Exploring Language, Class, and Identity in Shaw’s Pygmalion: An Analysis through Communication Accommodation Theory

Abstract

In this article, I will analyze the evolution of speech in Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913), through the lens of Howard Giles’s Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). The communication accommodation theory details how individuals adapt their style in the direction of convergence or divergence with people that they perceive (depending on social identity and relationships). The theory can be applied to intercultural communication, workplaces, and social settings. Analyze the social language through the socio linguistic right language is a means to social growth and personal development. It uses the concepts of convergence and divergence in the study of Eliza, a flower seller from the working class with Cockney speech transformed into an upper-class lady to use upper-class language. The study provides evidence of Eliza's growing social mobility through subtle shifts in her speech, as well as how her lowborn background continues to shape her life even as her social position improves. It also analyzes language through the lens of those who either accept or fight against prevailing social structures, particularly when it comes to the social-class differences signaled by differences in language. This paper highlights that class is still a barrier to full mobility and that whilst language is a forte asset this does not equate with being able to penetrate the workings of the elite in their true terms. An interplay of language reinforces the rigid structures of society, but, with a point-of-view this makes Pygmalion a critique of language itself and how it controls the ability to change.