Americans Are Fast to Judge Social Class

The plot of the famous musical My Fair Lady is based on the idea that the way we speak determines our position in society. The main character, Eliza Doolittle, becomes the unwitting target of a bet between two phonetics scholars, one of whom (Henry Higgins) brags that he can convince strangers that Doolittle is a duchess by training her to speak like one. In reality, she is the poor daughter of a dustman who speaks with a thick Cockney accent. By the end of the musical, Doolittle is able to...