Relation of Language and Society in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

Abstract

This study aims at looking language and society in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. It shows how lower class persons are victimized after intermingling in higher class. They cannot leave easily from others’ classes if they are trained properly there. Henry Higgins, a Professor of phonetics who teaches Eliza, an uneducated girl who sells flower in London street, to speak like the upper class using correct grammar, proper vowel sounds and careful pronunciation in the correct tone of voice. Shaw, in Pygmalion presents the language and phonetics how English respect it and tries to convey us language is that factor which determines the economic standards and social status. Speech, Shaw believed, was the great barrier between social classes. And Higgins' experiment with Eliza was intended to support the proposition that the individual difference between a flower girl and a duchess is no greater than the difference between the sounds they make when talking. Triumph to lower class people is not ultimate satisfaction which determines society. That is real in the life of Eliza who leaves Higgins after perfection in language training, thinking her old world, a flower-seller.