My Fair Lady

Henry Higgins is both fascinated and repulsed by any permutation of the English language that varies from the standard of the Queen’s English, also known as Oxford English. He offers elocution lessons to “correct” these accents and wishes to homogenize the English language. He acknowledges that the differences are simply geographical, even showing off his ability to pinpoint someone’s place of birth with impossible accuracy simply by listening to them speak. However, his own attitude quickly reveals how accents are closely tied to social status, reflecting the class hierarchies of English society.

Eliza Doolittle’s Cockney accent is exaggerated through her wailing and exclamations to show how rough and unrefined she sounds to Higgins’s ears. It seems counterintuitive that a linguistics scholar would be so thoroughly offended by such a diversity of dialects, but Higgins sees “dropping aitches everywhere” (7) and “speaking English any way they like” (8) as an assault on a singularly “correct” version of English that must be protected. More importantly, Higgins attributes Eliza’s low social status as a flower seller on the street to her accent alone, claiming that he can reinvent her as respectable—even as royalty—by simply changing her speech. Notably, his servants have taken on his disdain for dialects, as they all speak and sing in the Queen’s English, suggesting that dialect is an easy excuse to feel superior to someone else.