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Running head: FILM REVIEW OF MY FAIR LADY

Film Review of My Fair Lady

Hassan Basarally

806007430

LING 6307: Introductory Sociology of Language for Graduate Students

The University of the West Indies

Open Campus
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FILM REVIEW MY FAIR LADY

The film adaptation of the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (Warner & Cukor, 1964)

illustrates several issues related to language, in particular attitudes to language and

motivation for language shift. The main character Professor Higgins, is a linguist who is able

to identify a person’s geographic origin based on an accent. He believes that certain accents

reflect higher social status and education. This leads to the main part of the plot as he takes a

bet with Colonel Pickering that he can train Eliza Doolittle to change her accent and pass as a

member of upper society. Eliza has a Cockney accent, which is stigmatised as uneducated

and working class by characters in the movie. She agrees to the plan, as it is a means for her

social and economic advancement.

After arduous training in changing her accent, Eliza is put to the test as the Ascot

horse races but lapses into her native accent and dialect. Her second test at a ball is more

successful as she is accepted as a member of upper society due to her speech, of course her

beauty amplifies her accent and charm. Professor Higgins develops feelings for Eliza who

leaves after feeling unappreciated for her tremendous effort in changing her accent and

speech. At the end, she returns to his home and speaks to him in the same accent and with the

same lines as in the beginning of the film.

The first linguistic issue that is evident in the movie is the existence of two distinct

speech communities. A speech community is a group of people that share a set of linguistic

norms and expectations. Speech communities are defined my many factors, in the movie the

main factor that distinguishes the speech communities is that of social class, a main

differentiating factor mentioned by Holmes and Mayerhoff. The speech community of

Professor Higgins is characterised by being educated, high social class and economic power,

while the speech community of Eliza is known as working class, less educated and with

limited economic opportunities. Eliza’s speech community is distinct in the omission of the

consonant [h] in word initial positions e.g. [h]urricanes [h]ardly [h]appen. However, it is not
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only Eliza’s accent that identifies her as being part of a speech community; her word choice

is unique as well. This is seen when the members of aristocratic society at the races notice

phrases such as “done her over” when Eliza speaks. At first, they suspect nothing as her

accent has been changed through the efforts of Professor Higgins, but her sentence structure

stands out to the other characters. This highlights a misconception that exists today that

accent alone makes a variety, as seen in the Caribbean where speakers sometime employ a

foreign accent in order to project education while using Creole sentence structures.

The second issue seen is that of linguistic prejudice. Professor Higgins embodies the

prescriptivist view of accent and language variety. He holds that his speech community is the

only standard to be attained and anything outside of it is wrong. When he hears Eliza’s

variety of English, he is quick to remark, “Why can’t the English learn to speak?” His

experiment does not seek to describe her variety but to have her change it to conform to his.

The fact that he associates social status with certain accents brings up the issue of motivation

for language shift. Language shift is when a speaker moves from one language or dialect to

another one. One of the main motivators for this in the movie is social class and economics.

Eliza realises that if she shifts to the variety of Professor Higgins it opens social and

economic opportunities for a girl that wants to be “a lady in a flower shop.” The type of

language change that she seeks to undergo is Change from Above as this is when people

imitate others consciously. However, even though Eliza has some measure of success in

changing her variety, she cannot mask her native speech. When speakers use a non-native

variety, the speaker reverts to the native language in times of heightened emotions. This is

seen when Eliza reverts to her accent at the race when cheering on a horse.

In My Fair Lady (Warner & Cukor, 1964), several issue related to sociolinguistics are

highlighted. There is the existence of different speech communities, with distinct accent and

sentence structure. Language attitudes are seen in the way Professor Higgins stigmatises
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other varieties of English. Finally, motivation for language shift is highlighted and the

struggles of someone trying to adopt a perceived prestigious variety is illustrated in Liza.

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References

Warner, J.L. (Producer), & Cukor, J. (Director). (1964). My Fair Lady [Motion Picture].
United States: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.