从社会语言学角度看电影_窈窕淑女_英文_

语文学刊 ·外语教育教学 பைடு நூலகம் 2010年第 5期
Soc iolingu istic Ana lysis of M y F a ir L ady
○ Xiang Tingting
(B eijing Forestry U n iversity, B eijing, 100083 )
Ⅱ. D ia lects
Every language may have varieties, which defines by Hud2 son as“a set of linguistic item s w ith sim ilar distribution”[2 ] 21. D ialect is one of the varieties of language which is believed to be excluded from polite society[2 ] 24. Taking English for examp le, as the most w ildly - used language in the world, English has
[ A bstract] M y FairL ady 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 socio2 linguistics 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.
This paper tries to analyze the movie from a sociolinguistic angle, mainly focusing on language difference caused by social class and gender difference.
[作者简介 ]向婷婷 ,北京林业大学外语学院英语语言文学专业研究生 。
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LANGUA GE Xiang Tingting / Sociolinguistic Analysis of M y Fa ir L ady
class spoke totally different languages, and men and women talked differently too. The movie has well reflected class - relat2 ed 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”in2 stead of“ I haven’t done”, “my words”and“it wasn’t”. Eli2 za’s friends who are from Selsey and Hoxton make sim ilar gram2 matical m istakes as Eliza does. They app ly“ain ’t” to every negative sentence, regardless of person or auxiliary. Phonologi2 cally they om it / / in words like“going”and“paying”, p ro2 nounce“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. D ifferent ways of speaking may 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 clas2 ses. Professor H iggins condemns Eliza as the murder of English and p roposes that she should be hanged for not speaking“ the language of Shakespeare and M ilton and the B ible”. He p redicts that the girl w ill live a m iserable 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. A ll his assump tion is merely based on her language. Eliza, having heard H iggins’s boast to his friend that he could change her life by teaching her talk, goes to find H iggins to persuade him to teach her how to talk so that she could find a job as a shop assistant in a flower shop. W hen 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. M rs. Pearce, the housekeeper, does not sent Eliza away only because she thought Eliza was com ing 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 know ing him / her well. Eliza begins to learn speaking standard English from Profes2 sor H iggins. 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 om itted 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 let me come”w ith the stress on the second word“kind”instead of on“you”. W hen Eliza finally learns the vowels Professor H iggins takes her to the race where she is sup2 posed to talk about only weather and health. There is a strong trace of im itation in her speaking but she does well. However, she betrays herself when shouting at the horse“move your bloom2 in’arse”at the end of the race. W e 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 H iggins decides to take her to the Embassy Ball after two more weeks training. W hen Eliza appears in the Embassy Ball, she is not the flower girl any2