本书有以下特点:
一、按照人文学科特点,上册共涵盖四大学科领域:哲学、历史学、宗教学和文学,下册涵盖社会学、文化学、语言学和新闻学四个领域。
二、考虑到我国大学生学完两年大学英语后所达到的实际水平,课文的选材、注释和练习基本上都以《大学英语课程教学要求》的“一般要求”为基础。
三、每册教材涉及的四个领域按上文提到的顺序依次循环排列,每册循环三次,形成十二单元——即:哲学、历史学、宗教学、文学;哲学、历史学、宗教学、文学……这种安排主要是便于我们贯彻教材在选材难度上的循序渐进原则。
四、从知识的角度,我们也注意到了知识的循序渐进性,因此,涉及某个专业领域的**个单元基本上只涉及这个专业领域里的基础知识和基本原理。
五、考虑到《大学英语课程教学要求》对英语学习质和量上的要求,我们采用“主、副”课文制:对主要课文从注解和练习两个方面都进行了**处理,用作教师课堂内**讲解的内容;副课文主要供学生课后自学,以便对课文从语言和知识两方面起到巩固作用。
六、本教材强调培养学生准确理解文章内容的能���,相应地,每单元三篇文章都配有阅读理解练习。

Unit One
Text:An Invitation to Sociology
Reading Passage One:The Sound of Silence
Reading Passage Two:Structuralism in Anthropology:Claude Levi-Strauss
Unit Two
Text:The Analysis of Culture
Reading Passage One:Looking Backward at Cultural Studies
Reading Passage Two:The Influence of American Culture on Post-War Austria
Unit Three.
Text:Sign, Signified, Signifier
Reading Passage One:What Is Language?
Reading Passage Two:Language and Thought
Unit Four
Text:The Mass Media:What Is Newsworthy?
Reading Passage One:Electronic Newspapers
Reading Passage Two:Journalism Education Marked by Fragility
Unit Five
Text:The Sociological Imagination
Reading Passage One:Durkheim's Solution to Modemity's Riddle
Reading Passage Two:The Interactional Basis of Self and Other
Unit Six
Text:Constructing Cultural Metaphors
Reading Passage One:Shoring Up the West
Reading Passage Two:What Is Global Culture?
Unit Seven
Text:Language and Literature
Reading Passage One:The Whorfian Hypothesis
Reading Passage Two:Language as a Social Behavior
Unit Eight
Text:In All Fairness
Reading Passage One:The Pulitzer Prizes
Reading Passage Two:Public Sphere, Complex Citizenship and News.
Unit Nine
Text:Social Capital and America's Ills
Reading Passage One:Social Isolation Growing in US
Reading Passage Two:The Differences of Habermas's Ideas with Marx.
Unit Ten
Text:Postmodernism and the Pluralism of Value
Reading Passage One:Popular-Common Culture
Reading Passage Two:Globalization
Unit Eleven
Text:The Language Game
Reading Passage One:Language as Human Behavior
Reading Passage Two:The Relationship Between Language and Thought
Unit Twelve
Text:News Agencies and Cyberspace
Reading Passage One:Journalism and Moral Innocents
Reading Passage Two:The Sweet Sound of Conflict
Appendix Ⅰ Key to Exercises
Appendix Ⅱ Chinese Translation of the Texts
Appendix Ⅲ Glossary