2024年6月四级 第2套 Section A 选词填空

A team of researchers led by Priyanka Joshi examined the degree to which men and women relied on "communicative abstraction" to verbally convey their ideas and emotions. Communicative abstraction, according to the researchers, reflects the tendency of people to use "abstract speech that focuses on the broader picture and __26__ purpose of action rather than concrete speech focusing on details and the means of __27__ action." Interestingly, they found that men were far more likely to speak in the abstract than were women.

To arrive at this __28__, the researchers examined the linguistic (语言的) patterns of men and women in over 600,000 blog posts written on websites. To do this, the researchers computed abstractness ratings for __29__ 40,000 commonly used words in the English language. Words considered to be concrete could be easily visualized, such as "table" or "chair". Words that were more __30__ to visualize, for example, "justice" or "morality" were considered to be more abstract. They found that men used __31__ more abstract language in their blog posts.

What is the __32__ of this effect? The researchers suggest that power differences between the genders— that is, men having more power in society—might be a key determinant (决定因素). For instance, in a follow-up study conducted with a sample of 300 students, the researchers __33__ power dynamics in an interpersonal setting to see if this would influence communicative abstraction. They found that participants in a high-power interviewer role were more likely to give abstract descriptions of behaviors than were participants in a low-power interviewee role. This suggests that communicating more abstractly does not reflect a __34__ tendency of men or women but rather __35__ within specific contexts.