Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.
A. genuinely B. pocket C. mass-produced D. seemingly E. inspiration
F. familiarize G. group H. encounter I. customary J. symbolic K. motivation |
A Deeper Meaning behind Souvenirs
“Nobody sits us down and tells us to collect objects when we’re young,” writes Rolf Potts, “it’s just something we do, as a way to【小题1】ourselves with the world, its possibilities, and our place in it.”
Few of us would call ourselves collectors, but most travelers 【小题2】a seashell from a vacation, or bring a keychain. As Mr. Potts notes in a book called “Souvenir,” there is more to this 【小题3】simple practice than meets the eye. For one thing, it can date back to the oldest described journeys, so it’s a【小题4】practice that goes back thousands of years. And academic researchers have classified souvenirs -- even【小题5】items like “I Love New York” T-shirts and plastic miniatures of Michelangelo’s David -- into various categories, likely unknown to many travelers.
Which categories do the things we’ve bought or found in our travels fall into? Further, what’s 【小题6】behind our need to bring home souvenirs?
Over time, intellectual curiosity became the driving【小题7】for personal travel. Yet even as travelers began collecting historical and scientific souvenirs, not just religious items, the things they brought home stood for feelings for holy objects.
Scholars【小题8】these souvenirs into different buckets, including “markers” (location branded items like T-shirts and teacups), “pictorial images” (postcards and posters), and “【小题9】landmarks” (for example, Statue of Liberty key chains), with the latter two categories symbolizing, though not exclusive to, mass tourism.
In the end, “Souvenir” suggests that its meaning is not fixed because its importance to the owner can change over time and that its significance is closely related to the traveler’s identity. Mr. Potts himself has had plenty of souvenirs, things that remind him not merely of the places he’s been and the extraordinary 【小题10】between him and local people, but of former life phases. “When we collect souvenirs,” he writes, “we do so not to evaluate the world, but to tell the self.”
