蕭伯納的故事《賣花女》講述了一個粗俗、骯髒、未受教育的賣花姑娘如何從一口倫敦東區工人階級的「考克尼」口音，被教導如何正確地說英語，最後變身為高貴的女士，成功在大使的花園宴會被認為是女公爵。在1912年本劇的著作時期，英語仍然是社會階級的決定因素.無可挑剔的用語是上流階層最重要的因素，因此伊萊莎請求語音學教授亨利•希金斯的幫助。希金斯對伊萊莎著名的一番話，「妳這片爛菜葉，妳丟盡了這些莊嚴圓柱建築的臉，妳對不起英國的語言！但我可以讓妳變成示巴女王！」這顯示了階級劃分和社會提升如何與英語緊密聯繫在一起。儘管她的詞彙和語法錯誤，伊萊莎僅只透過學會正確交談就得以改變自己的身份。我的研究首先將顯示十九世紀末英格蘭上下階層之間的緊張關係。第一章將會分析語言在評價社會地位中的作用。第二章我會闡明教育與階級區分之間的關係，以及英語學習與階級劃分的相關性。在最後一章中，我會指出語言與人類生命意識之間的密切關係，揭示貧窮女性在二十世紀初僵硬英國階級體系中爭取獨立的挑戰過程，這確實為女性在自我意識和自我認同的形成提供了一個借鑒。
George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is the story of how a vulgar, dirty, and uneducated flower girl, who speaks cockney, was taught to speak English properly and finally turned into a noble lady, passing for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. In 1912 when the play was written the English language was still a social determinant. As the most important element to assume gentility is impeccable speech, Eliza asked Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins for help. Higgins’s famous declaration to Eliza, “Yes, you squashed cabbage-leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language! I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba!” shows how fixedly class division and social mobility were tied to the English language. In spite of her lexical and grammatical errors, Eliza was able to change her identity simply by learning to talk properly. My study will first show the tension between the upper and lower class in the late 19th century England. The role of language in marking social status will be analyzed in the first chapter. In the second chapter, I will clarify the relationship between education and class distinction, as well as the correlation of English learning and class division. In the last chapter, I will point out the close relationship between language and human’s life consciousness and reveal the challenging process of a poor woman’s struggle for independence in the rigid British class system of early twentieth century, which indeed offers a lesson for woman’s formation of self-awareness and self-identity.
