English Received Pronunciation and Cockney in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" and George Cukor's "My Fair Lady"

This dissertation investigates the characteristics and differences between Received Pronunciation (RP) and Cockney through a comparison of some scenes from George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play “Pygmalion” and Cukor’s 1964 musical film “My Fair Lady”. The study begins with an introduction to the history of the English language, before delving into the phonetic and grammatical characteristics of the main varieties and their relationship with society. After providing a further description of the works with a focus on the representation of the Received Pronunciation and Cockney and on their differences, the actual analysis of some scenes from the play and the movie is presented, with a comparison of the two varieties and a discussion of the results. The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that, although pronunciation reveals a lot about a person’s history, it is not a valid criterion for defining them. This applies even in a society with different accents associated with distinct cultural backgrounds, like the English one, as a register and a behaviour appropriate to the situation are more important.