Prime Time 6, Coursebook mit Audio-CD und DVD

c) In a chart, summarise the main points of each paragraph of the text in order to better understand the author’s line of reasoning. d) What do you think about the last two sentences in the text (“… has made the United States a replica of the world.”)? Writing: An e-mail to the editor You have come across the article “Is American culture ‘American’?” printed above when it appeared in a youth magazine focusing on globalisation. You would like to comment on some of the views given in the article and decide to write to the editor of the magazine. In your e-mail to the editor you should: • discuss the domination of a global culture • analyse the US as a replica of the world • outline your own experience with the cultural influence of the US Write around 200 words . 3 between the United States and the rest of the world over the past 100 years has never been one-sided. On the contrary, the United States was, and continues to be, as much a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic in uences as it has been a shaper of the world’s entertainment and tastes. In fact, as a nation of immigrants from the 19 th to the 21 st century, the United States has been a recipient as much as an exporter of global culture. Indeed, the in uence of immigrants on the United States explains why its culture has been so popular for so long in so many places. American culture has spread throughout the world because it has incorporated foreign styles and ideas. What Americans have done more brilliantly than their competitors overseas is repackage the cultural products they receive from abroad and then retransmit them to the rest of the planet. at is why a global mass culture has come to be identi ed, however simplistically, with the United States. Americans, aer all, did not invent fast food, amusement parks or the movies. Before the Big Mac, there were sh and chips. Before Disneyland, there was Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens (which Walt Disney used as a prototype for his rst theme park in Anaheim, California, a model later re-exported to Tokyo and Paris). And in the rst two decades of the 20 th century, the two largest exporters of movies around the world were France and Italy. e eectiveness of English as a language of mass communications has been essential to the acceptance of American culture. Unlike German, Russian or Chinese, the simpler structure and grammar of English, along with its tendency to use shorter, less abstract words and more concise sentences, are all advantageous for the composers of song lyrics, ad slogans, cartoon captions, newspaper headlines and movie and TV dialogue. Another factor is the international complexion of the American audience. e heterogeneity of America’s population – its regional, ethnic, religious, and racial diversity – forced the media, from the early years of the 20 th century, to experiment with messages, images, and story lines that had a broad multicultural appeal. e Hollywood studios, mass-circulation magazines, and the television networks have had to learn how to speak to a variety of groups and classes at home. is has given them the techniques to appeal to an equally diverse audience abroad. America’s mass culture has oen been crude and intrusive, as its critics have always complained. But American culture has never felt all that foreign to foreigners. And, at its best, it has transformed what it received from others into a culture everyone, everywhere, could embrace – a culture that is both emotionally and, on occasion, artistically compelling for millions of people throughout the world. In the end, American mass culture has not transformed the world into a replica of the United States. Instead, America’s dependence on foreign cultures has made the United States a replica of the world. (From: Global Issues: The Challenges of Globalisation by Richard Pells, February 2006; adapted) 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 71 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv