从语言学角度分析电影《My-Fair-Lady》教学内容

从语言学来看《窈窕淑女》
《窈窕淑女》是根据萧伯纳小说改编的一部电影，其中，奥黛丽赫本扮演女主人公伊莉莎——一个美丽但口音怪异、行为粗鄙的街头卖花女，她的嗓音引起了语言学家希金斯教授的注意，他和好友打赌，经过他的训练，卖花女也可以成为贵夫人。

他从最基本的字母发音开始对伊莉莎密集训练，在6个月后的一次重大舞会上，伊莉莎谈吐不凡，气质高雅，成为焦点。

学过语言学，再看这部影片，发现很多耐人寻味的语言现象。

从语言角度来看，卖花女伊莉莎的嗓音被希金斯教授称为“如小鸡在粮仓里咯咯叫”，“她发的每一个音都不适当，她应该被吊死因为她无情地谋杀了英语”。

从语音分析四的个方面（音高，音重，音长，音质）来解析伊莉莎的自身语音系统，她有着与其成长环境一致的发音习惯，比如，她会把“以为”发成“以味”的音，经常读错重音，会把[ə:]发成[ə]，把[z]发成[T] close cloth breeze breathe。

自由的生活环境和卖花女身份更丰富的了她的发音方式。

这让教授初教她发音字母时头疼不已。

从语法角度来看，伊莉莎的表达更是自由，她会说“两元一支”而不是“一枝花的价格是两元”。

这是一个紧缩句，或者是种语言的变换。

而教授要她学严谨优雅的英语语法，这对她来说无疑很困难。

从词汇和语言发展角度来看，首先是口语和书面语，伊莉莎会说“喝水”而不是“饮水”，说“脑袋”而不是“头颅”；其次是社会方言，她的圈子里说“盐巴”而上层社会会说“食盐”。

赫本的另一部电影《罗马假日》中，标志性的上层语言暴露了她的公主身份。

这些都是和她的职业、阶层相适应的。

包括她说话时的体态、表情广义上应该属于一种语言方式。

但教授的训练要她从词汇到体态甚至表情做全方位的转换，这是对一个成长于社会底层的她的折磨。

从各方面来讲，这注定是一次艰难的蜕变。

宏观上来讲，影片侧重的更是语言的阶级性方面，伊莉莎做这些改变的根源就是社会上下层在语言上有差别。

但语言本身不分贵贱，政治的贵贱之分给它抹上了势力的色彩。

但从另一方面来讲，也充分说明了语言的重要性。

气质不是由血统决定的，是一个人内涵，语言，姿态的集合。

语言的内核是一个人的内在。

Sociolinguistic Analysis of My Fair Lady [ Abstract] M y FairLady is a movie about how a poor flower girl turns to a lady by simp ly changing her language at the help of a linguist. It demonstrates in a dramatic way the importance of language as a social identity of a person and the influence a language exerts on a person’s experience. This paper tries to exp lain some phenomena in the movie in a sociolinguistics view, focusing on variations of language caused by gender difference and class difference. The paper hopes to help the reader to know better the charm of language through the analysis and to have a p rofound understanding of the film.
[ Key words] sociolinguistic; gender difference; class - related variation
I. In troduction
Sociolinguistic is“the study of language in relation to society”. [ 1 ] 1 It is believed that language is an essential part in our lives because it is“a very structured set of symbols”by which we can identify ourselves in the world[ 1 ] 12. Just as it is impossible for two peop le to have identical experiences, so the language of two peop le will never be the same. A person’s language is closely related to his/her social background and vice versa, his/her experience will to a large extent be determined by the language he / she speaks. The movie M y FairLady is a good illustration. M y FairLady is a movie about how a poor flower girl named Eliza changes her life by changing her language at the help of a famous linguist Professor Higgins. Eliza is a lower - class flower girl selling flowers on the streetswho speaks“terrible English”. Higgins boasts to his friend Pickering that he could turn this girl into a real lady in six months simp ly by teaching her standard English. Eliza also wants to become genteel so that she could find a job in a flower shop, therefore she goes to Higgins for help. The game begins and after two months Eliza successfully turns into a lady, dancing in the Embassy Ball with Transylva nian p rince and everyone thinks her is a p rincess.This paper tries to analyze the movie from a sociolinguistic angle, mainly focusing on language difference caused by social class and gender difference.
Ⅱ. Dialects
Every language may have varieties, which defines by Hudson as“a set of linguistic items with similar distribution”[ 2 ] 21. Dialect is one of the varieties of language which is believed to be excluded from polite society[ 2 ] 24. Taking English for example,as the most wildly - used language in the world, English has many varieties such as British English, American English, Indian English and so on. In each variety, there are many dialects.To those who do not speak natural standard English, we can always find traces of dialects in their speaking from which we may find out their identities. Just as Professor Higgins has said in the movie, “an Englishman’sway of speaking absolutely classifies him”.
2. 1 RegionalDialect
Regional dialects are“varieties of a language which are spoken in different geographical areas”[ 3 ] 154. A regional dialect distinguishes peop le of one region from those of another region. In the movie, as a linguist Higgins can easily tell where the person is from by the accent he / she wears. He knows Eliza is from the far eastern part of Britain, L isson Grove, and that Charlie,Eliza’s father, may have a Welsh mother from their speaking.Not only could he tellwhich part of Britain a person is from but also he could roughly tellwhich block a person lives if she /her is a Londoner. Although itmay be exaggerated to portray a linguist like this in themovie, it has indeed demonstrated to us how great the influence of a dialect can be. As a fan of standard British English, Higgins desp ises any regional English variety besides standard British English. “The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. In America they haven’t used it ( English) foryears, ”said the p rofessor.
2. 2 SocialDialects
Just as regional dialects distinguish peop le from one region to anther, so does a social dialect distinguish peop le from one class or group to another. Two peop le who are born in the same place may not use the same variety of language. Their social background counts a large part in their speaking and can make a great difference in their use of language[ 4 ] 79. At the time when M y Fair Lady sets as background, the upper class and the lower class spoke totally different languages,
and men and women talked differently too. The movie has well reflected class - related social dialects and gender - related social variations.
1. Class - related social dialects
Language has classes too. In the movie, the upper class speak standard English while the lower class speak nonstandard
English varieties. Eliza comes from L isson Grove. Grammatically she says“he’s your son, is he?”instead of“he’s your son, isn’t he?”, “I ain’t done”, “me words”and“it weren’t”instead of“I haven’t done”, “my words’’and“it wasn’t”. Eliza’s friendswho are from Selsey and Hoxton make similar grammatical mistakes as Eliza does. They apply“ain’t”to every negative sentence, regardless of person or auxiliary. Phonologically they omit /./ in words like “going”and“paying”, pronounce“you”as“ya”if the word is at the end of a sentence, and contract“believe me”as“blimey”. The upper class, on the other hand, even if some of them may wear accent, speak grammatically and phonologically correctly. Differentways of speakingmay give different imp ressions to the hearer. The language of the lower class sounds barbarous and impolite while the language of upper class imp licates grace and politeness. Language sets as a natural barrier between the classes. Professor Higgins condemns Eliza as the murder of English and p roposes that she should be hanged for not speaking“the language of Shakespeare andMilton and the B ible”. He p redicts
that the girlwill live a miserable life for the whole life because of her language. To him, Eliza is a dirty and shallow girl who drinks a lot and has no feelings like others. All his assump tion is merely based on her language. Eliza, having heard Higgins’s boast to his friend that he could change her life by teaching her talk, goes to find Higgins to persuade him to teach her how to talk so that she could find a job as a shop assistant in a flower shop. When the man answering the door asks her name, Eliza says nothing. The man repeats his words in a polite way. The moment Eliza opens her mouth the man’s attitude turns into a cold politeness. Mrs. Pearce, the housekeeper, does not sent Eliza away only because she thought Eliza was coming to record her“ghastly accent”for the p rofessor. The influence of language is such that it can make peop le p rejudge a person before knowing
him /herwell. Eliza begins to learn speaking standard English from Professor Higgins. Most of the time she learns how to standardize her lower - class p ronunciation of vowels /·au / and /·i/ to / ei/ and / au / , and learns to p ronounce /h / which was omitted in her p revious speaking. Besides, she has to learn to put the tone at a p roper position of a sentence. For examp le, she should say“how kind of you to letme come”with the stress on the second word“kind”instead of on “you”. When Eliza finally learns the vowels Professor Higgins takes her to the race where she is supposed to talk about only weather and health. There is a strong trace of imitation in her speaking but she does well. However, she betrays herself when shouting at the horse“move your bloomin’arse”at the end of the race. We can understand how hard it
is for a person to change his/her speaking totally in such a short time. Desp ite of the accident, Professor Higgins decides to take her to the Embassy Ball after two more weeks training. When Eliza appears in the EmbassyBall, she is not the flower girl any more or the girl in the race. She speaks pure standard English and behaves gracefully. The p rince is attracted by her charm and asks her to dance with him. She is regarded as a foreign p rincess by everyone. The reason why peop le regard Eliza as a foreigner is that a Hungarian linguist says that her English is too good which indicates she is not English because English peop le do not receive education on their native language. She must have learned English from a linguistic p rofessor. And by her grace, said the Hungarian linguist, he could tell“her blood is bluer than the Danube”and must be a p rincess. In sociolinguistics, this phenomenon is called hypercorrection. The term hypercorrection is first put forward byLabov. In his investigation of the / r/ variable in New York City, Labov discovers that the lower middle class speak with more r - p ronunciation than the upper middle class, which is weird because in theory the amount of r use should increase by social class. Labov finds out that lower class people who are aware of the p
restigious use of r tend to“outperform their reference group ”i. e. the upper middle class. Lobav call the out - performance as hypercorrection. [ 2 ] 163 In the movie hypercorrection has occurred to Eliza. As a lower class girl who is trained to become a higher class duchess to attend a ball, Eliza hasmade great efforts in imitating the way the upper class people talk so that in the end her speech ismuchmore standard than her reference group—the noble.
After a quarrel with Professor Higgins because he did not p raise her for the success in the ball, Eliza goes back to where
she lived only to find peop le who were familiarwith her cannot even recognize her anymore. They call hermiss and suggest that lady like her shouldn’t be walking alone around London that hour of the morning. Eliza is undergoing an identity crisis. Having changed in language and behavior, Eliza no longer belongs to her p revious speech community. A speech community, according to the definition p rovided by Bloomfield, “is a group of people who interact bymeans of speech”. [ 2 ] 119 Strictly speaking, Eliza does not belong to the speech community of upper class, either. She may speak their language but she is not one of them. She is only a poor flower girl who has learnt a noble way of speaking. Eliza is worried about and confused by what she will become of and where she should go. Apparently it is impossible to go back to sell flowers now. “Now you’ve made a lady of me, I’m not fit to sell anything else, ”Eliza comp lained to Professor. The movie ends as Eliza continuing to stay at the Professor’s where everyone knows her identity as a flower girl and yet loves her as a duchess.
2. Gender - related social variations
Besides class - related social dialects, the movie has clearly demonstrated difference of the use of language caused by gender difference. Men and women talk differently. This is a truth generally accep ted in sociolinguistics.The language ofmen and women vary form many aspects. In terms of tone, women p refer to use rising tone in the end of statements while men like to use a falling tone[ 5 ] 127. In the movie, when Eliza goes to visit Professor Higgins, both the man who answers the door and the housekeeperMrs. Pearce have uttered the sentence“one moment, p lease”. The difference is that the man used a falling tone on the word“p lease”whileMrs. Pearce used a rising tone. Women also like to add tag questions to statements. “He’s your son, is he?”Eliza asks a woman like this. Women talk in this way to encourage others to give an explicit answer or to join in the discussion actively. Generally speaking, women are more polite but less confident than men in the use of language. They try to maintain a good relationship with others during conversation while men mainly care about the information conveyed in conversation. [ 6 ] 64Contrary to women’s polite way of speaking, men speak in a more forceful and less polite way. For examp le, in the movie no matter how scared or angry Eliza is she only uses the word“ohh”and“garn”to exp ress her feelings. Professor Higgins, on the other hand, repeats“damn”when he is up set and angry. Even in lower class where polite p rincip les are not so restricted as those of upper class, a girl like Eliza would not use“damn”to exp ress her anger. Otherwise she may be condemned as vulgar. However, a man in upper class can use the word to exp resshis frustration without being considered vulgar. One of Higgins’statements reflects another difference between men and women in their use of language. “You want to talk of Keats orMilton; she onlywants to talk of love. You go to see a p lay or ballet and spend it searching for her glove, ”said Higginswhen he describes how horrible itwould be like if a man let a woman in his life. It seems thatwomen and men prefer different topics in talking. Modern linguists find out that men like to talk about job or sports while women p refer to talk about personal feelings or trifle things like clothes. [ 5 ] 127 That is why Professor Higgins dislikes women because he thinks women are noisy and emotional, and they do not take any interest in his hobby—literature.
Ⅲ. Conclusion
In this paper, the movie M y FairLady is discussed from the sociolinguistic view. Containing a large amount of phenomena
which sociolinguisticsmay find interesting, the movie is not only a good story to app reciate but also a p ropermaterialworth sociolinguistic attention. It has reflected the different usage of language among classes and between genders, and has demonstrated to us in a dramatic way how great the influence of language can be to a person’s experience. The author of this paper hopes that after the analysis the reader could know better about the charm of
language and its social functions.。