appearance and behavior)-----à2）attitudes and interests-------à3）society’s ideas and values

看过0510G同主题习作中的分析后，我自己的观点是1）推不出2），但推得出3）……觉得快把issue当argue写了，而且写不清楚……真是欠抽啊……

1，
个人的外表和行动不一定反映个人态度与偏好，因为外表行动更受其他因素，如职业，经济地位，文化传统等社会因素影响
In the first place, people may dress according to their attitudes and interests. Like a rock music fan may prefer fabulous wardrobe. Yet the way people dress themselves does not loyally reflect their attitudes and interest because many other facts contributes to people’s dressing habits, such as profession, economic status and social customers. For example, many business men and women are dressed in neat suits and behave in a homogenously polite way; but that does not mean that business people really like ties and high heels. Their appearance is more or less professional requirements. Moreover, people in poverty have not much choice about what to wear, while their plain appearance does not suggest that they are “plain” or trite. In some regions traditional costumes are preserved probably because of cultural traditions, or simply because no other clothes are available. Through these cases we cannot get much information about personal preference and interests of the people concern.

2，正是因为外表行动受社会因素影响，观察大部分人的外表与行动是能推断出社会价值的
However, just because individual appearance and behavior do not always indicate personal attitudes and interest does not mean we cannot learn the social values from individuals. If we just need a general picture of the ideas and values of a society, we can omit the above cases because whether people are forced into certain dressing habits or behaviors or not, their appearance and acts are constrained by the social values and ideas anyway, thus serve as an indicator to our observations. For example, during the period of Cultural Revolution in China, around 1960s~1970s, all men and women were dressed in military forms or simple clothing, voluntarily or not. The idea behind this dressing habit is collectivism, high social uniformity and obedience to the CCP and the center government. While in an open and diversified societies like ones in Europe or North America, people's appearance and make-up varies from one another, which indicates that the society put much emphasis on individualism and free choice. The most extreme case is in the Arabia world, most women wear black veils covering more than half their faces. This seemingly odd dressing habit actually reflects cultural tradition and value of sexual discrimination in the Arabia world for thousands of years.

行为
As for behaviors, it is a more powerful indicator than clothing. People from Asian societies, generally speaking, act in a cautious and conservative manner. They seldom kiss on the street, nor do they feel comfortable about having credit card overdrafts. The social values seem to be conservative and risk-averse. In contrast to the Asian world, in modern western society people are more prone to express themselves in most circumstances. They dare to raise questions and challenge the teacher in the class, kiss each other goodbye, and spend extra money on luxury goods. From the above facts we can speculate several conclusions that western people are not superstitious about authoritarians, that they are loyal to their own emotions, and that they enjoy high quality life and pleasures.




In sum, the statement by the speaker is partially correct and has some merits. Usually some social constraints, rather than personal attitudes and interests, dictate people’s way of dressing and behave, and because of that, we can infer from the general dressing and behavior habits the value of the society.

starshaneUID: 2616355

自顶……有人来帮忙看看逻辑吧