On October 21 1964, the long-lasting and much-celebrated movie My Honest Woman premiered in Hollywood. Sixty years later, the movie stays an satisfying rollick stuffed with catchy songs, however will not be a completely correct depiction of what linguists do – actually not these days not less than.
Linguists are removed from the lecturers who’re most ceaselessly depicted in movies. It’s usually the white-coat, work-in-a-lab, scientist-of-some-nondescript-sort professors who get to present stark warnings or unsettling analysis insights to the maverick protagonist. However My Honest Woman is a movie all about linguistics (and likewise class, love and horrible Cockney accents – extra on that later).
Within the movie, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), takes beneath his wing a Cockney flower vendor known as Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn). He wagers along with his buddy and fellow haughty linguist, Colonel Pickering, that he can train her to talk “correctly”.
It appears at first there isn’t a hope however – hoorah! – Eliza lastly grasps it, instantly blurting out “the rain in Spain stays primarily within the plain” in an ideal imitation of Queen’s English.
Doolittle then dazzles at an embassy ball, the right duplicate of an upstanding posh girl – or, because the movie’s title suggests, a “girl” (itself a problematic phrase which encodes sexist tropes about what must be aspirational and respectable for girls).
She even fools a person who has made a reputation for himself by figuring out imposters primarily based on their accent. Although, you might also surprise if she evades detection by barely talking on the ball, transformed right into a demure and unforthcoming shadow of her beforehand forthright, unapologetic and garrulous self.
Professor Higgins: not your typical linguist
My Honest Woman avoids the widespread pitfall of assuming that the first endeavour of the linguist is to be taught as many alternative languages as they will, gathering them like stamps (the movie Arrival can take observe). However it nonetheless doesn’t get our job fairly proper.
I, for one, have by no means groomed a younger, destitute girl to talk “accurately” whereas moulding her right into a “respectable”, posh girl (if solely trendy academia granted the respiration area for such folly).
Linguists love, have a good time and are consistently itching to know, examine and discover the various tapestry of accents, dialects and languages that exist within the UK and world wide. We’ve got no real interest in reinforcing any societal excellent for a supposedly “appropriate” accent, or throwing a grammar rule e book at unwitting members of the general public.
Against this, Higgins is repulsed by any accent that isn’t Queen’s English (which, by an exquisite flip of luck, can also be his accent). Within the opening quantity, he has a pop on the dialects of Yorkshire, Cornwall, America, Scotland and Eire.
However he’s notably dismayed and repulsed that Doolittle, regardless of being from London, has a powerful London accent (or she is supposed to not less than – I can solely think about Hepburn was instructed to open her mouth as vast as attainable for all vowels and caw like a crow if all else fails).
Higgins makes varied proclamations which could have you shouting on the telly, “Regular on, Professor!”. In his phrases:
Take a look at her, a prisoner of the gutter / Condemned by each syllable she ever utters / By proper, she must be taken out and hung for the cold-blooded homicide of the English tongue.
Greatest not inform him “hanged” is the previous tense of “grasp” when referring to capital punishment, else he stroll himself straight to the gallows.
With a bit of little bit of accent prejudice
The true beast in disguise on the embassy ball will not be younger, Cockney, Eliza Doolittle. It’s misogyny and contempt for the working class that hides behind a masks of sustaining good requirements and defending the English language.
It’s no coincidence that ladies and working-class folks (and Cockneys who are sometimes seen as emblematic of the working class) usually bear the brunt of accent prejudice.
Accent prejudice is a smokescreen for broader societal prejudice. My Honest Woman appears antiquated and quaint in some ways – like Higgins utilizing a gramophone to play again recordings of Doolittle – however accent prejudice is alive and nicely.
Ladies within the UK corresponding to Alex Scott, Angela Rayner and Priti Patel nonetheless routinely face criticism, commentary and contempt for his or her regional accents.
Learn extra:
Ask or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality
You would possibly assume that the movie’s lesson is for Doolittle to tackle the world along with her freshly mastered “commonplace” accent. In spite of everything, she consented to being ridiculed and paraded round like a present canine as she felt her accent prevented her from getting a job in a flower store. Now, nothing stands in her manner.
However folks mustn’t have to vary their accent to get alongside – and it’s not all the time attainable or perhaps a assured ticket out of discrimination. If we take the accent out of accent prejudice, we’re nonetheless left with the bias – let’s take away the bias and be left with the accent.
We’d like extra unapologetically working-class girls with regional accents on the embassy ball, but in addition in politics, academia, within the media and in all walks of life.
Within the movie, Doolittle in the end feels she has been used and disrespected, main her to bitter on Higgins. After she leaves, he grows to overlook her and wistfully performs again recordings of her voice.
And that is the actual lesson for viewers right now. Higgins has gotten to know Doolittle as an individual and now sees past her accent and his personal prejudice. The extra we hear folks with regional accents, the extra regular and uneventful it turns into, and the extra we’ll give attention to what they are saying and never how they are saying it.
