Comparing Language and Identity in Pygmalion and Educating Rita

Pygmalion and Educating Rita: Language and Identity

This essay is based on the reading of two literary plays, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Willy Russell’s Educating Rita. Language and identity are two expressions that need to be explained. English is the official language in several countries; Chinese is the language spoken by Chinese people and Danish is how Danes speak. But languages could also be described as different ways of talking due to social background, education, profession, age and sex. A person’s language is connected to his social situation. Eliza, the cockney flower girl from the gutter does not speak the same language as professor Higgins, even if English is their common mother tongue. They speak differently because they belong to different social worlds. Identity can signify the very special characteristic of a person, something that makes him differ from others.

EDUCATION AND IDENTITY CHANGES

Eliza and Rita, the principal characters of the two plays are both objects of identity change in the course of the stories. Are these changes identical or can we find differences? The two young women originally come from intellectually poor circles. Eliza is a young flower girl who speaks a gutter language. She talks in the following way: "Aint no call to meddle with me, he aint." (1) Her manners are crude, and her cockney accent leaves her feeling as if she is a second-class citizen. She is treated that way. Still, she seems to be proud of herself, "I’m a good girl, I am." (2)

Rita is a twenty-six-year-old, brash, earthy hairdresser, married to a Liverpudlian beerdrinker who demands her to have children and to be a good wife. She feels unsatisfied with her marriage. At the hairdressing salon where she works, she gets tired of the daily listening to women who talk a lot without saying any important. "They never tell y’things that matter." (3)

The story of the two plays tells how the education of the women changes their lives. There are remarkable progresses in their studies and the result is an obvious change of their lives.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CHANGES

I would guess that many readers and spectators of the two plays regard them as about the same story. As a matter of fact, they are not. There is at least one important difference. The changes are not the same. One of them is external while the other is internal.