My Fair Lady follows Professor Henry Higgins and his student Eliza Doolittle. Professor Higgins, a linguist who can distinguish different accents from all across Europe, takes on a bet in which he says he can transform Eliza, a lowly flowergirl, into a lady who speaks, acts, and dresses properly. Eliza eventually succeeds at becoming a more "genteel" woman, and even attracts the attention and adoration of a young aristocrat. Eliza's makeover is apparent in the way she talks (how she enunciates her vowels), the way she dresses, and the overall way she handles herself. However, when she overhears Prof. Higgins taking all the credit for her unbelievable transformation, Eliza leaves him and Prof. Higgins realizes that he misses her.
From a linguist student's point of view, this film is interesting, as it allows us to listen to many different dialects of the English language--from the rough way of speaking of Eliza to the more refined speaking of Higgins and his colleagues. My favorite part of the movie was in the beginning when Prof. Higgins went around listening to people to talk and telling each one of them exactly where they came from! He mentioned that he could distinguish where someone is from within 3 or 6 miles! I also found it interesting how Eliza wanted to change her way of speaking so she could find a better job and make more money. This shows that her dialect was of the low variety and that she would have to change that if she were to speak in a different, higher domain of life.
Overall, My Fair Lady was a good musical which successfully incorporated different dialects to teach the differences between high and low varieties.
I liked how you incorporated the idea of diglossia in your perspective of the movie. I was wondering what specifically about Eliza's dialect made it so "low" of a variety? Was it the harshness of the sound or intonation? I understand that political and economic forces drive the creation of low and high varieties, but are there also linguistic reasons?
ReplyDeleteOverall good summary and analysis of the movie. I like how you mention the part that this movie wasn't just to focus on the differences in languages and that it was after all a musical. It just happened to have successfully incorporated the discussion about speech and dialects.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how people view certain dialects as low and high dialects. Indeed, the Cockney language does have a more harsh tone to it than the high society British accent used by the aristocrats. However, maybe we have just become accustomed to associating these dialects with social ranking because that is what we have been shown in the movies. If we did not have these preconceptions, I wonder how are opinions about the social ranking based on dialects would differ.
ReplyDeletewhen it comes to high and low dialects, i feel as if it is more of a generalization/stereotyping of the people who speak the variety, as opposed to the spoken variety on its own.
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