阅读理解
New dictionaries are needed because English has changed more in the past two generations than at any other time in its history. It has had to adapt to extraordinary cultural and technological changes, two world wars, unparalleled changes in transportation and communication, and unprecedented (史无前例的) movements of populations.
More subtly, but pervasively, it has changed under the influence of mass education and the growth of democracy. As written English is used by increasing millions and for more reasons than ever before, the language has become more utilitarian (功利的, 实利的) and more informal. Every publication in America today includes pages that would appear, to the purist of forty years ago, unbuttoned gibberish (莫名其妙的). Not that they are; they simply show that you can''t hold the language of one generation up as a model for the next.
It''s not that you mustn''t. You can''t. For example, in the issue in which Life stated editorially that it would follow the Second International, there were over forty words, constructions, and meanings which are in the Third International but not in the Second. The issue of the New York Times which hailed the Second International as the authority to which it would adhere and the Third International as a scandal and a betrayal which it would reject used one hundred and fifty-three separate words, phrases, and constructions which are listed in the Third International but not in the Second and nineteen others which are condemned in the Second. Many of them are used many times, more than three hundred such uses in all. The Washington Post, in an editorial captioned "Keep Your Old Webster''s," says, in the first sentence, "don''t throw it away," and in the second, "hang on to it." But the old Webster''s labels don''t "colloquial" and doesn''t include "hang on to," in this sense, at all.
In short, all of these publications are written in the language that the Third International describes, even the very editorials which scorn it. And this is no coincidence, because the Third International isn''t setting up any new standards at all; it is simply describing what Life, the Washing-ton Post, and the New York Times are doing. Much of the dictionary''s material comes from these very publications, the Times, in particular, furnishing more of its illustrative quotations than any other newspaper.
单选题
Why does the author say new English dictionaries are needed?