LANGUAGE AS POWER: EXPLORING LINGUISTIC CONTROL AND CLASS MOBILITY IN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION

Abstract

This study focuses on the issue of language and socio-economic mobility in the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, using Fairclough's model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). By focusing on selected dialogues from Acts II and V, the paper seeks to understand the phenomenon of social mobility and discursive power. The study examined Eliza’s speech patterns in his interview with Higgins and identified the themes of class and expectation dominance. The study considers speech as a site of struggle. Thus, Eliza becomes the active creator of her own identity rather than being a powerless passive victim of Higgins’s constructions. All in all, this research considers Pygmalion as a paradigm of a language dominated society which perpetuates class hierarchy, violence and invites new social and political conflicts in their wake.