Explain how Churchill uses language to establish a particular character’s identity, class, or social status.
In the book Top Girls written by Caryl Churchill, it is evident that she uses specific language to establish a particular character’s sense of class. Churchill has done this by portraying Joyce as slightly of a lower class than Marlene, through the use of simplistic sentence structures, grammatical errors every so often and relative use of slang. This leads to contrast with Marlene, where she is seen as quite sophisticated, with good job status and is much more proper, indicating that she has a set-out path and has made the fullest out of every opportunity pointed towards her.
When Joyce is first introduced as a secondary character, we instantly see the contrast between her and her sister Marlene. It is very apparent that her background in the state of living is completely different from Marlene’s lifestyle. To be more specific we see this through Joyce’s diction. For starters, her simplistic sentence structure instantly brings out the essence of her character. This is seen most prominently in act 2 scene 1, where Joyce says “drink your tea and shut up, pet”. In this quote it highlights the initial idea that Joyce isn’t one to come up with complex ways to express her emotions, rather she is portrayed as very straightforward and explicit. What is thought in her mind is said out loud with no means of regret or embarrassment, yet full-on confidence and intention. Moreover, this carries out hints on the type of person she may be as the way one communicates with those around them gives off a certain type of impression. From this, I pick out the fact that her actions are full of intent and she sticks by them wholeheartedly.
Churchill has made each character in this book very unique, one to its own. Specifically for Joyce, it is clear to point out that in the way she expresses her emotions or thoughts it’s straightforward. This has been done well by purposely having her use a lot of slang. Usually, we would see how proper Marlene speaks whether she is at work or at home with people who are more familiar with her. This gives readers the implied understanding that she is living a well-off lifestyle and is well-mannered for a working woman in a world that is dominated by men in the workforce. This idea contrasts with Joyce’s character as she would speak of such things as “I hate the cows I work for and their dirty dishes with blanquette of fucking veau”. The need to use profanity to express one’s feelings gives readers ideas that the character may be unhappy with themselves, their current lifestyle and numerous things may come to mind, but not only is it the use of the one explicit word that underlies some sort of unhappiness for Joyce but the way she tries to tie cows with her employees and make that contrast, it truly shows a lot about how she stands in her class level and that she seems to want something more than what she has.
On a final note, I would like to address the use of giving Joyce’s character broken English or very aggressive specified vocabulary to allow the readers to acknowledge how hard she’s had it in life. A clear example of this would be, “I spit when I see a Rolls Royce, scratch it with my ring Mercedes it was”. This conveys her subtle envy towards materialistic things and how she reacts to such extremes of lifestyle. This can also be seen through how she reacted when her daughter received the perfume and dress from Marlene, it wasn’t a huge deal for her after it all, but it definitely turned out that way because she was seeing what another mother figure could’ve potentially done for her daughter and could’ve been envious of the fact that she could never reward her daughter with such a life.
In conclusion, Churchill has used language to establish Joyce’s sense of class through the three different mentioned techniques and has successfully done this in order to express her lack of understanding of the world around her, whilst she is bitter to her lifestyle and herself.
