Accent and Cultural Language: Pygmalion

In the play, Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, uses cultural criticism, revealing one of their strong accents in the book, Eliza, and most of the characters. The play very often by their speaking. They all have a different accent or way they talk throughout the play. Especially because their language comes from their background, as their class comes with that cultural language. Throughout the story, the language changes by class. Eliza is an example of their language changing by class. When Higgins takes Eliza under his wing, Eliza has a big change from dressing to a whole new different language. Not just Eliza of course but many characters change their slang throughout the play.

At the beginning of the play, Eliza has one of the strongest accents when they took her in throughout the play. In Act 3, we can tell the proper small talk in social situations. The plays also show the power of language. Eliza's transformation is changed by Pickering, who calls her 'Miss Doolittle, while insults her language. Which hurt Eliza's feelings deeply, in this case, shows the violence of language. The plays best interested in the connections between people's speech and hers and his identity. From the start of the play, Higgins easily notices or guesses where people are from by their accent and slang as they talk. People speaking the same language yet reveals a pretty large amount of their identity.

Eliza's speaking changes throughout the whole play. Eliza changes her identity by only learning how to speak different. At the begging of the scene people from different social speaking opposite dialects. Ms. Eysnford was lost as when Eliza calls her son Freddy, without realizing that it is a kind of lower-class slang. By using different habits of speech, Eliza can play as one of the upper classes. The upper class in the play claim to correct or proper English. For example, Higgins comes at Eliza for her poor version of speaking. Even Ms. Eysnford thinks that Eliza's lower slang language is a new way of fashionable talk.

There is really no proper or correct way of Eliza's language. Different accents and slang are all learned my various of people and later used as slang to talk to each other with or their own way to communicate with each other and will also associate from their own background. The higher social class thinks their way is the right and best way of talking, trying to disadvantage the lower classes with the way they talk. Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza all use these slangs and different ways of talking to their advantage to fool pretty much anyone they want to, In this case playing the high society and a proper woman.