Dialect as an Indicator of Social Class in the UK:
Cockney in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
150398 Kohei TAKANOIntroduction
Many languages spoken in the world have dialects, most of which are defined
depending on the area where people live, and affects the identity formation in that
dialects help confirm sense of belonging to certain community. However, British
dialects are slightly different from those in other countries. Britain has one of the uniquesocial systems called social class, which is regarded as one of the social variables ofBritish dialects. Thus, unlike countries such as Japan in which the class system has nottaken root, the phenomenon that people “cannot” acquire some types of dialects
depending on class—e.g. Received Pronunciation (hereinafter, referred to as “RP”)—can occur in Britain.
In this thesis, I explore the role of British dialects as an indicator in the reader’sjudgment of the social class which the characters belong to, based on the analysis of the
dialogues in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, in particular Cockney—a dialect
spoken among the working class people in Eastern London— of Eliza, a main character.
The purpose here is to find out the significance of the relationship between the dialectsof British English and the social class unique to Britain. In Chapter One, I consider the
relationship between British social classes and dialects in The UK. In Chapter Two, I
reveal the specificities of Cockney, considering the reasons why it still survives as oneof the most famous British English dialects. In Chapter Three, based on what I clarified
in Chapter One and Two, I analyse Pygmalion, and examine the effects that Cockney
has as an indicator of British social class in the novel.
George Bernard Shaw, an author of Pygmalion, was born in Dublin, Ireland in
1856, and produced 53 plays in his life. In 1925, he was awarded the Nobel Prise in
Literature for his achievement. He was not only a playwright but also a critic, apolitician, an educator and a journalist, indicating that there was a strong intention that
he wanted to convey a message to the British society at that time through his works.
One of the most important features of Shaw’s works is independent women with uniquepersonalities. He portrayed heroines who have a strong belief and sometimes work likemen in the society in order to make a living.
138

I have two reasons why I deal with Pygmalion in this thesis. Firstly, one of themain themes of Pygmalion is language. As wrote above, Eliza, a main character, mainly
speaks Cockney—she acquires RP through strict education— because she has originallybelonged to working class, and professor Higgins speaks RP because he is supposed to
be upper middle class—he works as a linguist, which is one of the professions of theupper middle class. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse Pygmalion in theorizing therelationship between British dialects and the social class in Britain. Secondly, Shaw’s
message is reflected in Pygmalion. In fact, Pygmalion is the original of a film My Fair
Lady, which is one of the most famous works of Shaw. Here, I show the synopsis of
Pygmalion.
A phonologist Henry Higgins encounters a lower-class flower girl Eliza Doolittle,
the main character with no culture who has been speaking with an uncultivated accent.
He bets with his friend Pickering, an Indian linguist, whether he can transform Eliza
into a lady like Duchess. Higgins accepts the bet and teaches Eliza thoroughly themanner and wording of the upper class or the upper middle class as a subject of research.
As a result, she grows into a fine lady and fascinates many people.
Actually, the story of My Fair Lady unfolds almost in the same way as Pygmalion.
However, there is a significant difference in the ending. In Pygmalion, Eliza gets rid ofHiggins and marries with young Freddy—who cares about Eliza unlike Higgins. In
contrast, in My Fair Lady, Eliza and Higgins get married. It can be inferred that theintention of the director of My Fair Lady, George Cukor, was to succeed as anentertainment. This was reflected in the ending of My Fair Lady in the process ofmaking a drama into a musical. In contrast, the thought of Shaw was completely
different. A passage in the sequel that Shaw left behind the main part of Pygmalion
supports this:What is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins?
Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’ slippers or to a lifetime ofFreddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. […] And that isjust what Eliza did. (110-111)
As mentioned above, Shaw described strong women with self-reliance like Eliza in
Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, who overcomes the difficulty of accent or manner andtranscends class. Shaw must have thought that if Eliza had fallen in love with Higgins,readers could have not conclude what Shaw wanted to say. Thus, I analyse not My Fair

139

Lady but Pygmalion in considering the relationship between British dialects and Britishsocial class.

140

Chapter 1: Relationship between Accents and Social Class in The UK.
Many people know that there is a unique social system called the social class in
the UK, and it is often said that British people spend their lifetime within the same classas their parents. However, they do not always belong to those classes for their whole life.
Actually, there are some cases that children are educated at private schools because of
their parents’ successful business and educational enthusiasm, and transcend classes.
One of the essential elements dividing class is “language.” According to the homepageof British Library, in fact, only two percent of Britons speak RP—which is regarded as
standard British language—in spite of the fact that RP is the most widely studied andmost frequently described variety of spoken English in the world, as well as the upperclass people occupies a very small proportion in the UK. In other words, 98 percent ofBritons speak dialects. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between social class in
the UK and British accents.
It should be noted that, in this thesis, ‘accent’ means a sound variation for aparticular group of people, and ‘dialect’ means a regional speech variety including
vocabulary, grammar and accent.
1-1: The System of British Social ClassA political scientist Kawai (1982), stated that the British class system wasestablished in the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century (801-802).
According to Kawai, in Britain, in those days, there was a solid political systemestablished by the Glorious Revolution at the end of the 17th century, which thepolitical sovereignty of the state was ambiguously considered as the power that the kingand parliament had (802). However, Kawai also stated that it was obvious that it was anaristocratic oligarchy that had the real power, which dominated the upper and lower
houses of Parliament (801-802). Oligarchy means the political regime in which thepower is concentrated in a small number of people, and philosopher Plato defined it as
the statecraft based on the valuation of property. In this respect, it is assumed that
British aristocratic oligarchy was the prototype of the upper class, which means theorigin of the British social class. Then, thanks to a stable political regime, thehierarchical system spread throughout the society.
According to Kawai, specifically, the royal family, aristocrats, or ancient rulingfamilies connected with them were called the upper class, and the rulers of a newsociety with sufficient property to be able to be independent by commercial and landownership became known as the middle class (802). With regard to the latter, inparticular, Kawai stated that, even though the middle class people economically had
141great ability, as long as people were permitted economic activities, they are satisfied
with leaving political control to the traditional rulers (802). From this, it can be inferredthat the middle class had a stronger class consciousness than the upper class. The
middle class consciousness is regarded as a major factor of class formation.
As we can see from the Figure 1, these days, this British class is divided into
upper class, middle class, and working class, and sometimes, the middle class further
can be divided into upper middle, middle middle, and lower middle.

Fig.1: The Division of British social classSpecifically, the upper class people traditionally used to be able to live by income
obtained from assets such as lands, without working. The middle class earns income bysome forms of business. The working class consists of wage workers, who earn money
by selling labour to employers in exchange for salary. Here, it is natural to question the
difference between the middle class and the working class. The former can be definedthat they are “not physical workers but workers.” For example, regarding the former,
people manage their companies and earn their profits as sources of income, such asindustrial capitalists or business managers, while others work as professional
occupations such as lawyers, doctors, policemen or professors. In contrast, regarding thelatter, almost all people engage in physical labour such as carpenters, bus drivers andfarm workers. Furthermore, it is characteristic that working class people tend to be
exclusive and conservative to any changes, and that they have great solidarity among
themselves. In fact, I have come in touch with British insular culture locally. When I
conducted a survey on the dialect for the working class people in East London last142

summer, they all refused the interview because they were wary of an unknown foreigner,
and I was forced to change the contents and the place for survey quickly—after that,
actually, many kinds of people responded to my interview. This experience indicatesthat the working class people tend to exclude those different from themselves becauseof their strong pride towards their class.
In general, in most countries, social class does not exist strictly. However, classtends to be defined as an economic classification except in Britain. According to Kawai,in the UK, social class is not only a classification of people from an economic point ofview but also a concept that can distinguish people “in all ways of life” (801). As
referred to in the introduction of Chapter One, there is a fact that British people do notalways belong to those classes for the whole life, but it is also true that many people
consider that it is not necessary to change their class. For example, while some people
transcend their classes, the working class people tend not to wish to change theirposition because of their strong pride. This finding supports that British class system is
not a mere economic division. Some upper class people, who must be able to make aliving without working, tend to engage in jobs like company management. Furthermore,some royalties open a part of their mansions or gardens for the general public, or request
the National Trust to manage them because they cannot afford to do that. For example,
Brenham Palace in Oxford, England, which I visited last summer, opens to the public,
and the current owner, the 12th Duke of Marlborough, often works in the palace living
in a villa. In contrast, some middle class people possess greater assets than those of theupper class. They can give their children special education to change the class, and also,
they are sensitive about the trend of the modern society.
Kawai cited firstly “occupation,” secondly “education” and thirdly “dwelling, theway of speaking English and lifestyle like daily manner” as indicators of classificationin the UK. (824). I omit the first “occupation” because I have described it above.
Regarding the second and the third, I focus on “education” because I insist that manners
and lifestyle depend on how people are educated. If social class was divided dependingon occupation, people would become more educated to learn expertise or to engage in a
desired job for higher class. In fact, most of teachers in the university in which I learned
last summer belong to the middle class. Moreover, they revealed that, because of theirposition, their English is substantially identical to RP. These findings indicate that theymust have received higher specialized education. However, such programs are very
expensive. First of all, in order to receive higher education at the university, it isrequired to enter public school. Yamanouchi (2000), an educational sociologist,
described that, in Britain, private schools are called independent schools in the143

aggregate, and among them, the so-called elite middle educational institutions with long
history and tradition are called public schools (5). Yamanouchi also stated that publicschools are referred to us “public” despite the fact that these are NOT public, because
British public schools were constructed with an official character, in the time when theconcept of public education had not been developed yet—Winchester College, theoldest British public school was constructed in 1382, and Eaton College, the mostpopular public school was constructed in 1440 (5). According to The Complete
University Guide (2018), the undergraduate tuition of universities in England, Northern
Ireland and Scotland can be up to £9,250 a year, and that in Wales can be up to £9,000 ayear. In contrast, according to journalist Doughty (2018), the tuition of Eton is £38,730,
indicating that the tuition of public schools is much higher than that of British
universities. Besides, parents have to pay a large amount of funding in order to allow
children to enter public schools. From this, we can say that almost all children who canattend public schools belong to upper class or upper middle class—sometimes
exceptional cases that some people in lower position than the middle middle class, suchas David Beckham, get so large amount of money to let their children go to publicschool, can occur. In short, it is not until people ensure the economic margin enough to
pay for public schools regardless of their original class, that they may be able totranscend their class. Meanwhile, working class people cannot afford to pay for publicschools. However, even if they are affordable, they will not let their children receive
special education. It is possible to suppose that this view is related to their strong prideand class-consciousness unique to the working class. They are satisfied with theirposition and they absolutely do not behave like higher class people, who they do notnormally accept. In other words, it is obvious that it mostly is the middle class that
consciously attempts to “transcend the class.”
British social class was constructed from a solid social system that oligarchy has
substantial power—which was the prototype of recent upper class. It is clear that Britishsocial class is roughly divided into three, and is not a mere economic division. Whileamong the middle class, some people pay large amounts of money for higher education
for their children for the purpose of elevating the class, the working-class people tend
not to even if they can afford economically to do so, because of their strong pride
toward their position and a sense of belonging.
1-2: The Roles of Dialects in the UK.
According to Ethnologue, a cite exploring the world’s languages, and collecting
the statistics of them, there are 7097 living languages in the world as of February 21,
144

2018. It can also be inferred that languages are essential tools to support not only ourcommunication but also the culture itself in our daily life. Britain has many dialects, but
it should be noted that British English dialects are different from those of othercountries in various ways. In this section, I clarify how important dialects are in Britain
for the purpose of connecting with the next section “class dialects.” Firstly I describe
what the standard British English is, secondly I discuss the importance of British
dialects, and thirdly I consider the function of British dialects.
Before revealing specificity of the British English, it is necessary to describe theconcept of standard British English. In the case of Japan, the dialect so-called “Tokyo
dialect,” which is spoken in Tokyo, often is recognized as the standard language. Even
if one lives in a rural area, there are many opportunities to hear this dialect throughout
the media such as radio and television. Furthermore, in Japan, “Tokyo dialect” is easy toimitate or learn as a standard language. Thus, it tends not to be difficult to masterstandard Japanese language. In contrast, regarding RP—referred to be the standard
British English—, as wrote in the introduction of Chapter One, approximately only two
percent of British people can speak it, and among the remaining 98 percent of British
people, there are few able to master it.
Linguist Kawamura (1998) insisted that, when the language is used in the realsociety, various kinds of social evaluation will be given towards the standard variety
such as Tokyo dialect in Japan, and the non-standard variety such as Cockney in the UK(78). For example, the standard variety is viewed positively in social assessment such as“correct,” “polite” and “elegant,” and then it has a cultural, economic and politicaladvantage as a prestige linguistic variety. In contrast, non-standard variety can be givena negative social assessment such as “wrong” or “dirty,” and sometimes, is associatedwith “stigma.” In Japan, many people who have come from the countryside to Tokyo or
its suburbs for the purpose of working or studying could have experienced being madefun of due to their dialects and making efforts to correct them into the standard language.
It can be inferred that this situation occurs by strengthening stigma when local people
are evaluated as “wrong” for speaking non-standard languages.
It should be noted that, however, in most countries except the UK, it is easy tolearn the standard language due to the advantages of the number of speakers in thesurroundings, economic aspects, and so on. In the case of the UK, as shown in theprevious section, though education is necessary to acquire the accents, huge amounts offunds are required to receive the higher education, so those who can actually acquire
languages similar to RP are limited to quite a few people. This shows that the standard
language, which should be familiar among all the people, is NOT the standard in the145UK, and is different from that of other countries, indicating that British English is oneof unique languages in a sense.
These days, despite its small territory, Britain has many kinds of dialects
compared to other English-speaking countries such as the US and Canada. It has a long
history that the words which came newly through the invasion and the conquest ofvarious tribes such as Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, have evolved into dialects
over thousands of years. In the UK, the dialects in the northern part tend to be stronger.
When I questioned British people which dialects are difficult to hear in London, most ofthem answered the northern dialects are hard to understand, and in fact, people in
Edinburgh could not understand what I said, and neither could I understand them, so I
relied on my smartphone when telling the taxi driver the destination.
While RP is recognized as a valuable language for people in higher classes, its
speakers are extremely few. In other words, overwhelmingly large numbers of people
are not interested in it or have a bias against it. In particular, the working class people,
who have strong pride toward their positions or a sense of belonging, and whose
positions or occupations are hardly affected by languages they speak, tend not toattempt consciously to correct their accents unless they shift the types of working. From
this, it can be inferred that the importance of the standard language in Britain is very
tenuous compared to other countries, indicating that the importance of dialects is greatin Britain.
In addition, Kawamura insisted that working class people gain some kinds ofsocial rewards such as clarification of social distance to the middle class, improvementof solidarity, and a symbol of powerfulness and masculinity, by speaking non-standard
variety (81). The social distance of the working class to the middle class may berephrased for that to people of all the classes except the working class, because, as
wrote above, they have a strong sense of belonging and take an exclusive attitude
towards any people in different positions. Occasionally, dialects may show a
powerfulness and masculinity. For example, when we try to communicate with theKansai people in Tokyo, some casual phrases can be overbearing. Likewise, it may also
be an example that we feel more frightened when we are yelled at by someone with adialect. In that respect, one can think that the dialects in the UK function as a part ofmany citizens’ identities and play an important role to support their cultures.
British dialects have a great significance compared to those of other countries
including Japan because the standard languages which should be familiar among us
cannot be standard in the UK. British dialects can roughly be divided into two types
depending on specific social variables. In the next chapter, I clarify these two types of146

dialect, and further discusses “class dialect,” which is a unique concept that Britain
shares with few other countries, more in detail.
1-3: British Peculiar Concept “Class Dialects”
The British social class and dialects have formed “class dialects.” British dialects
are divided into this “class dialect” and “regional dialect.” In this section, I focus on theformer for the purpose of the further clarification of the specificity of British English
and the reasons why I analyse Cockney in the following chapters. Firstly, I reveal thesetwo concepts of British dialects, secondly, I consider the examples—RP, Cockney andEstuary English (hereinafter, referred to as “EE”), and the reasons why these three arereferred as the examples of class dialects, and thirdly, I focus on the social variable“gender” when British people belong to the same class.
“Regional dialect” is a familiar concept for not only British but also people allover the world including Japanese. Rather, in general, when imagining about dialects,
we can hit on this concept. Regional dialect is a language variety prescribed by social
variables “locality” such as geographical conditions. For instance, as wrote in Section
Two, Japan has dialects such as Kansai dialect and Hakata dialect and each of them hasregional origin. Britain and Japan are common in that they are island nations, and the
Ryukyu dialect, which is spoken in Okinawa, is assumed to have been created in theprocess of forming unique cultures under the condition of island country since Okinawa
was Ryukyu kingdom. In this way, regional dialects have created various differences
depending on the region, and according to sociolinguist Fujimori (2008), in particular,
British English has a large difference in regional dialects in terms of pronunciation,
accent, phrasing and vocabulary compared with other languages (108). As we know,
Britain consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and each of them has
specific regional dialects with various differences depending on locality.
In contrast, “class dialect” means a language variety prescribed by the social
variable “social class.” Again, it can be inferred that this concept is unique in Britain
due to its unique social system. Among British English, RP—which I showed in theprevious sections, Cockney—which I mainly deal with in this thesis, and EE—which
has been spread as new standard British English, are often mentioned as clear examples
of class English.
Each of these three types of British English have the reasons why they are
regarded as class dialects. Firstly, RP has been influenced by public schools. Fujimori
said that, originally, RP was developed from the south-eastern part of England including
London since the late medieval period (113). Furthermore, Fujimori stated that RP is not
147different regionally, because the educational act called the Foster Act in 1870, which
aimed at strengthening reading, writing and arithmetic, led upper class children fromvarious regions to enter public schools—again, which means elite middle educational
institutions with long history and tradition— and these children learned this accent as astandard language (113). It is inferred that this unified and neutralized their languages
regardless of the students’ birthplaces. It should be noted that English used in educationin public schools is similar in every region. Although, inherently, regional differences
can arise in the educational language, in the case of Britain, in which the social classtakes root, regional differences should not occur in English taught to the upper classbecause languages may greatly influence the career or behaviour. Figure 2 shows therelationship between British accents and the social class in Britain. The vertical axis
represents the social class, and the horizontal axis represents the number of regional
dialects. Actually, it is assumed that, the higher the social position is, the less regional
accent can be addicted. In other words, the pronunciation of people with higher social
status is closer to RP, which is still a prestigious language occupying the highest social
class position. The class to which the speaker of EE belongs is represented by the dottedline in the centre of the figure and the class to which the speaker of Cockney belongs isrepresented by the dashed line at the bottom of the figure.

Fig.2: The Relationship between Accent and Social Class(Adopted from Fujimori, 2008)
In addition, Hughes, a scholar of modern English, and sociolinguist Trudgill(1984), insist that “Received” means “accepted in the best society,” which is a typicalthought prevailing in the 19th century (3). According to Kawai (1982), in the 19th148

century, the election law was amended three times—in 1832, 1867 and 1884, leading
the expansion of the suffrages to many of the farm workers at that time (802), and as
mentioned above, the Education Act was enacted in 1870. Thus, the 19th century was
important for not only the class dialect but also the British society itself. However,according to Hughes & Tradgill, the above “best society” means a society consisting of
the people who are evaluated in terms of education, income, occupation and status, andRP remained as a language spoken there (4). This concept of 19th century is further
discussed more in detail in Chapter Three. I omit the discussion about cockney because
I do it in the next chapter.
Secondly, I would like to consider EE. According to Fujimori, this is mainly
spoken among the middle class people in southeastern part of England and is called
Estuary English since this was used around the Thames River including London (120).
In addition, Pitts & Tsuruta (2014), scholars of the foreign language education andlinguistic, described that EE is “the typical accent of workers—who belongs to working
class or middle class— in London and the countries around London in comparision with
Cockney.” (17) I agree with Fujimori’s view because when considering EE as a classdialect, the regional element “London” in Pitts’s view may influence it too much and it
can be similar to a regional accent. One of the reasons why EE is preferred regardless ofthe class is BBC announcers and politicians tend to use it. In addition, Fujimori
described about the feature of EE that it is like intermideate between RP and Cockney,
and it is spoken regardless of the area (120), indicating that EE has the possibility of
spreading widely regardless of the class. Furthermore, EE is spread to wider area due tonot only the use by the highly-educated people but also the technological development.
It means that the working class is “upgraded” to intellectual laborers, the lower middle
class, because the industry cannot only be powered by physical workers. As the classchanges, people in the new middle class must correct their languages and thus thedemands of EE are inevitably rising. This situation will continue as long as technology
continues to be developed. In this way, it is clear that the demands of EE are expanding
in both middle class and working class,which may have a great influence on the conceptof British dialects.
Finally, from a sociological viewpoint, I consider the social variable “gender” inthe case that people belong to the same class. Figure 3 shows the result of the survey
conducted by sociolinguist Macaulay (as cited in Kawamura, 1998) in 1978 on
pronunciation of /i/ in Glasgow (81). Classes are ordered depending on occupation. The
score is set from 100 points to 500 points, and the higher the score is, the higher the149usage rate of the regional dialect. In contrast, the lower the score is, the less people tendto speak the language closer to the prestige form, which is a majestic languages like RP.

Fig.3: The gender difference in the pronunciation of /i/ in Glasgow(Adopted from Macaulay, 1978)
This result shows that men tend to use regional dialects more frequently than women of
the same class, and that, in the case of male, the difference between the score of Class 1
and that of Class 2 is greatest, and in the case of female, the difference between thescore of Class 2 and that of Class 3 is the greatest. In other words, it is clear that,regarding Class 2, men are close to Class 3 and women are close to Class 1. This
indicates that women are more conscious of classes upgrading than men and are
sensitive to languages. In the case of Pygmalion, Eliza, whom I deal with in this thesis
as main concern, often struggles with the insults from Higgins, which can be inferred to
be based on her strong intention to transcend the class from social reality.
“Class dialects” is a linguistic variety prescribed by the British social class. The
familiar examples of class dialects are RP, EE, and Cockney. The reason why RP can be
regarded as a class dialect is that it was spread into students in public school regardlessof the region due to the Foster Act in 1870. EE can be a class dialect because of the use
by BBC announcer or politician and the unconscious promotion of class due totechnological development. Furthermore, as is the case that British people belong to thesame class, women tend to be more conscious of class than men and are so sensitive totheir languages.
The British society has the unique system called social class, and thus, British
dialect is divided into two: regional dialect and class dialect. The system of the Britishsocial class is not only an economical division but also a division of any points of life.
British dialects can be specific because the importance of the British standard
language—RP—is so tenuous that British dialects are valuable. RP, EE, and Cockney
can be the examples of British class dialects. In the next chapter, I discuss the150specificities of Cockney focusing on slang, the lack of the pronunciation of “h” and thereasons why Cockney can still be these days.

151Chapter 2: The Specificity of Cockney
In Chapter One, I have clarified the British social class, the British accents, and“class dialects” which is formed by these two. In addition, I have confirmed that
Cockney is one of the examples of a British class dialect. Unlike RP which has beenauthoritative as a standard British language or EE which has attracted attention as a new
standard in Britain as the border of social class becomes ambiguous, Cockney is adialect symbolizing working class. Furthermore, Cockney is spoken by Eliza in
Pygmalion, so it must be necessary to understand Cockney more in advance in theanalysis of Pygmalion. Thus in this chapter, I clarify the linguistic features of Cockney
symbolizing the British working class, and discuss the specificity of Cockney from theeducational aspect and cultural aspect.
2-1: The Unique Features Symbolizing Cockney as a Working Class Dialect
One of the features of Cockney is a large amount of vocabulary called Cockney
Rhyming Slang (hereinafter referred to as CRS), which is similar to a secret language.
The exclusive and conservative attitude towards those in different positions and manychanges, which is a feature of British working class people, must have had a large
influence on the establishment of CRS. Furthermore, as examined in Chapter Three,“h-dropping” in the beginning or the middle of words, which is one of the phonologicalfeatures of Cockney, can be seen in the ending of Pygmalion. Among approximately 15
phonetic features of Cockney, h-dropping is particularly characteristic. Thus, in thissection, I analyse the specificities of Cockney focusing on CRS and h-dropping.
Before moving on to the analysis of CRS, I outline Cockney. Although Cockney iscommonly interpreted as a dialect that is spoken among the working class people ineastern London, it traditionally refers to the people born in the area where one can hear
the sound of Bow Bells—the bell in St. Mary-le-Bow church— and to the dialect ofsuch a group of people (Pitts & Tsuruta, 2014; Fujimori, 2008). In this way, the word
Cockney means not only a dialect but also its speakers. However, according to journalist
Parsons (2012), compared to 150 years ago, the area where Bow Bells’ sound can beheard is considerably narrowed due to the noise pollution by traffic and airplanes(Parsons). Therefore, in this thesis, I have judged it difficult to define Cockney based on
Bow Bells. Furthermore, if we add “people” to the definition of Cockney, this thesis
may miss the point. Thus in this thesis, I define Cockney as a dialect spoken among
working class people born in the East End of London.
According to Fujimori, most British people sometimes use “Rhyming Slang”(hereinafter referred to as RS) in daily life (116-117). She stated that RS represents what152

you really want to say by using other totally different words rhyming with them
(117-118). In addition, Fujimori stated that many kinds of RS originate from Cockney(117). Pitts (2014), said that though he grew up in the suburb of Yorkshire, far awayfrom London, he learned vocabularies originated from CRS, and used them (22). From
this, it can be inferred that a part of the CRS which was originally used as a secretlanguage in London from that time was transformed into casual English throughout The
UK.
So why was CRS born? Fujimori stated that CRS was begun from using Cockney
as secret words when peddlers selling fruits, vegetables, and fishes on carts tried tocarry on trade illegally (117). Furthermore, Pitts & Tsuruta (2014) referred to the twotheories about why CRS originated: “it developed among street market traders to baffle
their customers,” and “it developed among criminals to baffle the police and theirinformers” (20-21). Pitts & Tsuruta added that when the modern police was founded in
the 19th century, it was headquartered in Bow area (20-21), supporting that CRS was
spread among Eastern London. In this way, though we can enumerate some theories
about the origin of CRS, what is held in common for each theory is that CRS was madeso as not to leak out a secret of illegal actions. Again, working class people are so proudof their class or position, and tend to exclude those in different position from them. As isdrawn in Pygmalion, most working class people have a bias towards those inhigh-ranking occupations such as police. In this respect, it is natural to consider that, if
people have words that are comprehensible only among themselves, they can share with
their fellows feelings like hatred towards those with high professions.
Table 4 shows some examples of CRS. As wrote above, Cockney speakers
express what they want to say by replacing the combination of completely different
words rhyming with that word. When telling “Believe,” for instance, speakers combine“Eve” which rhymes with this word and “Adam” which has nothing to do with thisword, and use it like “I don’t Adam and Eve it!” Naturally, people who do not speak
Cockney literally interpret it as “Adam and Eve,” causing contextual confusion. For
Cockney speakers, this confusion is effective to confirm their senses of belonging.
Rhyming Slang

MeaningRhyming Slang

Meaning

Adam and Eve

Believe

Barack Obamas

PajamasChina Plate

Mate

Donkey’s Ears

Years

Loaf of Bread

Head

Porkie Pies

Eyes

Rabbit and Pork

Talk

Scotch Eggs

Legs

Table 4: Examples of CSR (Adopted from Fujimori, 2008; Pitts, 2014)153

Next, I analyse “h-dropping.” This literally means a phenomenon in which thesound of /h/ is omitted in the beginning or in the middle of a word. H-dropping isreferred to as a linguistic feature symbolizing British English rather than that of
Cockney. According to sociolinguists Upton & Widdowson (1996), h-dropping can beseen in most areas of England with exception of the surroundings of Northumberland
and East Anglia. In addition, linguists Dahou & Hamlin (2016) stated that the history ofh-dropping is not so long relatively, and it has developed from the end of the 17th
century to the 18th century when people began settling from the UK to the US becauseof the Treaty of Paris in 1783, indicating h-dropping cannot be seen in American
English (21). Furthermore, as is clear in Chapter One that Britain has the social class,h-dropping is also influenced by British social class. Linguist Petyt (1977; as cited in
Hughes & Trudgill, 1984) conducted a survey on pronunciation of /h/ at the beginningof words subject to the people in middle class or working class in Bradford in Yorkshire,
England (10), with the result shown in Table 5.
Class

Percentage of dropping initial /h/ (%)

Upper Middle Class

12

Lower Middle Class

28

Upper Working Class

67

Middle Working Class

89

Lower Working Class

93

Table 5: The Result of a Survey on the elimination of the initial /h/ in the Bradford(Adopted from Petyt, 1977)
As we can see from this result, we can say that British people tend not to pronounce ‘h’as the class is lower. Linguist Ramisch (2010) stated that, actually, h-dropping is atypical feature of working class and sometimes is stigmatized as “uneducated,” “sloppy,”and “lazy” (175). From this, it can be inferred that, actually, h-dropping is recognized asa negative feature of the working class in the British society. Therefore, h-dropping
must be an important element in recognizing Cockney as a working class dialect.
One of the most famous speakers of Cockney is David Beckham, who is a former
professional footballer who has long played an active part in England. Dahou & Hamlin
stated that Beckham was born and grew up in the suburb of the borough of Waltham
Forest in East London, and that he is a native-born British working class, whose father
works as a kitchen fitter and whose mother is a hairdresser. In addition, he continued
providing high performance in not only England but also in various countries.
154According to an article issued by The Richest in 2018, Beckham, who played football
not only in England but also in Spain, America, Italy and France, is estimated to haveearned a net asset of € 4.5 million in his professional career as of 2018, five years after
his retirement. From this, it can be said that Beckham is a rare example that became acelebrity comparable to the upper class while being working class. However, Beckham’schange in the words has also occurred, and his change is occasionally criticized.
Dahou & Hamlin compared Beckham’s rate of h-dropping from the analysis of
the interviews which Beckham had taken in 20 years—from 1994 to 2014. According tothem, Beckham has considerably reduced his h-dropping from 100 percent of in 1994 to
only 33 percent in 2014 (22). Dahou & Hamlin argue that the reason for his decline in
the use of h-dropping is his social status and his age (23), and I insist that the former has
a greater influence than the latter. In addition to the fact that Beckham acquired assets
comparable to that of the upper class as wrote above, he played in the US where thedifferent English, American English, is spoken. It can be inferred that as a result of
increasing his opportunities to faithfully pronounce ‘h’ by putting himself in anenvironment where h-dropping is proof against local people, Beckham “unconsciously”
showed his improvement of social status through his own words In my opinion,
regardless of whether he intended or not, the decline in the probability of h-dropping in
Beckham’s English caused him to be the target of criticism due to the lack of his
identity of the British working class—though, actually, he played in the US for four
years, which was not enough to change his language completely—indicating thath-dropping is one of the greatest features of Cockney as a dialect spoken among theworking class.
CRS, which is an element of Cockney symbolizing an exclusive attitude towards
people of a different position from themselves, is a combination of the word rhyming
with the word people really want to tell and the word not related with that, causing
non-Cockney speakers to become confused because CRS does not fit in their context.
This confusion is a useful phenomenon in the confirmation of sense of belonging,showing that CRS symbolizes the specificity of Cockney. Furthermore, as is the case of
Beckham, who became criticized by Cockney speakers as he learned to pronounce /h/faithfully from the influence of his professional career in the US, h-dropping can beseen in the society including Cockney speakers, which is effective as an element
indicating the specificity of Cockney symbolising the British working class.
2-2: The Reasons Why Cockney still Survives
As mentioned in Section One, among the features of Cockney, CRS and155

h-dropping are in particular sufficient functions explaining the role of Cockney as aclass dialect. However, it should be noted that social authority of Cockney isoverwhelmingly lower than that of RP and EE in the category of class dialect. In
addition, as wrote in Section Two of Chapter One, Cockney, which is classified as anonstandard variety, sometimes is evaluated negatively. In this section, I discuss thereasons why Cockney, which has such a low social status, is still alive in the British
society.
Macindoe (1990), a scholar of ancient history, said about the general evaluation of
Cockney in the former British society that “Cockney is especially condemned as being
ugly, and school teachers have worked for generations to try to standardise it, whether
for reasons of class prejudice or aesthetics.” (4) In short, the correction of Cockney
could be seen in education because it was evaluated as ugly. As discussed in Chapter
One, it can be inferred that education, which is one of the indicators of the social classin the UK, has a great influence on language as well. However, while this correction
was seen, some people referred to the inadequacy of education in the East End, which isconsidered to be the poorest area in London. According to Fujimori (2008), Cockney
still has pronunciation that should have been eradicated by educational reform by the
Foster Act in 1870—which, again, was enacted for the purpose of improving reading,writing and arithmetic— as education is not complete in East End due to the poverty. It
seems reasonable to suppose that, while the Foster Act had a major influence on thedevelopment of RP because it promoted to children in the upper class entering publicschool regardless of where they were born and raised, children in East End who cannot
afford to go to school acquire language in their work or life, which has changed intosome unique words in Cockney these days.
In addition, Cockney, which once was evaluated as ugly in London and eventhough there was an attempt to correct it through education, it tends to be usedaggressively in education in recent years. The article “Would you Adam and Eve it?
Pupils to be taught Cockney rhyming slang in east London schools,” which was posted
in Dailymail on July 23, 2012, serves as evidence of the fact that recent students in East
End study CRS. According to this article, the purpose of learning CRS is to make youth
in East End recognize that Cockney is an official dialect. For example, this article refers
to education in a borough of Tower of Hamlet in London, and Lutfur Rahman, a former
mayor of this borough, stated in the article that “It’s really important we keep the older
traditions alive and support them, not as fossils, but as living traditions,” based on his
description that 127 languages have been spoken in schools in East End and among
them, Cockney is the most familiar. Furthermore, Fox, a scholar of modern English,156

stated in this article that, for the past 50 years, Cockney has undergone a particularly
rapid change in the long history of itself, which is no wonder considering the social andeconomic redevelopment in the traditional area where it has been spoken. In particular,
CRS is changing remarkably into familiar slang to youth. According to this article, forinstance, a slang telling “a curry” has changed from Ruby Murray, an Irish singer, toAndy Murray, a tennis player, because young people do not know Ruby. Thus, with theprocess of revolution of the traditional area in which Cockney has been spoken,
Cockney is also becoming familiar to young people in such an area. Reflection on someof these make clear that, due to the recent changes in social and economic
redevelopment of the city, Cockney is becoming familiar to youth, and Cockney istaught to children in London who will play important roles in the future, not only tomake them recognize Cockney as an official dialect of the East End but also to let theminherit Cockney as a tradition.
Let us leave the educational topic and turn to the similarity between Cockney
speakers and social minority. Though the class society is rare in the world, there aremany vulnerable people in some social aspects such as race. Writer McCrum, television
producer Cran and novelist MacNeil (1987) pointed out about the similarities between
British Cockney speakers and Blacks who are vulnerable in the US because of their race,that while the socio-political pressure which Black Americans suffer is obviously more
serious, both have in common in that they were outsiders in their own society; they hadrich and traditional types of expression through speech or song; they had a form of
self-expression through the entertainment or sport; and they suffered some stereotypes
from media (218-219). This suggests that Black American and Cockney speakers havevarious similarities in some cultural aspects. It is important in the description of the
impact on their languages that both Black American and Cockney speakers were
excluded in the society. In particular, regarding Cockney, it is possible to suppose thatmost its speakers were treated as outsiders in the society behind the construction of CRS
for the purpose of baffling people in higher position. In addition, I would like to lay
special emphasis on the fact that we can see a form of emotional expression using words
and songs as a culture of both Black American and Cockney speakers. That is because
this indicates that the language has been essential tools to express identity even inworking class people, some of who could not afford to be educated.
Furthermore, McCrum et al. described about the linguistic similarities between
Black Americans and Cockney speakers “Both are exceptionally good at describing thenuance of personal relationships, of feeling (anger and love), and of good times.”(218-219) In other words, what we can say in common with Black Americans and157

Cockney speakers is that both are very expressive about human relations and emotions.
Furthermore, in recent years, the intentional uses of Cockney by those who are NOT
working class can be seen. According to Arai (2005), a scholar of English literature,some young people in the upper class and upper middle class tend to speak English withaccents of working class deliberately (77). In addition, according to Pitts & Tsuruta(2014), the phenomenon “mockney” sometimes occurs in England (20). Thisphenomenon is represented by the coined word multiplied “mock” and “Cockney,” andmeans that people in the upper class or the upper middle class intend to adopt thefeatures of Cockney to communicate on similar social level, which most likely ends infailure (20), which is similar to the example that the politician used the EE as wrote in
Section Three of Chapter One. For instance, when George Osborne, a former Finance
Minister of Britain, talked to workers in Kent, located in the southeast of London, in
2012, he was supposed to use mockney such as the change of pronunciation from“British workers” to “Briddish workers” (20). The purpose of his using mockney was tomake it possible to put himself in workers’ shoes by bringing familiarity to thewords—in fact, Osborne’s mockney seemed to be blamed by teenagers and working
class people—, which may be attributed to linguistic features of Cockney speakers thatthey are good at expressing emotions and human relations. In addition, McCrum et al.
stated in describing the languages that both Cockney and English spoken among Black
Americans, “for these on the outside, connotes a mild rebellion,” (219) against theoutsiders such as policemen. Again, linguistic features including CRS symbolizing the
pride of the working class are considered to be the reason why Cockney is still alive.
The reasons why Cockney, which has smaller social authority, is still not dead areroughly divided into two. One is from an aspect of education in schools. It can beinferred that Cockney is still worthwhile socially because CRS has been taught tochildren recently in the East End in order to inherit Cockney which was accidentallyborn because of insufficient education in the East End. The other is from an aspect ofidentity formation. From the analysis of the similarities between Cockney speakers andBlack Americans, it is clear that Cockney speakers construct a form of their identities by
gaining opportunities to express their emotion through songs and words while being
treated as outsiders in the society, and that Cockney speaker is so expressive abouthuman relations or emotions. It can be inferred that Cockney is able to maintain social
value because working class people have a culture composed of their expressiveness.
The features of Cockney, which is one of the most famous dialects spoken among
the British working class, are CRS and “h-dropping,” which are considered to function
as indicators symbolizing the exclusive and conservative attitude of working class158

people against those different from themselves. Furthermore, as stated above, it can beinferred that Cockney can maintain its social value in the British society from theeducational aspect and cultural aspect. Therefore, I judge that Cockney is valuable as
the subject of this thesis, and move on to the analysis of Pygmalion in the next chapter
mainly from the perspective of the use of Cockney.

159

Chapter 3: Cockney as a Symbol of Social Class in Pygmalion
In this chapter, I examine the effects of dialects as an indicator of social classmainly by contrasting Eliza’s Cockney and Higgins’s RP in Pygmalion by Bernard
Shaw, based on what I have discussed in previous chapters. That is because, inPygmalion, class dialects—Cockney and RP— play an important role in shaping somemorals which are the characteristic of Shaw’s works, and the class dialects in Pygmalion
may make it possible to confirm the importance and value of dialects in the British
society. In addition, I deal with the contrastive description between Eliza and her father
Doolittle from the perspective of gender. Pygmalion is divided into five acts. Thus inthis chapter, I discuss the significance of Cockney and RP as class dialects by analysing
each acts.
3-1: Effects of Cockney as an Indicator of Social ClassAs outlined in the introduction of this thesis, in Pygmalion, Eliza, who has
originally been uncultured and vulgar, meets a phonologist Higgins, and becomes a ladytranscending her class through the strict education. In this respect, it is necessary tocompare Eliza’s behaviour before encountering Higgins and that after having growninto an independent lady throughout Higgins’s education. In addition, I also consider theprocess of Eliza’s change, and the old-fashioned invariant spirit of Higgins in contrast to
her. Hence, this section examines how Cockney symbolizes the working class inPygmalion, based on Eliza’s lines when she was a flower selling daughter who had not
yet encountered Higgins, at the beginning of Act One.
Before moving onto the main subject, I must describe why I choose Pygmalion
and My Fair Lady as the subject of this chapter. Pygmalion is divided into five acts. Act
One mainly shows Eliza’s meeting Higgins—actually it includes her first encounter
with Freddy whom she marries—. Act Two shows the bet of Higgins and Indian dialect
researcher Pickering and the hardships awaiting Eliza. Act Three shows how Eliza
behaves in Higgins’s mother’s invitation day or in a fashionable world six months afterthat day. Act Four shows the appearance of Eliza showing anger with no outlet or
distress and her engagement to Freddy, whom she has met again at Higgins’s mother’s
invitation day. Finally, Act Five shows the appearance of Eliza’s father who has becomea man of property because of Higgins’s joke and the scene that Eliza leave Higgins. I
have described the feature of Shaw’s work is a strong social message—I referred to in
Section Three of Chapter One—, and as an evidence supporting this characteristic,
Shaw wrote in the preface of Pygmalion:160

I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play, both onstage and screen, all over Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so
intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delightin throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art
should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that great art can never beanything else. (6-7)
In summary of this, Pygmalion has become so worthwhile that, though this has a serious
theme and deliberately incorporates some lessons, Shaw proved his opinion that great
works can give readers some lessons inevitably. I regard his “serious subject” as theissues of social class in The UK. We can consider what the class is from Eliza, who tried
desperately to accept many kinds of new changes in spite of her class but finally insisted
her strong identity based on the pride of working class which is what she should haveoriginally, to Higgins. From the discussions in Chapter One and Two, it is clear that
British social class and languages are related to each other, and it can be said that
language is very important in Pygmalion, too. This is why I have made a judgement thatthe value of British dialect can be confirmed by studying the words spoken bycharacters such as Eliza and Higgins in this work.
At the beginning of Pygmalion, Eliza is not only involved with Higgins or
Pickering. The scene I discuss in this section is her communication with young Freddy,
his mother and his sister. As Shaw wrote in Act Three that the mother is well-bred andalways is worried about the tightness of assets, and her daughter Clara is familiar with afashionable world, indicating that she tries to display a brutality of the upper classwhile the assets her family has are small (56). It is predicted that Freddy’s family
belongs to the upper class while being poor. When Freddy ran while searching for a taxi
cab in a heavy rain, he hit Eliza, running for the shelter, and she dropped her flower
basket. When the mother misunderstood the reasons why Eliza knows the name of his
son Freddy—actually Eliza called him Freddy by guesswork—, and asked the reasons,she said:
Ow, eez,ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y’d-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed
now bettern to spawl a pore gel’s flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py
me f’them? [Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect
without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London].
(11)

161

[Translation: Oh, he’s your son, is he? Well, if you had done your duty by him as amother should, he would know better than spoil a poor girl’s flowers and then run
away without paying. Will you pay me for them?]
As Shaw stated, he would stop representing Eliza’s phrases normally because it wasdifficult for the readers except ones from London to understand her accent, only thispassage is clearly distinguishable between Cockney and others in Pygmalion. However,it must be meaningful that Shaw faithfully expressed Eliza’s dialect in this passage eventhough he should have been able to take no account of Eliza’s phonetic notations fromthe beginning.
Unlike dramas and plays that make the language audible by phonetic sounds, inthe case of a novel that visualizes the language by letters, there is no way to express
pronunciation in order to distinguish the accent clearly. Therefore, due to his challenge,
the above passage is very effective in clarification of accents—in order to show theclasses the characters belong to. For example, comparing the above text with thetranslated one, “he’s” is written as “eez” and “he” as “e” in the first sentence. These
parts show the dropout of “h” at the beginning of the word described in Chapter Two,
Section Two, which is one of the features of Cockney. In addition, “your duty” iswritten as “y’d-ooty” in the second sentence, which shows the glottal stop, which is also
the characteristic of Cockney. The glottal stop means a sound that cannot be sounded byclosing the glottis at once and cutting off breath. According to philologist Tanaka (2005),“butter” is called “bu’er” as an example of the glottal stop, and according to Hayashi(2007), a scholar of British literature, the glottal stop means skipping consonant “t” at
the middle or the end of words. Thus, the glottal stop tends to appear in consonant “t,”but in the case of “y’d-ooty,” it appears in consonant “y,” which is no exception.
We can confirm the characteristic expression in this passage. In contrast to
Doolittle’s passage, focusing on the dialogue before and after of this Eliza dialogue:(The mother) “How do you know that my son’s name is Freddy, Pray?” […] (Thedaughter) “Do nothing of the sort, mother. The idea!” (11) Although the daughter’s
speech is very colloquial, both sentences can be interpreted as usual. Again, while they
belong to the upper class in spite of small amounts of asset, Eliza is the daughter of thelower rank among the working class. In my opinion, Shaw deliberately and faithfully
drew the pronunciation of Cockney as a class dialect for the purpose of showing thiscontrast clearly in the early stage of Pygmalion. As a result, the readers can gain a first
impression of “wrong” or “dirty,” which I described in Section Two of Chapter One, toEliza. In contrast, they must gain the impression of “elegant” or “polite” with Freddy’s
162mother in particular. I theorise that this impression operates in a sense to have the effectof strengthening the impact of the contrast in the ending between Eliza sticking to her
own belief based on what she has learned and Higgins sticking to the old-fashioned
thoughts and appears foolish.
In this section, I first described the scene which Shaw depicts Cockney’s phonetic
notation faithfully at the beginning of Pygmalion. Second, I have shown the dropping of"h" and the glottal stop, which is the feature of Cockney, in this passage. Third I
discussed that the comparison of the dialogue of this passage before and after can givethe readers a negative impression of Eliza and a positive impression of Freddy’s family
respectively, which has the effect of raising the impact of the ending. I discuss theending of Pygmalion in Section Three. The next section considers the typical thought of
the 19th century’s people in which the society consisting of highly evaluated people interms of education, income, occupation and status is the most desirable, as wrote in
Section Three of Chapter One, associating with Higgins’s speech.
3-2: Typical Thoughts of 19th Century and Higgins’s Dialogues
Although Pygmalion was first played in 1913, in the early 20th century, thetypical thoughts of the 19th century as wrote in Section Three of Chapter One isstrongly reflected in the action of phonologist Higgins, one of the main characters.
Moreover, this way of thinking in his speech is almost unchanged through the work,
which influences how Shaw told the readers some lessons, by contrast with Eliza. Thus,
I focus on and analyse how Higgins’s dialogues in Pygmalion indicating the thoughts of
19th century influence the way to impart some social messages to the readers.
Before moving on to the analysis of work, I clarify the British society in the 19th
century. First, the educational act called the Foster Act was enacted in 1870, aimed atstrengthening the reading or writing of English and arithmetic. This was important not
only for making mandatory primary education, but also in the process of the formationof RP as stated in Section Three of Chapter One. In addition, according to historian
Inose (1992), the Sandon Education Act was enacted in 1876, aimed to prohibit children
under 10 years old from working and to obligate parents to send them to school. People
whose children often were absent were fined due to this act, which caused strikes
frequently in each region from the resistance to this policy (112). From this, it isconsidered that, though the mandatory primary education had progressed, workers
depending on the income of their children could not afford to let their children go toschool, so this policy was not realized substantially.
Moreover, according to Kawai, in the 19th century the election law was revised163three times—in 1832, 1867 and 1884 (802). She also stated that the amendment in 1832
granted voting rights and eligibility for election to urban bourgeoisie, the amendment in1867 granted voting rights to urban workers, and the amendment in 1884 granted voting
rights to farm workers (802). In this way, the voting rights gradually expanded, showingthat the political participation of working class people gradually became possible while
limited to men. Besides, various events such as the shift to liberalism or theestablishment of the Second British Empire occurred in the 19th century; this century
could be inferred to be a trigger to strengthen the class consciousness in terms ofeducation and political participation in particular. From this, it can be inferred that,while working class people strengthened the solidarity among themselves, the belief
continued that only the people who are highly-educated, work advanced professions orlive without working, and have established their own position are happy, was spreadamong higher class people such as upper class or upper middle class.
Moving on to the main topic of this section, first, I analyse a scene in Act One:THE NOTE TAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a humanbeing with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language
is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible: and dont sit there
crooning like a bilious pigeon (18).
This is Higgins’s reply with anger when Eliza has claimed about his job that “Ought tobe ashamed of himself, unmanly coward!” (17), or that “Let him mind his own businessand leave a poor girl —,” (17) in the scenes of these two encountering. Higgins isconvinced that those speaking vulgar languages, that is, working class people such as
Eliza have no rights for living. From this, although it can be inferred that Higgins is justignorant, he must stick to his position and supremacy towards others, and has bias
against lower class people. It must be effective to clarify the class difference of thecharacters as well as Eliza’s utterance which I have analysed in Section One.
The scene to be analysed next is a passage in the conversation between Higgins’s
mother and himself after Eliza’s behaviour in his mother’s invitation day:HIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels andconsonants. I’m worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth
and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot.
MRS HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live
164

doll.
HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that,mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a humanbeing and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech
for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul fromsoul (65).
While Higgins and Pickering are desperate to make Eliza a lady, his mother sees themas if they are playing with Eliza. In fact, Higgins’s mother says that “manners and habitsthat disqualify a fine lady from earning her own living without giving her a fine lady’s
income!” (67).
In addition to this interesting contrast, I focus on the word “soul” in each Higgins’s
dialogue. Higgins believes as a matter of course that Eliza must be a lady by acquiring
the way to speak proper language or some manners, and from the position she has
gotten, she can acquire the endowments for living in the most desirable society for
Higgins—he would not think that this is an old-fashioned idea of the 19th century. As it
can be seen from the latter of Higgins’s dialogue, his stereotype towards lower classpeople reinforces his ignorance, and ironically, he has not noticed that. From this, it canbe inferred that “soul” for him is different from what Eliza actually has in her mind.
That is because he is convinced that soul is extremely fluid to be collapsed easily
because of the acquisition of manners including language or customs, and the changesof class, occupation and position due to this acquisition. His bias toward “soul” must becaused by his old-fashioned thoughts of the 19th century.
From this passage, we can see that his attitude towards the class and language is
so unchanged that he has criticized his mother whom he ought to love so much.
Incidentally, in Eliza’s first participation in the fashionable world, Higgins declares that
“I stick to my opinion” (72). From this, it is also obvious how stubborn he is. In otherwords, it can be inferred that these behaviours play a role in expressing Higgins’s
stubbornness and his clumsy character in a sense.
Finally, in Act Four, Higgins says “[…] I tell you, Pickering, never again for me.
No more artificial duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory” (75). One
might be able to perceive this dialogue as Higgins simply confesses that he wasstruggling to teach Eliza. However, we should not overlook that he declares Eliza
clearly as an “artificial duchess.” While Higgins says that he would make Eliza a perfectlady, he infers her as an imitation looking down on her. We can see Higgins’s thought of
19th century from this deliberative saying. From this dialogue, in my opinion, Higgins,165

who has already been a member of the most desirable society in his own mind, regards
Eliza as a poor daughter of working class, and thinks that his hardship is more valuable
than whether she can become a member of his most desirable society. Furthermore, theauthor Shaw’s lesson that class or position does not always determine one’s happiness isparadoxically presented by the dialogue of Higgins sticking to his thought stubbornly.
This means that, by daring to describe Higgins who stubbornly believes that only people
who are educated highly, belong to higher class, or work as profession can be happy,
Shaw tried to tell the readers that real happiness is not necessarily influenced by one’sclasses and positions.
In this way, the old-fashioned way of thinking that a society consisting ofhighly-evaluated people in standards such as education, occupation, andstatus—constructed in the 19th century—, became the opportunity for British people tostrengthen class consciousness in terms of education and political participation. In
particular, this way of thinking was reflected in Higgins’s behaviour in Pygmalion,
indicating his thought is unchanged throughout this story. In addition, these dialogues
play a role of clarifying the stubbornness of Higgins and the class difference. We cansay that the description of Higgins, who never grows spiritually, should paradoxicallyshow that one is not necessarily happy just because they belong to a higher class or
position. As Higgins’s immutable thought of the 19th century is fully demonstrated evenin the ending, I briefly analyse his thoughts in the next section.
3-3: Pride of Working Class in the UK
As stated at the beginning of Section One, it is necessary to compare Eliza’s
behaviour before encountering Higgins and that after becoming a lady throughHiggins’s education. Furthermore, as wrote in the introduction of this thesis, the greatest
difference between Pygmalion and My Fair Lady is in each ending, and the mostimportant lessons of Shaw appears in the ending of Pygmalion. Thus in this section, I
focus on the scene that Eliza ranted against Higgins using not RP—which she had
acquired through strict education—but Cockney—her original dialect—in the ending.
As discussed in Section One of Chapter One, one of the features of the British
working class is that they are exclusive and conservative to any people who are different
from that of the working class, and to any changes. Such an attitude must reflect theunconcern to transcend class such as through higher education, and the appearance of
their own words such as Cockney Rhyming Slang—discussed in Section One of
Chapter Two. Hayashi (2007) stated that working class people tend to regard higher
class people including policemen or civil servants as “they always look down on us,”166

“they treat us as something dirty,” and “they put us in the disadvantageous position”(89). In contrast, Hayashi also stated that working class people sometimes take theattitude of not accepting anyone who is in a higher position, or who get on well with
police officers and civil servants in case they face some troubles (89). In fact, in Act
One of Pygmalion, a bystander tells Eliza that Higgins is taking some notes, and Eliza
becomes scared of Higgins as she misunderstands him as an informer for policemen.
This is because Eliza is frightened that she may be in trouble, indicating she is excluded
from any people different from her in class or position.
It can be inferred that the pride and a sense of belonging of working class are
involved in not only such an exclusive attitude but also the identity formation of eachindividual of the working class. Thus to theorise this identity formation, I shall analyse
the Eliza’s dialogue in the end of Pygmalion:
LIZA [defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew youd strike mesome day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having forgotten himself, andrecoils so hastily that he stumbles back into his seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I
know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You canttake away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you can.
Aha! [Purposely dropping her aitches to annoy him] Thats done you, Enry Iggins,
it az. Now I dont care that [snapping her fingers] for your bullying and your big
talk. I’ll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you
taught, and that she’ll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months
for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet andbeing trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up myfinger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself (104, emphasis added).
In this passage, although phonetic expression is not drawn faithfully like the dialogue as
analysed in Section 1, there is a part which Eliza must use Cockney apparently. That is“Enry Iggins, it az,” “purposely dropping her aitches to annoy him.” This means that
Eliza has deliberately dropped “h” at the beginning of words in order to make Higgins
annoyed. It goes without saying that Cockney is unpleasant for Higgins, but Eliza has
another reason why she does that.
Again, Eliza belongs to working class. Her behaviour before encountering
Higgins is terrible even considering that she has been ignorant, and Eliza has delicate
side while being strong-willed—in fact this features is not changed even in a while after
meeting Higgins. Thus, I suppose that Eliza was characterised as a typical model of167

working class in that she has a strong pride of her position. In contrast, as wrote in the
Introduction of this thesis, Shaw preached the readers some lessons by portraying
women with strong beliefs and self-reliance based on the influences from his motherand his wife who supported him. Eliza is also one of the characteristic women of
Shaw’s work, and this ending showed it clearly. Eliza can have a strong belief against
the adversity because she was born into a poor working class, brought up by astepmother, and kicked out to work by herself by her father. Although Eliza decides tolearn wording and manners from Higgins in order to live by herself, she has been
blamed heavily by Higgins, and has had terrible experiences through the strict education.
However, even under such circumstances, she has never lost her belief and self-relianceas she have decided to get out of the depths by all possible means. It can be inferred that
this change of tone has occurred because Higgins’s cold treatment to her strengthened
her pride or belief as a working class and she reconfirms what she should be.
Furthermore, as observed in Section Two, Higgins has a solid belief of the 19th
century that the society composing of people who are highly evaluated in terms ofeducation, occupation, position, and status—including himself— is the most desirable.
When Eliza has told Higgins about her engagement with Freddy, Higgins says about
Freddy “Damn his impudence” (102), “young fool” and “that poor devil who couldnt
get a job as errand boy even if he had the guts to try for it” (104). From the descriptionin Act One before the appearance of Eliza, Freddy cannot catch a taxi no matter how
much time passes. For Higgins, Freddy is just a deadhead if Higgins judges Freddy interms of occupation, while being in the upper class. In contrast, Eliza insists about
Higgins and Freddy that “Freddy’s not a fool. And if he’s weak and poor and wants me,
may be he’d make me happier than my betters that bully me and dont want me” (102).
Unlike higher class people including Higgins, Freddy treats Eliza kindly. It can beinferred that, Eliza, living as a working class, recognized Freddy as a good matebecause Freddy needs Eliza in spite of the different class, and she chooses Freddy
despite the fact that she has acquired what is necessary for transcending the class andvarious choices of her life. Eliza’s decision to marry with Freddy can show the working
class pride of Eliza who has a strong sense of belonging.
As is clear in this section, Eliza’s change of tone in the ending of Pygmalion was
brought as a result of strengthening her working class pride through Higgins’s cold
treatment. In addition, Eliza reconfirms her pride by realizing Freddy’s kindness, andEliza’s view that she loves Freddy even if she get many choices by acquiring themanner or wording of a fine lady leads to their engagement. In contrast, Higgins’s
supremacist attitude, which was often seen among people in the 19th century, is
168unchanged till the end. In this way, the contrast between Eliza, who returned to her pride
accepting various changes through the strict education, and Higgins, with a narrow view
sticking to his own belief without considering others’ opinions, works effectively tomake the readers understand the real happiness that is not influenced by one’s class andposition.
3-4: The Class Consciousness and Dialects from the Perspective of GenderAs can be seen from the result of a survey by Macaulay (1978) confirmed in
Section Three of Chapter One, in the UK, women are more class-conscious than men
and therefore women are more sensitive to languages. It is reasonable to suppose thatwhile men tend to have only a strong pride towards their own position, women havetheir desires for improvement in the society in addition to their pride. In Pygmalion,
characters in various classes are portrayed, and it is possible that a similar genderdifference occurs among them. Thus, in this section, I focus on gender, and analyse therelationship between class consciousness and language from gender comparison among
Eliza and her father Doolittle in Pygmalion.
Before moving on to the comparison in gender, it is necessary to arrange theinformation of Doolittle as we must set the condition—the class. Doolittle has belonged
to working class as well as Eliza, and promotes himself to upper middle class. In the Act
Five, Doolittle appeals “Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a sharein his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year” (88). It means that
Doolittle acquires huge asset unintentionally due to Higgins’s joke, so he must behave
like a wealthy man. Eliza and Doolittle have in common in that they transcend theirclass, so it is possible to say that they are suitable for subject of comparison in gender.
In comparing Eliza and Doolittle, first, I show Doolittle’s dialogue symbolizing
his class consciousness:
It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make agentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody formoney when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Enry Iggins. Now I am worrited:
tied neck and heels; and everybody for money. It’s a fine thing for you, says mysolicitor. Is it? (89, emphasis added)
This is a passage in the scene that Doolittle complains to Higgins and Pickering that hepromoted to the upper middle class unintentionally. It can be inferred that, again,
Doolittle has belonged to the working class, as h-dropping, which is the linguistic
169

feature of Cockney as a class dialect—described in Section One of Chapter Two—, canbe seen in this dialogue. Therefore, I develop the theory assuming that Doolittle is so
proud of his class that he has a bias against people in a different position from himself,
and takes his exclusive attitude towards such people. At the beginning of this line,
Doolittle insists that he had already been happy and free when he was working class.
Furthermore, Doolittle states that he had been tied up with the social control, andironically questioned Higgins and Pickering whether it is convenient for those who havebeen originally born and raised in the middle class like them. From such remarks, it canbe inferred that Doolittle implies his present status is not his true self.
In addition, Doolittle’s dialogue emotionally appealing to Higgins’s motherindicates Doolittle’s attachment for the working class:(Excuse the expression, maam; youd use it yourself if you had my provocation.)
They’ve got you every way you turn: it’s a choice between the Skilly of theworkhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I havnt the nerve forworkhouse.”（90）In the passages I analysed in this chapter, phonetic notations are not described faithfully,
yet the above dialogue has a part that is assumed to be the voice in Doolittle’s heart inparenthesis. Doolittle apologizes for his dirty way of speaking. From this, we ascertain
this implies that he uses the accent of Cockney even at the time when he becomes upper
middle class. Of course, unlike Eliza, the fact that Doolittle has not been educatedsufficiently must be taken into account, but we can understand that Doolittle implies hewill never renounce his identity as working class. Furthermore, he says that he has no
courage to choose a life in workhouse, which can be inferred to indicate that he cannot
return to his life in working class realistically, as his working class experience would
have included severe conditions.
Let us focus on an Eliza’s dialogue:
PICKERING. [laughing] Why dont you slang back for him? dont stand it. It would
do him a lot of good.
LIZA. I cant. I could have done it once but now I cant go back to it. You told me,
you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up thelanguage in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I
have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours. Thats the real170

break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street
finishes it. (95-96)
This is a passage between Eliza and Pickering when Eliza comes to Higgins
immediately after Doolittle’s going out, and Eliza and Pickering hear Higgins’s dirty
response. She implies that she cannot go back to the time when she has been in working
class, because she has forgotten her wording, Cockney, through the strict educationfrom Higgins—actually she has hardly been able to speak Cockney, as is clear in theprevious section. Unlike Doolittle, her words after strict education are portrayed withouta glimpse of Cockney, so we can see that Eliza has no regret for losing Cockney at thistime.
So what is the difference between Eliza and Doolittle in class consciousness? Here,I go back to Shaw’s view of women. Lorich (1977), a scholar of British literature, stated
how middle class women at the beginning of the 20th century should be, describing that
“Women of the middle class, however, were prevented by class distinctions from
earning a livelihood except as governesses, authors or artists” (99). According to Ooe(2005), a scholar of British literature, in addition to the above description by Lorich,middle class women were expected to lead “lady-like” lives to keep their social position
and their appearances despite the fact that Industrialism affected social and economic
conditions and more women began to work in factories and offices (83-84). However,while such a tendency is general, Shaw stated in the social role of women from the endof the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, in the essay which hecontributed to the Fabian Association in 1891:
Hence arises the idealist illusion that a vocation for domestic management and thecare of children is natural for women, and that women who back them are not
women at all, […] The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the
military career is natural to all men. (60)
From this description, it is clear that Shaw had a different view of women from thegeneral view at the time. According to Ooe, Shaw’s mother worked hard as a musicteacher to raise her three children in place of Shaw’s father who was useless due to his
heavily drinking, and Shaw’s wife supported him economically and mentally while hegained unsecure income (13-14). In this way, unlike the typical women at that time,
many of the heroines in Shaw’s works have their own strong beliefs, and do not live
under the control of men.
171

Let me turn back now to the analysis between Eliza and Doolittle. While Eliza ischaracterised as a woman with a backbone and self-reliance challenging boldly to thesociety despite the trend of the society at the beginning of 20th century, her father
Doolittle is described as a man who faces social restraint by being promoted from hisclass unexpectedly and accordingly loses his happiness. From these descriptions, we cansay that the pride of working class is totally different from the class consciousness.
While the former means the pride towards one’s present position, the latter means desire
for improvement in social standing by transcending class, and can be rephrased into
“Life Force” in Shaw’s saying. Ooe stated that Eliza has the power of trying to open her
own way by herself, which can be “Life Force” trying to change things positively (82).
In other words, the contrastive description between Doolittle, who has only a strong
pride of working class, and Eliza, who has not only this pride but also the classconsciousness or “Life Force”—despite the fact that they are in the same class— may
be responsible for further strengthening the message in Pygmalion.
In this section, from the perspective of gender, I have analysed a comparison
between Eliza and her father Doolittle, who have belonged to working class and have incommon in that they transcend their class. Doolittle’s h-dropping and his apology forhis dirty way of speaking in his dialogues indicates that Doolittle’s behaviour in Act
Five is not his true self and he still looks back to the past when he was working class.
From Eliza’s dialogue, regarding to the working class, it can be inferred that womentend to have their upward mobility in addition to their pride—which working classpeople have regardless of their gender. This makes the message in Pygmalion stronger.
To sum up, we can see two comparisons in Pygmalion. First, it is possible to draw
a comparison between two main characters: Eliza and Higgins, indicating that mental
growth is not correlated with social class. In essence, Shaw published Pygmalion at the
beginning of the 20th century when the class consciousness became stronger, in order toinsist that happiness cannot necessarily be obtained even if we adhere to the hierarchism.
Second, we can compare Eliza with her father Doolittle, both of who transcend theirclass, from the point of view of gender. From this, regarding to British working class, it
can be inferred that women tend to have their ambitions to rise in the British society
based on their class consciousness in addition to the pride which all working classpeople basically have. In both two comparisons, Cockney must work as an indicator of
British social class.

172

Conclusion
In this thesis, I have considered the class dialects, which is uncommon all over
the world, of British English through the analysis of British dialects spoken by thecharacters of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. In particular, I have investigated
Cockney which is spoken among the working class people in Eastern London. The
purpose of this thesis is to find out the significance of the relationship between British
dialects and the social class in Britain more clearly.
In Chapter One, based on the explanation of the social class unique to Britain, I
have shown that British dialects are roughly divided into two: regional dialects and classdialects. Though people who are not familiar with the class, in particular, tend to regard
the class just as an economic division, I have revealed that British social class is not
merely defined economically. Basically, British people spend their whole lifetimes in
the class to which they inherently belong, but some of them can transcend their class byzealous education or success in business that helps transform their behaviour. Thus,
some people desperately struggle to raise their class, while others think it is notnecessary. It is possible to suppose that most of the working class people, in particular,
are so proud of themselves and have strong solidarity toward their community, so manyof them never transcend from their class even if their conditions are satisfied. I revealed
that it is RP, EE, and Cockney that are the dialects prescribed by British social class. It
seems reasonable to suppose that RP, which is influenced by the change of education in
public school due to the Foster Act in 1870, and EE, which is affected by the increase in
the use in the media and semi-compulsory promotion due to the technologicaldevelopment, can be regarded as class dialects because they have no regional
difference—described the reasons why Cockney is one of the class dialects in Chapter
Two.
In Chapter Two, I have analysed the specificity of Cockney from the linguistic
aspect and the cultural aspect. Regarding to the linguistic aspect, I have revealed that
Cockney’s linguistic features include CRS (Cockney Rhyming Slang) which wasconstructed as a secret vocabulary among Cockney speakers, and h-dropping which isthe phenomenon that can be seen more frequently as the class of speakers is lower. In
other words, these two linguistic features must symbolize Cockney as the working classdialect. Regarding to cultural aspect, I have shown two facts. One is that, in recent years,
CRS has been taught at the East End in order to inherit Cockney which was formed as
an accidental dialect because of the deficient education in the East End due to poverty.
The other is that Cockney speakers were expressive because they had displayed their
feelings through their words and songs from of old, indicating that some expressions of173

Cockney are valuable to the society. For these reasons, I judged that Cockney was
suitable for the subject of the research in this thesis because it is regarded as a classdialect with the social value symbolizing British working class despite the fact that
Cockney has been referred to as ugly.
In Chapter Three, I have analysed Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, based onwhat I revealed or considered in Chapter One and Two. To begin with, I examined
Eliza’s Cockney before she meets Higgins. Then, I analysed Higgins’s RP throughout
the story. Finally, I compared Eliza and Higgins in the ending. From each topic, I havedetected the pride or identity which are attached to the characters’ class. Furthermore,from this, I have confirmed the mental contrast between Eliza, who accepts various
changes while she has belonged to working class which tend to refuse them, andHiggins, who lacks flexibility and sticks to his old-fashioned thoughts—which was
typically spread among people in the 19th century— while he belongs to the upper
middle class and has more knowledge of the society. In addition, I have confirmed thegender differences of class consciousness from whether Cockney appears in the
dialogues of Eliza and her father Doolittle after transcending their class, indicating thatworking class women tend to have their upward mobility in addition to their pride.
Through the whole, I arrive at the conclusion that Shaw combined Cockney asclass dialect and a heroine with strong self-reliance—Eliza— to attempt to effectively
make the readers cautious to the class supremacy to which British people at the
beginning of the 20th century tended to adhere, and to let them consider about it. This
thesis is significant in that I have analysed the features of Cockney as a class dialectfrom the perspective of Japanese who is not familiar with the social class, about 100
years after the publication of Pygmalion.

174

Works Cited
Ando, Sinsuke, et al. The Kenkyusha Companion to British Life and Culture. Tokyo:
Kenkyusha, 1982. Print.
Arai, Megumi. The Sullen Mary Poppins: “The Classes” from the point of view ofBritish novels and movies. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2005. Print.
Dahou, Sofia, & Hamlin Jasmine. “Ow Cockney is Beckham Twenty Years On?: An
Investigation into H-dropping and T-glottaling.” Lifespans & Styles:
Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation. 2(2), 20-27.
Edinburgh: the University of Edinburgh Journal Hosting Service, 2016. Print.
Dailymail. “Would you Adam and Eve it? Pupils to be taught Cockney rhyming slang ineast London schools.” N.p. 23 Jul. 2012. Web. 2 Nov. 2018.
Doughty, Eleanor. “Is public school still worth it?: Why more and more parents arethinking again about sending their children to private schools.” The Spectator, 17
Mar. 2018. Web. 30 Oct. 2018.
Ethnologue. “How many languages are there in the world?” 21 Feb. 2018. Web. 30 Oct.
2018.
Fujimori, Asuka. “The British Hierarchical Society and English.” Chukyo English
Literature, 28, 107-127, Aichi: Chukyo University Society of British andAmerican Cultural Studies, 2008．Print.
Hayashi, Masahiro. “About My Fair Lady and Cockney.” Studies of the Nippon
Sherlock Holmes Club, 16(1), 82-100, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo Publishers, 2007.
Print.
Hughes, Arthur, and Tradgill, Peter. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction toSocial and Regional Varieties of British English. Translated by Torii, Tsugiyoshi,
and Watanabe, Tokio. Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1984. Print.
Inose, Kumie. British Empire for Children: The Appearance of hooligan at the End of
Century. Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 1992. Print.
Kawamura Yoko. “Social Meaning of the Standard Languages and Dialects.” Journal of
Institute for Human and Environmental Studies, 1, 77-85, 1998. Print.
Lorich, Sonja. “The ‘Unwomanly Woman’ in Shaw’s Drama.” Fabian Feminist:
Bernard Shaw and woman. Ed. Weintraub, Rodelle, 99-111, Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977. Print.
Macindoe, Angus. “Cockney in Literature.” Literary Symposium. 93, 220-229. Aichi:
The Aichi University Literary Association, 1990. Print.
Macaulay, Ronald. “Variation and consistency in Glaswegian English.” Sociolinguistic
Patterns in British English. Ed. Trudgill, Peter. London: Edward Arnold, 1978.
175

Print.
McCrum, Robert, Cran, William, and MacNeil, Robert. The Story of English.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987 (First published in 1986). Print.
Ooe, Mariko. My Fair Ladies: Undomesticated Heroines of Bernard Shaw. Tokyo:
Keibunsha, 2005. Print.
Parsons, Chris. “Could Cockneys soon be brown bread? Sound of Bow Bells that define‘true Londoners’ are ‘being drowned out by capital’s noise pollution’.” London:
Dailymail, 26 Jun. 2012. Web. 2 Nov. 2018.
Petyt, Keith. ‘Dialect’ and ‘Accent’ in Industrial West Yorkshire. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 1985 (First published in 1977). Print.
Pitts, Chris, and Tsuruta, Tatsunari. “An Introduction to Cockney.” Liberal Arts
Memoirs of Kyoritsu Women’s University. 57, 10-28, 2014. Print.
Pygmalion. Dir. Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard. Perf. Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller.
General Film Distributors (GFD, UK), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (US). 1938. DVD.
Ramisch Heinrich. “Analysing linguistics atlas data: The (socio-) linguistic context of
h-dropping.” Dialectologia Special Issue. 1, 175–184, 2010. Print.
Shaw, Bernard. Pygmalion. London: Penguin Classics, 2003 (First published in 1912).
Print.
---. “Quintessence of Ibsenism.” Major Critical Essays, 23-176, Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1986 (First published in 1891). Print.
Tanaka, Miwako. “Cockney in My Fair Lady.” Osaka International University Journalof International Studies. 19(1), 39-53, 2005. Print.
The British Library Homepage. “Received Pronunciation.” N.p, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2018.
The Complete University Guide. “Tuition Fee Loans and Financial Support: If You
Come from England.” N.p, n.d., 2018. Web. 12 Oct. 2018.
The Richest. “David Beckham Net Worth.” N.p, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2018.
Upton, Clive, and Widdowson, John. An Atlas of English Dialects. London: Routledge.
1996. Print.
Yamanouchi, Kenshi. “The Recent trends in the Studies on the Elites in United
Kingdom.” Kobe journal of higher education. 8, 51-61. Kobe: The Kobe University
Research Institute for Higher Education, 2000. Print.

176