Answer the following questions.

1. Are all people quite different shoppers? How can you prove this?

2. Is it easy to please an exacting shopper? What must a shop-assistant do to satisfy his or her needs and high standards?

3. What differs an exacting shopper from a shopaholic?

4. Does a shopaholic sometimes cause a stir?

                 SHOPPING AS A SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE

    This is an extract from the essay where Phylis Rose, a professor at Wesleyan University, is defending an original value claim. Shopping in America, she says, is different from mere buying; it’s a spiritual adventure that has a number of benefits. For many readers shopping has a number of negative connotations, reflecting materialism, consumption, and lack of self-restraint. Rose’s argument attacks this commonly held view.

Walk into an American supermarket in February and the world lies before you: grapes, melons, artichokes, lettuce, peppers, even strawberries, to say nothing of ice-cream. Another wonder is the discount department store. Here is man’s plenty: tennis racquets, pantyhose, glassware, records, toothpaste, watches, car wax, light bulbs, television- sets. All good quality at low prices with exchanges cheerfully made on defective goods. I feel good about America whenever I walk into this store, which is almost every midwinter Sunday afternoon, when life elsewhere has closed down. I go there the way English people go to pubs: out of sociability. To get away from my house. To widen my horizons. For culture’s sake. It provides me too with a welcome sense of seasonal change. When the first lawn furniture appears there, it’s as exciting a sign of spring as the first crocus or robin.

It’s a misunderstanding to think we go there necessarily to buy. Some of us shop. There’s a difference. Shopping has many purposes, the least interesting of which is to acquire new articles. We shop to cheer ourselves up. We shop to practice decision – making. We shop to be useful and productive members of our class and society. We shop to remind ourselves how much is to be striven for. We shop to assert our superiority to the material objects that spread themselves before us.

Shopping’s function as a form of therapy is widely appreciated. You don’t really need, let’s say, another sweater. You need the feeling of power that comes with buying it. You need the feeling that someone wants something you have. To get the benefit of shopping, you needn’t actually purchase the sweater. Window-shopping can be more rewarding. Minimum expense, maximum experience. Perfect shopping.

    (P. Rose, New York Times, April 12, 1984)

Notes

   1.  out of sociability - из желания пообщаться.

   2. to acquire new articles – зд. приобрести новые виды товаров

   3. this commonly held view – это широко-распространенное мнение;

Answer the following questions.

    1. Do people, according to the text, go to the department stores and         supermarkets necessarily to buy?

    2. For what purpose(s) do people go shopping?

    3. Do you agree with the author that shopping is a form of therapy?

    4. What are the benefits of shopping?

      5. Why is window-shopping, according to the author, a form of

    perfect shopping?

    DEFENDING OR REJECTING CLAIMS

From the following list of claims select the ones that are the claims of value. Then defend or reject all of the claims on the list.

1. The more expensive the product, the more satisfactory it will be.

2. Women prefer to look fashionable rather than feel comfortable.

3. Shop-assistants always exaggerate about the goods they are selling.

4. Men enjoy shopping as well as women.

5. Shopping is often thrilling and entertaining.

6. Shopping is a wasteful of time and money.

7. Making too much fuss about your clothes is not intelligent.

8. Women are mercilessly exploited year after year by top-fashion designers.

9. Like your house, car, and the school your children go to, your clothes can be a status symbol.

 10. Customer is always right.

DISCUSSION POINTS

1. Some people think shopping may be hard work. Others might say it can be also great fun. Do you sometimes find shopping boring, terrible, depressing, irritable, stressful, not appealing to the imagination? Do you often find it enjoyable, creative, good exercise, relaxing, a good source of entertainment, the best treat of all?

2. Are you a shopping addict? Do you use the day to the full when you do shopping? Do you often go shopping willingly? Do you always have to be cautious, wary, thrifty, rational, and reasonable when you do shopping? Have you ever indulged yourself with a shopping spree? What was it like?

3. Shop-assistants must do all they can to make their customers feel comfortable. What precisely do they do? What might be some good or bad points about their job? Does it sometimes seem fairly routine to some people? Sometimes they call their customers annoying. When? Do such customers ask to show them almost everything they see in a shop? Do they try on everything? Do they ask for help? Can they always buy what they need?