My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is a romantic film about a man named Henry Higgins who attempts to revolutionize the language abilities of Eliza Doolittle, a poor guttersnipe. Higgins has a superiority complex and thinks the proper usage of English is dying. He takes Doolittle in his experiment to transform her speaking capabilities in six months. His egotistical methods are very degrading and put Doolittle through a very emotional experience. She eventually reaches a point where she loses her original identity and yet cannot fully assimilate into higher class society.

This film makes a lot of assertions about the linguistic identity and its social influences. For the most part, it is fairly accurate in its depiction. Social classes are divided up not purely because of linguistics, but because of a various number of other factors such as education, wealth, legacy, etc. So when Doolittle changes her style of speech altogether, she becomes lost within a purgatory between high class and low class. With the high class, she is only able to speak like them, but shares no other similar qualities. With the low class, she is unaccepted because of the way she speaks. Thus, it is more logical that the language people should should result from their social class rather than their social class resulting from their language.