Language and Social Class in Play Pygmallion

Throughout the text, Pygmalion, by the playwright George Bernard Shaw, has explored numerous themes. George Bernard Shaw tackles these themes through the Victorian Romance genre, demonstrating the issues of wealth, privilege, education, and language that Eliza Doolittle goes through. The main theme that I will be focusing on today will be Language and Social class. Language and Social class play a major role on how Eliza is perceived as she is judged and placed in a social class based on her language, identity, and culture.

As you can see in the play, there are three main social classes; the upper class, middle class, and working class. Each representing a unique, individual lifestyle. Obviously, the upper class represents the wealthier people as they dress very fashionably which expensive clothing. Their way of speaking is also very delicate, calmly as well as very posh. This is represented through the image of the man on the poster, wearing a very expensive suit.

The speech bubble above the image saying, “Would you like a cup of tea” depicting a very clichéd phrase, a very posh person would say. In the text Pygmalion, this type of language and social class is represented by Mrs. Higgins, who says, “Quite right: I’m very glad indeed to see you”. This is shown to be similar through the orange arrow pointing towards the image of a posh lady, with her quote above demonstrating that Mrs. Higgins is of Upper class through her language (way of speaking) and identity (her appearance).

The other class, the Middle class, are those individuals who are not wealthy but comfortable with their wealth, as demonstrated through this very happy family in front of their owned house. The representation of middle class in the text would be Mrs. Pearce, Mr. Higgin’s slave. Even though she is a slave, she is still a class higher than working class (Act two) The speech bubble below the image of Mrs. Pearce, “Nonsense girl! …How can you be such a foolish, ignorant girl”. Mrs. speaks to Eliza Doolittle as she is socially in a high class, bossing her around, frustrated by her. This is revealed by her language (the way she speaks) and culture (what she thinks is right and wrong). The similarity between these images is illustrated by another orange arrow pointing at each other. Finally, the last class the working class. This class is classified by the poorly dressed people, the least wealthy people, and the least educated as well. This is shown is this depressing image of men who are working really hard to earn some kind of money. This class was represented in the text by Eliza Doolittle herself. Eliza is a poor woman who walked around the streets of London selling flowers. The quote above the image of Eliza, “Nah then, Freddy; look wh’ y’ gowin, deah”, supports the fact that the working class people were highly uneducated who spoke with a cockney accent, mimicking the formal way of speaking English.

One can be perceived and judged through these three classes and different ways of speaking. Eliza Doolittle was immediately socially classified as a working class with a broken English cockney accent from the start, as she was begging for money as well as “trying” to be polite and posh. “I’m a good girl, I am”, as shown on the bottom right of the poster. This enhances the point of how one can be defined by their language, identity and culture. To conclude, this poster was designed to imply the title of the text by placing it dead centre of the page, the three social classes were printed on the top left of the poster, as that is the first area the human eye glances at. This is so the main information was provided first. The huge blue slice across the page symbolises a sort of wall, to sperate the information. The use of bright colours, such as orange and blue, were used to really make the poster stand out to the human eye.