les mots associés à "elite" traduisent une différence de
pensée entre les français et les américains: les
américains associent globalement le mot "elite" au mot
argent tandis que les français l'associent a une
sélection et à un progrès basé sur les études, la
culture et le travail. On voit ici que le système
américain est moins égalitaire, car l'appartenance à
l'élite semble être déterminée par la taille du
portefeuille. De plus, le mot "elite" est plus positif
en France car vu comme étant le résultat d'un travail.
Il est beaucoup moins apprécié aux Etats-Unis, ce qui là
encore montre une différence de
culture.

I agree with Julien that American seem to see the word
"elite" with a more negative connotation than do the
French, but I think that the American associations also
talk about being able to gain entrance into elite social
classes through work - a lot of students associated
"school" and "academia" with class, which I think means
that you can rise in social standing in America through
things other than being of money. I was also curious
about what the meaning of "agence de mannequin" is? As
well as why "top modeles" have such high social standing?

Jessica, I took the liberty to respond to your question
even though I'm not one of the French students with whom
we are trying to correspond. <>,
<> (X2) refers to the fact that one of the
largest and most prestigious modeling agencies (as in
bookers, agents that send the models out for castings,
jobs, etc.) is named <>. There are branches of
this int'l agency in the U.S. as well. Two of them that
I know for sure of are in New York and Los
Angeles.---min.

sorry for the confusion i might have caused, i'm having
some technological problems... the missing words (which
were meant to go inside the brackets) are: 1. agence de
mannequin. 2. top-models (X2) 3. ELITE (name of the
agency).