Ana Mara Leal Oliva

ANOMIE AND DIGLOSSIA IN PYGMALION

Among the multiple topics seeing when reading Pygmalion, it is of great interest the evolution of one of its main characters, Liza. That is the reason why this evolution will be the starting point of the present essay, being focused on its consequences on Liza. Pygmalion attempts to demonstrate the connection between the language usage of individuals, their social class and national identity. In the play Mrs. Higgins, a professor of linguistics, meets a lower class girl named Liza in the London marketplace selling flowers. He bets with his friend Pickering that he can pass her off as an aristocrat. A very interesting statement by Higgins when telling his mother about the bet exemplifies Shaws opinion on language importance in self-identity:
You have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and to change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. Its filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.

In training Liza Higgins not only changes Lizas pronunciation, but trains her in high class vocabulary and manners. However, it is not easy for Liza to retain all these new information because her natural impulse is to be concentrated in the first place on her accent. It is through this linguistic change that Liza can be taken from her low social class into a higher one. This process of acculturation includes not also a new way of pronouncing but also the learning of a complete set of social habits. As a consequence of this process, the individual, in this case Liza, suffers profound effects on her individual personality. The view that ones identity is constructed by its environment is one of the main theoretical approaches to the sociolinguistics. The play states language as the fundamental barrier between social classes, which disables people of different classes to communicate in a proper way. By learning how to speak standard dialect distinguished by Hudson (2000) as the most prestigious and socially accepted and acquiring the high class behaviour, Liza alters her identity and forgets her own language, what ends in the loss of her identity. As this process of transformation comes to an end Liza becomes bidialectal, or more technically, diglossic. Diglossia is seen in sociolinguistics as a situation in which two distinct varieties of a language are spoken within the same speech community. Liza makes usage of her primary dialect of English Cockney as well as the highly variety taught by Professor Higgins.

Ana Mara Leal Oliva

Diglossia is also usually seen in bilingual contexts. Bilingual individuals use two completely different sets of reference and conventions, as well as behave in two different ways depending on the language used. In the same way, as Liza have to learn new habits of dress and behaviour, and the conventions of small talk, she begins to manifest the effects of interference from her primary language, as most bilinguals do, mixing up her new and former codes. This blend is clearly shown in Act III, when she is tested for presentation in society in Mrs. Higgins mothers home.
LIZA [piling up the indictment] What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

Liza speaks with the proper accent she has learnt, however, she uses a lower class language which impacts the communication process. Although her usual manner of speech is not noticeable, her usage of phrases such as, do her in, are indeed unrecognizable for the upper class audience. She does not simply learn new speech habits but she becomes a different personality who has difficulties in reconciling her new outlook of life with her former station. When a speaker learns a new language different of his mother tongue, he not only has to change his code but he also has to get used to the new language terms of reference and system of values. A failure to complete this readjustment will lead to non-assimilation in the reference group of the new language. Again, this can be seen in the same scene mentioned before in Act III. Nevertheless, a successful total assimilation will lead to a rejection of the individuals former life style and system of values towards the new code and its cultural attributes. Bearing in mind that it is extremely difficult for a person to assume a completely a new pattern of deportment and a new set of values that totally ignores the original pattern of his language community, it is easy to conclude the disastrous consequences in which this may lead: a feeling of marginality, of feeling comfortable in the society where one is placed, and unable of identifying oneself either with the cultural system of origin or with the newly acquired set of norms that linguistic retraining has opened up. This feeling is known as anomie. The concept may include any situation in which an individual is disorientated because he is atypical in society. Bilingual people usually suffer of this phenomenon as social psychologists have increasingly become aware of .

Ana Mara Leal Oliva

The theme of Pygmalion we are dealing with is that of the linguistic anomie or crisis of identity of Liza. As she develops her new personality she overcomes this feeling in the outcome. Professor Higgins creates a social inadaptation caused by the process of linguistic acculturation. Lizas future is the most important thing: she is no longer in a position to go back to the gutter she comes from, nor she will ever be able to assimilate completely in the higher class society she has been trained to be in. Lizas feelings of anomie are patently clear when she begins to ask:
who am I and where do I belong? What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? Whats to become of me?

Her major fear is underlined when she says:

I sold flowers. I didnt sell myself. Now youve made a lady of me. Im not fit to sell anything else.

Speakers who are in the process of becoming bilingual and bicultural may experience feelings of regret as they lose ties in the original group, as well as fears of entering a relatively new group. Lizas acculturation into her new speech habits makes her into an atypical marginal social being who has difficulties in reorientating herself in society. She realises that she will never be completely assimilated into the higher class group.
LIZA: I have done my best, but nothing can make me the same as these people

As she has been trained to be part of this higher class Liza is aware that she can no longer go back as a fully assimilated member of her original group. To finish, by the twist to the end that Shaw offers in his Pygmalion sequel in which Liza marries Freddy instead of her professor, the problem of the heroines anomie seems to be solved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Beardsmore, H. B.: A sociolinguistic interpretation of Pygmalion. (1979) Hudson, Grover (2000), Essential Introductory Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing