The Analysis And The Implication Of The Changes Of Eliza's Pronunciation From The Perspective Of Face Theory

With the development of globalization of the world economy,English has become an international language or lingua franca,which is no longer owned just by its native speakers(Graddol,2006).The non-native speakers outnumber its native speakers.After experiencing the three stages of Old English,Middle English and Modern English,the English language has greatly been different from its origins with lots of local varieties appearing,some of which have been institutionalized and standardized,such as Singlish,Indian English,Nigerian English,etc..Gradually,there are more and more varieties of English around the world.According to Kachru(1997),these Englishes fall into three increasingly well-known categories: the Inner Circle,English spoken in the United Kingdom,the United States,Australia,New Zealand,and some other places.The Outer Circle,namely,English used in India,Nigeria,the Philippines and other places.The Expanding Circle refers to the places,such as China,Japan,and South Korea and so on.Faced with so many varieties,what should the English learners set goals? Some scholars put forward that language is a means of communication,and the aim of learning English is to communicate with others.Thus,English learners should learn to speak smoothly and fluently.It is true that the function of language is to communicate with others.However,when it comes to the English major students of normal universities,especially those who determine to be English teachers in elementary schools,English is more than a way of communication.For them,their English has much to do with their job and their face.For the potential students,their teachers' English will affect them along their life span.From the perspective of Face Theory,the paper analyzes the actress Eliza's pronunciation problems in the movie My Fair Lady,and tries to answer the following questions:(1)What are the changes of Eliza's pronunciation?(2)Why does Eliza want to change her original pronunciation to master RP?(3)What is the relationship between one's image and pronunciation?Taking My Fair Lady as an example,the author employs the visual ethnography as the research method,and watches the movie many times to record the dialogues and behaviors of the character.The resource of the paper is attained from the notes,based on the author's analysis of Eliza's pronunciation changes and face issues.The original film dialogues were first cut from the movie with Power MP3 Cutter Classic and then analyzed by the phonetic software Praat.Through the latter Eliza's pronunciation has been illustrated vividly by amplitude,intensity,and pitch.Eliza spoke Cockney English at the beginning but RP later.Her pronunciation changed greatly,such as the pronunciation of vowels,the alternation of diphthongs and so on.In the movie,Eliza improved her pronunciation gradually and finally mastered RP,receiving the great praise from the phonetician Zoltan Karpathy.With the change of her pronunciation,her social status was changed and her face was kept accordingly.At the start,she was despised as dirt by Professor Higgins in the public.Later she got some praise from him as she made improvements and was regarded as a lady by strangers.Finally,she was detected as a princess from Hungary,dancing with the prince.In the movie,Eliza's pronunciation determines her status directly.After mastering RP,she is respected and loved by others.No one can ever recognize her as the former flower girl.In reality,English major students who have good pronunciation are always praised by teachers,admired by classmates and even have better opportunities during the job hunting.Therefore,it is greatly important for English major students to change their own pronunciation to master RP,especially for those who aim to be English teachers and work at window positions.