Explain how Churchill uses language to establish a particular character’s identity, class, or social status.
Top Girls by Caryl Churchill follows Marlene, a woman who works at top girl’s employment agency and is celebrating her recent promotion with 5 historical figures. She also later visits her sister Joyce and the relationship between them is revealed. Churchill’s uses language to establish Joyce’s character’s class. She uses simplistic sentence structures for Joyce’s character as well as the use of slangs and grammar mistakes.
The sentence structure compared to the sentences that Marlene says, is juxtaposed as Joyce speaks with grammar mistakes and slang. I think it can show their education level as well as their class. Compared to Marlene, her speech seems like she’s less educated, when they are talking about Kit and Angie, Joyce says, “She hasn’t an idea in her head what she wants to do”, the use of “hasn’t” can show the audience of her social class with the use of slang as Marlene does not speak like that, and we know that Marlene is in the upper class and that she is educated. When Joyce is talking to Angie, she also uses an informal tone with almost, shortcuts, to her speech such as “You’ve no money, have you?”, which can contribute to the idea of Joyce’s social class. Joyce also says, “You was in America or somewhere”, the use of “was” is grammatically incorrect showing the level of education she has compared to Marlene.
It is clear with the difference of class between Joyce and Marlene with their dialogue between each other. The things they say to each other can indicate their class status as perhaps Joyce is mad that Marlene left her family to go to a job as Joyce even mentions, “Don’t come back”, and after that point all the secrets are revealed about the two sisters. I think that the clear contrast between the two sisters enhances the text as it shows the audience the reality of the time (1980s) and the differences between lower and upper class. Joyce also tells Marlene, “For someone so clever, you was the most stupid” to perhaps illustrate the difficulties of a working woman, how they couldn’t do both, and that’s why Joyce had to look after Angie and stay in that lower class.
I think this book tries to emphasize the difficulties of a woman, a working woman, and showcases it with the relationship between the two sisters. It does a good job on showing which character is in the upper class and which is in the lower class with the specific language used.