The Stylistic Analysis of the Dialogues between Higgins and Eliza in Pygmalion

程希

Abstract：A turn is the basic unit of dialogues whose important component is turn-taking.The politeness，one of the important requirements of humans existence，attaches great significance to a successful conversation.This paper aims to analyze the con?versations between Higgins and Eliza in Pygmalion written by George Bernard Shaw to explore the characteristics of these two main characters from the perspective of turn-taking and the Po?liteness Principle.

Key Words：Turn-taking；The Politeness Principle；Pygmalion

Pygmalion is a drama written by Gorge Bernard Shaw who is a fa?mous Irish playwright and a winner of Nobel Prize in Literature.It mainly tells a story that Higgins，a phonetic linguist，and his friend，Pickering made a bet on a poor flower girl named Eliza.The author decides to illus?trate how the characters personalities，character relationships between Eliza and Higgins and plot development from the perspective of turn-tak?ing analysis and the six maxims of politeness principle.

Higgins always controls the topics and Eliza seldom controls the top?ic and has little right to say.Eliza did not say any monologue while Hig?gins said monologue twice from which we can infer that Higgins is a self-centered person.While Mrs.Pierce helped Eliza dress up，Elizas fa?ther，Doolittle，came to demand five ponds blackmail from Higgins.There were almost three phases of conversations between Higgins and Eliza.There are46turns among which27turns are started by Higginsand represent58.7%and19turns are initiated by Eliza and represent41.3%.There are35turns happened in the conversation between Hig?gins and Eliza.28turns were started by Higgins and the percentage of it is80%.Only7turns are initiated by Eliza，which accounts for only20%.In this part，interruptions made by Higgins are two times and Eliza inter?rupts his conversation for once，which marks the nearly equality of their psychological positions.Higgins has one monologue while Eliza does not have monologue.Higgins has26turns which accounts for56.5%and Eli?za has20turns which represents43.5%.Higgins and Eliza nearly have equal shares of the speaking right.Eliza does not response Higgins for three times and interrupted him for one time which can never be seen in the first four acts.In this part，Higgins has zero interruption and4mono?logues while Eliza has two monologues.

It can be seen the changes happened between Higgins and Eliza.At the beginning of the drama，Higgins used to always control the speaking rights and initiate the conversation；while Eliza just followed Higginss mind and responded.Higgins always interrupted Elizas words，but Eliza never broke through his words.At the end of the drama，Eliza starts to initiate conversations and interrupt Higginss talk，which is a major dif?ference of Eliza.Most importantly，Higgins and Eliza seem to share the equal speaking right，which shows that they finally reach the equality in psychological level.

Also，the maxims being violated demonstrate the shifts of their rela?tionships.Even though Higginss attitudes towards Eliza have changed，Higgins always violates the politeness principle，such as the Tact Maxim，the Sympathy Maxim and so on.Eliza obeyed the politeness principle firstly，but she also changed her minds after she shows her desire of be?ing an individual woman.This shows that Higgins and Eliza seem always in disputes and never compromise with each other.Also，Higgins，a pho?netic professor and middle class member，always violates the politeness principle，which is a sign of Gorge Bernard Shaws irony towards the middle bourgeoisie.However，Eliza，a poor flower girl，dares to show her impoliteness when talking to Higgins，which can be regarded as Gorge Bernard Shaws compliment to her.

All in all，author of this paper have gained much more understand?ing of the turn-taking analysis and the politeness principle and compre?hensive knowledge of Pygmalion and the two main characters.And au?thor hopes this paper could contribute to the stylistic study of Pygmalion and related studies as much as possible.

References

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[2]   Gorge Bernard Shaw，Pygmalion[M].Penguin Group，2013.

[3]   Leech.Principle of Pragmatics[M].Longman Inc，1983.