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Habitus Represented by Body in Pygmalion

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2012, 25(2), pp.189-213
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

So Young Yoon 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Pygmalion(1912) written by George Bernard Shaw is a salient play to show the relationship between language and body. Shaw presents a flower girl named Eliza on the stage, so as to describe a whole process of transformation of a flower girl into a lady through arduous language training by Prof. Higgins. What class people will belong to is based on Bourdieu’s habitus, which comprises social capital, economic capital and cultural capital. Especially, according to their language practice, people can be categorized. Thus, language use is an index to reveal the difference between classes. A woman, who cannot speak English properly, is like a squashed cabbage leaf from the viewpoint of Higgins, an English linguist, and sometimes she is treated as a thing by him. What is important in this text is Higgins tries to open a possibility to make Eliza a new person by training for six months to speak English properly and fluently. After his experiment, Eliza became a different person so that she realized that she could not go back to her past life. She is equipped with decent language, thus being recognized as a Hungarian princess by Nepommuck, who is not only a multilingual interpreter but a disciple of Higgins. What is noteworthy is that Higgins’s language experiment on her enables Eliza to speak adequate English as if she were a member of high class society. In so doing, something interesting happens. Her body as well as her language use is changed outstandingly and remarkably. In the end, practising new language of other classes leads to transformation of Eliza’ body and language use. In this paper Shusterman’s soma is adopted to present not a corporeal body as flesh but a somatic body which is to feel and conceive. In this vein, Eliza’s body represents Shusterman’s soma in that her body includes her feeling and consciousness of life. In addition, Bourdieu’s habitus shows what class Eliza can belong to through what kind of capital she has. Although she is equipped with proper language as cultural capital, she faces identity crisis since she has no economic and social capital. In conclusion, as one’s language use is changed, one’s body can be changed as well in that the relationship between language and body is close enough to be inseparable. One’s body represents a whole thing which is composed of one’s verbal & non-verbal language and one’s thought & mind.

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